Class Catalog

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.