Summer Class Starts Monday 6 July

The book we recommend for studying animation

What kind of preparation should students do before starting with us in our summer classroom, starting on Monday 6 July? It's always good to do a little preparation and get a bit of a head start.

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.

First, here is a short reading list to get you started. We've narrowed it down to just two key books that we recommend for all our students.

The Animator's Survival Kit.

The main textbook we recommend is The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams. It is now the standard textbook for animators and easily the most comprehensive book available for learning animation.

Get a Workstation
The next thing to do is make sure you have a decent computer, something that will run Autodesk Maya from home. Computer specs change all the time but here is a recent blog post with some recommendations on what to buy. 

Download your free copy of Maya

Get yourself a free copy of Autodesk Maya.  Maya is the main software we animate with, nowadays it's the industry standard. You can find a free educational license here.  Animation Apprentice is an approved school. 

Start watching our free videos
Once you have done that, 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.

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! 

To sign up, follow this link.

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.