Animation Workshop Day 1 - [Re-Post 22-11-2011]

Today was the first in a series of intensive animation workshops run by Campbell McAllister, and Susanna Shaw; two accomplished animators, who have years of experience in industry. Campbell has a BAFTA award for his student project under his belt and has worked as Director of Animation at two studios and was an FX Animator at Aardman. Susanna has worked with Aardman since the early 80's and is the director of the Bristol Animation Course, as well as 'Animated Exeter'.

The day started with an introduction and some observation exercises. We tried to imitate each others walks, which proved to be more difficult than expected. The subtleties of the human walking motion are extremely difficult to replicate in animation, so good observation is critical, which is what this exercise addressed.

We were then given cameras to record some real reference footage of people walking, and were set loose around the university. We found that to avoid people 'performing' their walks in front of the camera, we would film students without their knowledge, to get a more natural result.

We captured some footage from one of the busier areas of the University campus, and then asked one of the course demonstrators, Adam, to walk through the media school for us while we filmed. Adam has such a great macho walk, and was pleased when we asked to record it. Cheers Adam!

We continued the workshop in the labs, where we were introduced to the Witchdoctor rig that Campbell had used in a previous animation. He walked us through the controls, which were easy to use as the locators and controls were offset from the actual model, making them simple to select. Campbell used several joints to make a rudimentary rib cage, which stopped the arm pits from being affected when the arm is moved. I found this tip particularly useful, as it solves a common problem that affects nearly all humanoid rigs.

We then received a short tutorial on walk cycles, after which, we tried to replicate – using our captured footage as reference.

By the end of the day I'd gotten a few steps of the walk cycle done, but I was a long way from being finished.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this week, (apart from the early starts) and I'm interested to see what other insight they can give into the animation industry.

Time to sleep.