Computer Animation Arts

January is over at last.  Never a popular month, coming as it does after the bright lights and festive excitements of Christmas.  The first month of the year encourages us to look back and also look forwards - hence its name: "Ruler of new beginnings, gates and doors, the first hour of the day, the first day of the month, and the first month of the year, the Roman god Janus gave January its name. He was pictured as two-headed  and situated so that one head looked forward into the new year while the other took a retrospective view. Janus also presided over the temple of peace, where the doors were opened only during wartime. It was a place of safety, where new beginnings and new resolutions could be forged, just as the New Year is a time for new objectives and renewed commitments to long-term goals." http://www.mythicjourneys.org/calendar_january.html I think it only appropriate this latest edition of the Computer Animation Arts PWTM focuses on the work ...

Welcome to the final Post With The Most of 2017.  It's New Year's Eve.  The house in which I'm writing these opening words is hushed and I'm in a suitably contemplative mood.  It's been a rather strange and unsettling year.  It has felt sometimes as if the world is in reverse.  Real comfort then in taking a few quiet moments at the turning of the great clock to celebrate the achievements of our bright young things and marvel at the huge creative distances they've travelled in so short a time. The What If Metropolis project is an ambitious one for new-comers to Computer Animation Arts - in simple terms, it requires our first years to envision, design and model a fantastical digital set and adopt unfamiliar ways of looking, thinking, and designing in order to do so.  The project requires them to collaborate with established artists and thus resist any existing stylistic preferences of their own; students need to demonstrate the flex and dexterity to ...