Free Webinar July 24

Sea Serpent - Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I'll be doing a webinar on how to animate non-human characters on Tuesday July 24th.

The webinar is hosted by Escape Studios in London and is completely free, and there will be plenty of time to take questions during the talk.

How does an animator approach the challenge of animating non-human characters? After all, you probably can't film yourself acting out the scene, so you will need to find other solutions.

I'll be be showing clips from some of the films I have worked on over the years, such as
Chronicles of Narnia – Voyage of the Dawn Treader,  Robots, Lion King, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and showing how each project required a uniquely tailored (and different) approach to the animation. 

Annecy, France

The webinar explores in more detail some themes I touched on during a recent talk at the recent Annecy film Festival, where I sat on a panel along with a number of other animators and film-makers.

The panel was all about non-human animation, and the official title was "Ostriches, robots, mushrooms ... how to animate non-human characters".

Animating non-human characters involves a great deal of research, and also finding ways to apply that research to the character in a way that is entertaining and fun, and doesn't get bogged down in too much technical detail. After all, we're not making documentaries.



You need to use live-action reference, but make sure you're using it right, not as crutch, by literally copying real life, but using reference to make your work feel believable and compelling. Of course, saying this is the easy bit - doing it the right way is much harder.

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