Class Catalog

Class Details

Winter 2025: 3D Animation Track / Animating Characters
TERM DATES: Jan 5, 2025 - Mar 22, 2025
LEVEL: Beginner 
COURSE PREREQUISITES: Introduction to 3D Animation
3. Animating Characters
$1620
This course teaches the principles of animation applied to character motion and locomotion. Students are now ready to tackle full biped character animation in three animation assignments. Students learn how to maintain balance, understanding where the character's center of gravity is located, sculpting poses for strong silhouettes, shape reversals, how and why a character anticipates a move, motivated action, secondary action and reaction, caricatured motion, how to avoid twinning, appeal in asymmetry, and staging. In the assignments, the students are given more freedom to explore secondary actions.

Technical concepts and workflows like gimbal lock, rotation order, euler filter, constraints, breakdowns, avoiding counter-animation, and Tween Machine are covered so students will understand how to create clear actions while being expressive and creative with their character.

By using AnimSchool's simple segmented "block" characters, students focus on the specific positioning and angles of body parts to properly communicate a biped's pose, without getting lost in the ambiguity of fleshy characters.
1, 2 - Full biped character walk cycle.
3, 4, 5- Full biped character walk to stop assignment.
6-10 - Interacting with a heavy object.
11 - Finalizing and submitting assignments.
critique time *
class time
instructor
notes
Sunday 8:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Wednesday 8:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Saturday 9:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Wednesday 9:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Monday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Tuesday 9:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Friday 9:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Wednesday 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Tuesday 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Thursday 11:00 PM - 12:30 AM
Tuesday 12:30 AM - 2:00 AM
Tuesday 10:30 PM - 12:00 AM
Thursday 10:30 PM - 12:00 AM
Monday 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Wednesday 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
ABOUT INSTRUCTORS
Jamie Chung
Hong Kong
Jamie is currently a co-director for an animated film, 'The Rise of Blus'. He currently runs his own remote animation studio that specializes in film, TV and socials along with another partner. Prior to that, he was a senior animator for almost 10 years. He has experience in...
Christopher Dias
Canada
Chris has over 15 years of Animation experience and a graduate from Sheridan's 2006-07 Digital Character Animation course, Canada. At Sheridan, He won the DreamworksAnimation SKG Scholarship for best student character animation for his student projectthat year. He later ende...
Michael Ervall
Portugal
Scott Guppy
Canada
It’s hard to imagine but I’ve been in this industry for 20+ years. The first part of my career was working in TV and commercials before making the jump into feature animation, where I’ve spent the last 12 years. I spent 4 years at Sony Imageworks where I got to work on a wid...
Ayoub Moulakhnif
United Kingdom
Ayoub Moulakhnif is an Animator at Jellyfish Pictures, previously Axis Studios, Agora, and Superseed Studios, working on Animated features for Netflix, VFX and Games. Some of his work include Scrooge a christmas carol, Cosmoball, Oddworld Soulstorm, and Brawl stars Ayo...
Daniel Paul
Canada
Daniel has been teaching at AnimSchool for 5 years. With experience in film, games, vfx, and tech, Daniel is an excellent choice to start your animation journey. He can help guide you if you're unsure which path you want to pursue, and give you the tools you need to be ready...
Harish Pawar
Canada
Harish has over 18 years of experience professionally animating characters for films. Started his career back in 2007, He has worked for Oscar winning studios such as Rhythm and Hues, Double Negative, Method, Image Engine and currently a Senior Animator at Scanline Vfx. His ...
Anand Somasundaran
Canada
Anand fell in love with animation because it was a medium that combined two of his favourite things drawing and film-making. He has been working as an animator on feature films since 2009 and has worked at studios such and Rhythm and Hues, Industrial Light and Magic and is c...
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