Animate Like Miyazaki, Go!

Today I had my glimpse into the world of 3D animation in my first lesson with our animation tutor, Kafui ‘Kaf’ Elorm Avornyo.

Kaf explained to us, that he will be teaching us the complexities of Autodesk’s Maya 2013, as well as checking our progress on the assignments we will be given. For the first assignment, however, we are not required to animate, simply research. This meant we had time to have a quick play with the program before being given a comprehensive study list and some interesting homework.

What we must know for the next lesson:
  • ‘Polygons’ and ‘Vertices’.
  • ‘Deformers’ and ‘Subdivisions’.
  • Setting keys in the ‘Animation Editors > Graph Editor’ window.
  • Learning the ‘average’, ‘condition’ and ‘multiply/divide’ functions; under the ‘Utilities’ in the ‘Hypershade’ window.
  • Using the ‘Skeleton > Joint Tool’.
  • Looking at programming in Maya; Maya Embedded Language (M.E.L.) and Python.
Then homework on top, (hurrah):
  • Complete a rough draft of my assignment plan (done), complete with sources.
  • Analyse a Miyazaki short film.
  • Look at the work from students at the French animation schools of Gobelins and Supintocom.
Kaf suggested we study this pretty sweet short animation film by GOBELINS.

Unfortunately, our class was interrupted by another one of our tutors, who explained that the timetable for lessons has had to change and that we will now be incorporated into the second year (H.N.D.) students timetable. This means I’ll have to work through the night to complete the tasks Kaf gave us, as I spent most of my spare time this evening expanding the website. Joy!