Sebastian Castilho

I’m gonna go out on a whim here and say that there’s probably been a time where you’ve been watching a film or advert with some CG characters and you thought to yourself, now how was that made? Well Im’ma tell you: Through a bloody lot of effort and learning, that’s how

I mean take a good look at this rediculousness.

Numerous buttons and information EVERYWHERE, and that’s just the surface. There are menus……. behind menus. Eventually you learn to sort of ignore some of them to stop your mind from tripping out.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about though. To quickly preface this: A basic character animation requires a few things – First, a 3D model. Then a “rig” which is best described as the skeleton; the part of the body you don’t see that controls our movement arcs.

Recently I’ve been learning about the joys of rigging; and by joys, I mean relentless complexity. Sure it’s quite simple to do a very basic skeleton; it’s a matter of dot to dot (well, joint to joint), but you will find that it ends up looking completely unnatural. To make something look good is a completely different matter.

Reciting what I’ve learnt is as useful as reciting the bible – Those interested will already know all about it; those not interested don’t need to know about it. So I will simply say this – learning to animate requires you to enter a rabbit tunnel – to which there is an end, but only after a very long and dark journey. A tunnel with many different little paths that require different workarounds and puzzle solving to get through. Put more simply – there’s a lot of different tools at your disposal, but each part of the human body will really only work out well if you use a very specific tool and method of using the tool. Rigging is just one of the stages prior to finally being able to animate too The tunnel just keeps on going.

But hey, Gromit made it through the alright.

A friend recently asked me if there’s a book he can get for his young brother who’s becoming interested in animation. I made one suggestion since the brother’s only young, but there are numerous great books and websites to help people learning to animate, including myself.

Books:

• The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams (Has pretty much everything you need to know)
• Imagine Animation magazine (A year’s subscription includes a huge company directory; unfortunately it’s sorted A-Z rather than by city )

Helpful communities:

• http://www.11secondclub.com/ (also has great free animation rigs to use in various programs)
• http://www.zbrushcentral.com/
• http://forums.cgsociety.org/
• http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/

Podcasts (all found on iTunes):

• Animation Podcast (by Eric Goldberg)
• Frames Per Second Animation Podcasts
• Speaking of Animation
• Spline Cast
• Toon In! …to the Masters of Animation

Blogs

• http://www.animationblog.org/
• http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/

For a beginner, this is everything you need. It will take you a hell of a long time before you make good use of it all; probably your whole life time in fact. Enjoy

All this talk about 3D recently has just got me thinking.

1D = Length

2D = Length and Height

3D = Length, Height and Depth

4D = Length, Height, Depth, Time & Space

Animation = Objects that have length, height and depth, moving around in space (space as in the space around us, not Space up there)

So really the best way to describe 4D is just to say it’s animation Or am I wrong?

In the past few weeks I’ve literally spent hours researching what uni to go to through reading different articles, blogs, forums and contacting students and tutors from different places.  As the title suggests, I’ve made my decision, and I just got an unconditional offer to study Computer Character Animation from Teesside

I won’t know for sure if what I’ve been told is true until I go to the uni, but here’s why I chose it:

• Well structured course that’s also improving yearly.
• Plenty of the tutors with passion and teaching ability. Some even came directly from CGI studios.
• Great facilities, including quad core computers with 8 gigs ram, a rendering farm and motion capture facilities.
• A larger number of students – a good pool of people to share my passion with :p
• Animex, a great animation festival that many industry people attend, is held in the uni.

More… »

Three weeks ago I decided to leave Edge Hill’s animation course. Among other reasons, it was because I wanted a good focus on character CGI animation. Edge Hill’s programme was too general and with too few tutors to teach it. They taught/encouraged 2D, 3D, stop motion, live action and script writing. This meant that there could be no true structure to the course – We were given assignments and allowed to deal with it however we wanted. The scope for them to teach and assess us became way too big. Edge Hill doesn’t put the funding into the course; our few teachers are given few hours to teach us, and to be honest I don’t think they used that little time wisely (probably due to everyone being at different skill levels). Having talked to 2nd and 3rd year students, I don’t think the situation gets much better.

Unfortunately this is the case across the UK, and only a few universities do provide the right course for you to learn the things that the industry wants out of us.

Having said all that, Edge Hill has given me a nice starting point. The assignments they’ve set me have given me a basis for how long different things will take me and how my current skills stand against everyone else. Also, Edge Hill is good for traditional animation; it’s just that they’re weaker in CGI.