Computer Animation Arts

As anyone who teaches will tell you, the process of equipping young people with the skills and attitude by which to accomplish great things and realise their potential is no Hollywood-style montage of quick-cut, quick-fix gratification.  It's an uglier business than that, involving pushing, prodding, coaxing and no small amount of arse-kicking!  It is a battle of wills between past behaviours and future potential, between demons and destinies (which is already sounding a bit too Hollywood for a process that is often indescribably prolonged and frustrating). The rewards, however, can be huge - and this edition of the PWTM, which showcases the end results at the close of the academic year, is always a favourite of mine - not least because it reminds me of why we bother and why we need to go on bothering. First up, a small sample of completed films devised by first year students in response to their Fantastic Voyage brief, challenging them to pre-produce, produce and post...

Your Toolkit: Animation proformas are available now at your Ucreative email accounts.  If yours isn't there, drop me an email and I'll chase.  Many thanks.

Your Overall Toolkit Proforma + Vicky's feedback is available now at your Ucreative accounts.  You don't get written feedback for your Maya, as your grade derives from completed tutorials.  Your Animation feedback will follow later this week. If you didn't receive 100% for your Maya tutorials then you need to complete them now.  There is an unambiguous relationship between those students who complete all year one Maya tutorials and those students who have the best experience of Year 2 and their collaboration project.  If you haven't completed your tutorials then you know less than you should, and that knowledge gap will become more and more obvious as the course continues.  Please complete them now and reap the benefit later.

Your Fantastic Voyage assessment proformas are available now at your Ucreative accounts.  I'm assuming you've seen your percentages already as I understand they were made available last week.  I hope the written feedback lends further nuance to your assessment and encourages you to reflect on your achievements and areas for improvement.  If you haven't received your feedback, please email me and I'll investigate.  Many thanks.

We like to see as many year one and year two students at the New Designers Private View; it's a great opportunity to get a sense of what lies ahead, but also to meet and greet and mingle.  The date of the private view is July 5th at 6.30pm and the venue is the Business Design Centre, Islington, London.  I have a limited number of free tickets available for the private view, so if you're interested in coming along to the CAA grads' big opening night, then email me with your postal address and I'll organise them for you.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Hello, I am Anass Moudakir , a Computer Animation Arts graduate from 2012-2015.  I am currently working as a Junior Artist at PixelSky Studio in sunny Casablanca, Morocco. I am happy to tell you a little bit about what I have been up to since then. After completion of the course at UCA, I have kept busy with online classes to strengthen my skills. I have also attended weekly life drawing classes for animation in London where I met talented artists from the industry. Let me tell you it has paid off.  I am glad I made the effort, so do make the most of your life-drawing sessions in uni! I have also worked on commissioned projects including an info graphic for a friend’s project at the University of Leeds. The explainer is about single travel holidays for coffee lovers. It was made in just 48hours 'from script to screen'.     Upon my return home to Morocco, I joined an art workshop where I continued to develop my 2D skills (tradi...