Anna Laura Zielinska Animator at King Bee

Congratulations to Anna Zielinska, one of our online MA students, who has recently landed an animation internship with King Bee animation, based at the historic Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, just outside of London.

King Bee have worked on many animation projects, including music videos and TV series. They use Maya, Flash and Photoshop to do much of their work. To see the King Bee reel, watch the video below.

Emma Thorpe Animator at King Bee Animation

An internship at an animation studio is often a necessary first step to entering the industry. An internship gives you real-world experience of the business, will helps you to build contacts and - hopefully - might even lead to a full-time job.

In December last year Animation Apprentice student Emma Thorpe landed an internship with King Bee animation, based at the historic Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, just outside of London. And, fortunately, that internship has since turned into a job.

Facial Expressions Made Easy - By The Grimace Project!

Stuck for a good facial expression for your animation? Check out this cool website at the Grimace Project, which allows you to use a slider to dial in basic facial expressions like joy, sadness and anger.

You can't combine all of the expressions (though some of them do work in combination) but this is still a good starting point for getting facial expressions right, especially if you're feeling stuck on a character pose.

Where can you learn Flash online for free?

Hexjibber - home of Andy Sykes - and awesome Flash tutorials

Animation Apprentice is primarily a 3D animation course, focusing on character and creature animation in Maya, training our students in 30 weeks to reach a professional level at which they can start to take on freelance jobs and find work in the animation industry. What we don't have (yet) is a course in 2D animation, using Flash or Toonboom to create sophisticated traditional-style animation. Fortunately, the skills learned in 3D animation are highly transferable to 2D. A good animator must master timing and spacing, and must be able to give a performance. After all, we animators are entertainers, not robots. Like actors, our job is to entertain an audience.