Creature workshop 3 breakdown

Overview

This workshop will focus on flight animation and fantasy creature animation. How to craft believable and entertaining creature and animal performance. Two experienced instructors will join forces for this special workshop, which also provides 20+ hours of exclusive recorded lectures from more the 12 different creature animation expert.

Week 1 - 4: Flight School
The 4 first weeks we’ll focus on flight school. The assignment will start with a simple flight cycle, then evolve in a complete flight animation with proper flight behaviours.

Week 5 - 11: Fantasy Creature
The following 7 weeks we transition towards creature animation. How to create a dynamic and entertaining action sequence with a fantasy creature from planning to final polishing.

Prerequisite: Creature WS2

Week 01 - Flight school part 1

Introduction and presentation
Assignment presentation
Wing animation cycle demo

Week 02 - Flight school part 2

Using basic cycle to create variations
Analyzing footage displaying these variations in the basic flaps
Demo

Week 03 - Flight school part 3

Further analysis of flight behavior
Flight animation on a path demo

Week 04 - Flight school part 4

Further analysis of flight behavior, takeoff and landing
Recap of the key elements of flight animation
Lesson learned from 15 years in production

Week 05 - Creature animation part 1

Explaining the assignment
Find original and entertaining ideas (it’s as much what you choose to craft then how well you can execute it)
How to find and mix reference to build the blueprint of your animation

Week 06 - Creature animation part 2

How to properly analyse video reference
Setup your shot properly
Blocking, different technique, demo

Week 07 - Creature animation part 3

Staging and cinematography
Clear posing that communicates well the creature weight
Anatomy
Personality

Week 08 - Creature animation part 4

Splining-Refine - Demo

Week 09 - Creature animation part 5

Weight - how to exaggerate it by amplifying the laws of physics

Week 10 - Creature animation part 6

Polishing - putting the final touch - Demo

Week 11 - Creature animation part 7

Final Q&A session or replace last lecture with one more review