Pete Nicholson's Animation Job Tips

Pete Nicholson

Pete Nicholson graduated from Animation Apprentice a while back and, thanks to a strong demo reel and plenty of perseverance, he quickly found work in the animation industry, starting his animation career at Nano Films and later at King Bee.

Today he is working as an animator at Dead Ready Productions, where was recently involved in hiring a new After Effects animator.  What he discovered, going through the applications, was pretty striking.

You might think that the competition for animation jobs is intense - and it is. But you might also be surprised how many applications go into the bin because of simple, basic (and very easy to avoid) mistakes made by the applicant. 

Animate a "Take" Reaction with "Monty"

Animate a "take" with Monty

In this tutorial, we show how to animate a reaction shot, or "take" with Monty.  Reaction shots are the bread-and-butter of junior animators. On a feature film, once you have graduated from walk cycles and crowd shots, you get given reaction shots to test your skills.

A reaction shot is where animators first start to get to grips with acting and performance.  Just like live-action actors, animated characters on a screen must listen - and react.

What is the Best Free Editing Software?

Editing - how it used to be

What is the Best Free Editing Software? Animators need to understand editing, even if only to be competent enough to assemble a demo reel.

The most commonly used editing software these days is Adobe Premiere, part of the Adobe Suite of software and now available through the cloud at reasonable subscription rates.

But if you are on a tight budget and you need a very low cost option, there are a number of free alternatives.

BAFTA Scholarships for MA Study Now Open

Interesting in enrolling on our MA in animation - but lacking funds? Why not apply for a BAFTA scholarship?

BAFTA has opened applications for its scholarship programmes, worth up to £12,000. The scholarships are open to UK nationals for both undergraduate and post-graduate study.

Keith Lango Tutorials Available Free

Keith Lango YouTube Channel

Animator and teacher Keith Lango has made his animation tutorials free for everyone to learn online.

Keith's animation tutorials include animating a James Brown dance, rigging and skinning animation, and how to approach the business of animating a scene.

It's a great resource, and a very useful supplement to the growing body of online resources available for learning animation.

Blue Zoo Animation Recruitment Tips

Blue Zoo's Bader Badruddin

Animation Apprentice students who attended the recent VFX Festival at London's South Centre had the chance to meet recruiters from Blue Zoo Animation, one of London's animation powerhouses.

Among the Blue Zoo staff looking for fresh talent was Bader Badruddin, one of their lead animators (pictured left).

Bader chatted to animators about the kind of work Blue Zoo is looking for, and to make things easier still the company have also put together a very helpful blog post titled "Top Ten Recruitment Stand Tips" for students and graduates hoping to impress the company at a recruitment stand.

Meet Dana and David - New Rigs from Artstation

Meet Dana and David

Meet Dana and David, two new character rigs created by Gabriel Salas and downloadable from Artstation.com.

Dana and David were created by Gabriel to help create more diverse content for animation exercises in Maya.

Both rigs are attractive designed and visually appealing, and present a full range of facial expressions as well as body mechanics. There are a few glitches but these are fairly minor (see below for details).

On the whole we're recommending both rigs as a welcome addition to the growing range of reasonably priced character rigs for student use.

The Importance of Anticipation

Anticipation - Illusion of Life

Anticipation is one of the 12 Principles of Animation, and it is one of the key principles that every animator must master.

Every action tends to have three components: an anticipation, an action, and a reaction. If you make the anticipation clear, then the rest should follow effortlessly.

Consider the anticipation drawing of Donal Duck on the left, taken from the classic Disney instruction manual "The Illusion of Life" - still a must-have book on every animator's shelf.

It's absolutely clear what Donald is about to do - even though he hasn't done it yet.

The trick with a good anticipation pose is that it is made so clear that the audience knows what the character is going to do, before he or she actually does it. 

Free Hare Rig for Maya

Hare by Arman Musovic

We're liking this free Hare Rig for Maya by Arman Musovic. It's a fun rig, available for free download from CGMeetUp, and can be used to create some entertaining cartoony animation.

Hare works best in a cartoony, Tex Avery world, and can be combined with other cartoony characters such as the free squirrely rig, or perhaps Keith Osbourne's excellent Mr Buttons rig.

You could also consider downloading a cartoony landscape, such as this one from Turbosquid, or one of the free landscapes created by Truong for cartoony animation.

To see what can be done with Hare, check out the animation by Animation Apprentice student Dave Novis below.

BYOA on Monday 18th March

BYOA

BYOA (Bring Your Own Animation) is back - taking place in London on Monday 18th March.

Organised by the London chapter of SIGGRAPH, BYOA is an animation event that takes place every month at a pub in central London, always on the third Monday of the month, and almost always at the same location.

This month BYOA is taking place  at its usual home - the Smugglers Tavern in Fitzrovia.

For any of our students or recent graduates in the neighbourhood, BYOA is a great way to get feedback on your reel.

How to Build and Block a Scene

Animation Blocking on Stepped Curves: Mark Masters

One of the biggest challenges encountered by student animators is how to block out a shot from scratch, starting off with nothing but a blank screen and a character rig.

In animation you get nothing for free. You start off with a digital puppet, usually in a stiff "T-pose", and you have to figure out the rest yourself.

In a new series of videos, we show how to take a reaction shot - a cartoony "take" - from zero to hero.

Why Animators Should Do Facial Expressions 1st

Planning out animation isn't an easy process. In theory it is simple, but in practice there are many pitfalls for the unwary.  One of the most common errors made by novice animators is to leave the facial expressions until last.

You might think to yourself "I'll save time by blocking out the main poses, and then work on the facial expressions later", but the danger with this approach is that you might never get around to doing the facial expressions at all, and your animation will be lifeless and flat.

One of the early lessons I learned at Blue Sky Studios on "Robots" back in 2003 was how to block out the character's main facial expression from the very beginning, thus determining the main acting beats in the shot.

What is the character thinking and feeling? This is a choice you should make at the very start.

Why Animators Should Avoid Jump Cuts

A jump cut

What is a jump cut? and why should animators try to avoid them?

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that are almost the same.  The result of the cut is to "jump" from one shot to another, in a way that can be disconcerting and can take the viewer out of the story.

Download Paragon Assets Free

Paragon from Epic Games

Epic Games and Unreal Engine have released their "Paragon" online assets for free. Any student at Animation Apprentice who wants to use these photo-real characters in their projects can use "$12 million worth of assets" for no charge.

The online game Paragon was cancelled in March last year. Developer Epic Games (owners of Unreal Engine) announced that they would release all $12,000,000 worth of game assets for free use by anyone working with the Unreal Engine 4, via the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

The first wave of released content included 20 characters, with their respective skins, animations, VFX and dialogue, along with over 1,500 environment components.  To find the Paragon assets online, follow this link.

DJV View - Frame by Frame Playback

Animators need to be able to play back their shots frame by frame, in order to analyse what needs fixing. One very useful (free, and open source) tool for previewing image sequences is Djv. You can find Djv at http://djv.sourceforge.net/. Djv Djv runs on all the major platforms and is easy to use, though it has one big drawback - no audio.  

Online MA at Bucks New University

"School Run" by MA student Lee Caller

Animation Apprentice and Buckinghamshire New University are now taking applications through UCAS for the September 2019 intake of our part-time online MA in 3D animation.

The online MA is a unique degree which can be undertaken by students anywhere in the world, leading to a formal qualification in the field.

You will not only learn how to animate, but you will engage at Masters' level with the underpinning theory and structure behind the art form.

Why Animators Should Never Cross The Line

The 180 Degree Rule. Wikimedia

What is "Crossing the Line?", and why should animators never (or, almost never) cross it?

"Crossing the Line" is also known as the 180-degree rule, and it is one of the fundamental rules of cinematography.

Like most rules of film-making, the only way to really understand the 180 Degree Rule is to break it, figure out what went wrong - and then work out how to fix it next time.

Let's say you have a shot with two characters talking to one another. Draw an imaginary line between the two characters. This is the "line" that we should not cross.

Film Freeway - How to Enter Film Festivals

Film Freeway is a great way for students to enter short films into international competitions.

Rather than enter your film individually into lots of different festivals, film-makers can create one upload to a single portal, and then apply through Film Freeway for as many competitions as you like.

Film Freeway has over recent years come to replace IMDB's Withoutabox, which is being discontinued and will close down in October 2019.

Why Animators Should Learn to Be the Rhino

Durer's Rhino

Why should animators be like a rhinoceros? Because rhinos have thick hides, and animators need thick hides too, because applying for work in the animation industry is not for the faint-hearted.

Even though the animation industry is booming, and there are many opportunities, searching for work can be a dispiriting process.

Once upon a time you'd get a rejection letter; nowadays the most common outcome is silence - just being (and feeling) ignored.

But it remains true that the single most common reason why animation graduates don't get jobs is a very simple one:

Meet AZRI by Matthew Bachnick

Azri

We're liking the look of the new free AZRI Rig, a new animation rig for Maya 2018 and above, created by Matthew Bachnick.

AZRI is aimed at game animation, allowing users to achieve a high frame rate even when working on older or lower-spec machines.

The license allows for educational and non-commercial use.

Spring Class Starts 4th March 2019

Car animation by Lee Caller

Our Spring classroom starts on 4th March 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.