Winter Class Starts on Monday 7th January

"School Run" by Lee Caller

Our New Year classroom starts on January 7th 2019?  You don't need to know Maya beforehand (we teach everything from scratch), but it's always a good idea to do a little preparation.

Below is a brief list of stuff to get you under way. You don't have to do all of it, but tick off a few of the things on this list and you will be a making a great start on your animation career.

The book all animators need

The Animator's Survival Kit.
Any student of animation needs a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams.  It is easily the best and most comprehensive book available for learning animation.

Get yourself a decent laptop
This is a distance learning course, so you will need to get yourself a decent laptop or workstation.

We prefer laptops to a fixed workstation, as you can keep working while you are on the move. To see what kind of specifications might be right for you, read this blog post.

Download your free copy of Maya

Kayla, animated by Joris Van Laar

The next thing to do, assuming you have a decent computer or laptop at home, is get yourself a free copy of Autodesk Maya 2018.

Maya is the main software we animate with, nowadays it's the industry standard. You can download your free educational license here.

Watch some tutorials
Start to learn the Maya interface. Below is a free tutorial in the Graph Editor, the main technical tool used by Maya animators.





Start watching our free videos
Take a look at the week 1 videos at the Animation Apprentice website. The week 1 videos are all free and this gives you a general introduction to animation, helping you to get familiar with the language of the medium.

Check out our students' work
To see some of the great work done by our students, watch the video below


Welcome to Animation Apprentice!
If you do some or all the things on this list - you will have a great head start! We look forward to meeting you!

----Alex

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.