Acting and Performance Reel 2024

Above is a selection of the best acting and performance animation created by students at Animation Apprentice. The "Character Performance" reel includes work created by many of our talented students. All of our graduates should have at least one compelling acting shot on their reel, and one of the best ways to do this is to enter the monthly 11 Second Club.  Congratulations to all our students and recent graduates on their excellent work.

CMC Wants Your Pitches by 13 June 2024

Children's Media Conference 9-10-11 July 2024 

The Children's Media Conference (CMC) in Sheffield wants your animation pitches.  

In the "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" pitch sessions, animation creatives pitch to the animation industry, much like on the BBC's "Dragon's Den".   The CMC takes place from 9-10-11 July 2024. The deadline for submissions is 13 June 2024. 

Animals & Creatures Reel 2024

Above is a selection of the best work done on animals and creatures at Animation Apprentice.  The "Animals & Creatures Animation Reel" includes work created by many of our talented students.  Animals and Creatures are tough to animate - the mechanics of the motion need to be accurate and believable, especially so on high end visual effects feature film work.  Congratulations to all our students on their excellent work solving the peculiar problems of animal and creature locomotion and performance.

Lock To World Tool Stops Feet Sliding

We're recommending this new animation script "Lock to World", available for download at Gumroad.  The Lock to World tool does the same job as the Anchor Transform Tool - which no longer works in newer versions of Maya since the upgrade to Python 3. 

Sliding feet can be a problem when animating a character walk or a walk cycle.  Fortunately for Maya animators, the Lock to World tool created by Jesse Ong Pho offers a simple solution. 

Rather than manually tweaking your animation to stop the feet sliding, this script lets you anchor a transform for any given time range in your animation.

Animate a Telephone Ringing in Maya

In this very short tutorial (just ten minutes long) we show how to do some very simple animation - animate a Telephone Ringing.  This tutorial is aimed at animation beginners in Autodesk Maya.

Simple exercises are a great way to gain confidence in animation, starting with the basics to gradually build up your confidence and skills.

Animate a UFO on a Motion Path

Animate a UFO on a Motion Path

In this short fifteen minute tutorial we show how to animate a UFO on a motion path - a very useful technique for animating anything moving through space - UFOs, aircraft, birds, and even fish.  

Motion Path animation is an important animation technique, and can be learned in a few minutes. The tutorial starts by searching for a free set and a UFO at Turbosquid - free assets anyone can download.  This tutorial is aimed at Maya beginners.