Computer Animation Arts

Another nice video-essay on the 'camera-grammar' of Steven Spielberg.  Watch and learn.

Your 'Fantastic Voyage' project brief is available now on myUCA / Storytelling & Commission. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, this is it - the big one. The Fantastic Voyage commission project is your opportunity to pull out all the stops and accomplish something extraordinary - your first cg animation. Wow. This project is a culmination of all you've learned since week one of term one and you need to think creatively, ambitiously and you need to be determined from the very outset to make the best work of which you're capable.  You are not simply being asked to satisfy a year one project brief. You are being challenged to make others take your creative potential seriously, to put your money where your mouth is - to shine. This is about you and them - the audience. You need to get them on side. You need to make them love your vision. You need to win the prize, seal the deal, steal the show. This isn't about grades or what your tutor might t...

As you start thinking about your story ideas and planning your project timetables, take a look at these examples of previous student work in response to the From Script to Screen project brief - all of which began with those same 3 random slips of paper! Lucy Yelding - Gie (Animatic) Gie 'Art Of'     Samantha Niemczyk -  The Chefs Of Tonga Island  (animatic) The Chefs Of Tonga Island 'Art Of' Jono Pearmain - A Hero's Hat (Maya Pre-viz) A Hero's Hat - 'Art Of' This brief is much more than an exercise in satisfying the year one CGAA curriculum. This is your first experience of getting an original story idea from 'script to screen' - and what you accomplish in the next few weeks might be just the beginning of a much more ambitious creative experience. Back in early 2010, GTA Jordan Buckner undertook the very same challenge of synthesising 3 random components int...

Courtesy of the great concept art blog Film Sketchr , some industry insights into the role and production of animatics ...

For your reference in terms of thumbnailing and layouts - Mark Kennedy's Temple Of The Seven Golden Camels blog is a great resource, full of practical tips and know-how.  For example, check out his simple 'foreground, midground, background' formula in terms of making dynamic compositions... 

Take ten minutes to watch this award-winning short film written and directed by Victor Carrey .  It will make you want to write and direct films! It reminds me of Paul Thomas Anderson's wonderful Magnolia (1999) spliced with the whimsy of a Wes Anderson movie.  Enjoy.

You'll enjoy this!

That's it ladies and gents. It's all over bar the shouting. No more crits, essays, or Maya tutorials. No more film screenings, tutorials, seminars, or life-drawing classes. The baseroom will no longer smell of chips and ketchup and the lecturers will soon return to their musty wooden crates under the lower 4th stairwell where they hibernate until mid-September...  Of course, it's not over - not really - all this talk of endings is an exaggeration. Indeed, I could just as well have begun this PWTM preamble as a pean to beginnings; after all, the end of the academic year marks the moment year one students become year two students, year two students assume the mantle of year three students, and year three students become graduates who must now make their first tentative forays into that place sometimes referred to as 'the real world'. The May edition of the  CG Arts & Animation   Post With The Most has a simple enough remit - to showca...

Let's cut to the chase: on the 3rd, 8th and 10th of May, years 1, 2, 3 of Ba Hons CG Arts & Animation will submit their final projects and the academic year 2012/13 will come to an end.  This, the all-new April edition of the Post With The Most captures the 'about-to-be' of those final year projects.  In the days that follow, our students will experience stress, a few heart-stopping moments, exhaustion and the euphoria of the finish line. Good luck - all of you!  For the rest of us, we can enjoy the luxury of this sneak peak into the students' culminative projects and look forward to the May edition of the CGAA PWTM  showcasing a selection of those final projects in all their bright and shiny entirety! Bring it on. Our year one students' final project sees them commissioned by Dr Peter Klappa, senior lecturer in biosciences at the University of Kent , to create original cg animations from bioscientic scenarios.   Ba Hons CG Arts & Animation ha...