Adobe Premiere Pro - Basics for Animators

At some point every animator needs to learn the basics of video editing.  Premiere Pro, made by Adobe,  comes bundled as part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Animators need Adobe Premiere mainly to cut (and re-cut) their demo reels and - of course - to make short film projects.

Premiere is also needed to create movie files from a batch render of images. Let's say you are lighting and rendering your scene with Arnold, the ray tracer that is currently bundled with Maya. Arnold will not render out a movie file (such as a avi or mov) directly; instead, you must render still images in a sequence.  To turn those still images into a movie file, you need Premiere (or some other editing software). Here is how to do it.

Five Steps to Write a Great Story

Titles to Love Me Love Me Love Me by Richard Williams

How do you write a great story? You can't make a great film without one, and yet one of the most common mistakes made by rookie film-makers is to start making the film before the story is figured out.

In fact, it's not just novices who fall into this trap - Hollywood does it all the time. But with a little forethought and planning, you can start off your project with a great story. After all, story is the most important part of any film. As Pixar's John Lasseter put, "the three most important ingredients in a Pixar film are: 1. Story, 2. Story, and 3. Story". So, how do you make sure you get it right?

How to Create a QuickTime Movie in Maya

This excellent tutorial below was created by my colleague David Creighton at Buckinghamshire New University, and explains briefly but clearly exactly how to go about creating a Quicktime movie from Maya. This is something that animation students ask about all the time, and it is super helpful to have a short video that takes you through all the steps.