3D Character Acting

This course is a great start for students who are already very familiar with Maya. We adopt a simple production-based training methodology and our students gain valuable inside knowledge from our years of hands-on experience in 3D animation.

INTRODUCTION TO ACTING
• What is acting? Playing a role
• Improvising with Voice and speech
• Continuity
• Body Mechanics
• Pantomiming

PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
• 12 Principles of Animation (Overshoot, anticipation, secondary motion etc)
• 2D planning process
• Paths of Actions
• Animating a bouncing ball
• Playblast for review
• Using graph editor to perfect motion
• Homework – Students will practice the basic principles on simple primitives

BODY MECHANICS
• Scene referencing and working with passes
• Doing additional animation passes
• Bi-pedal character movement
• Quad-pedal or four legged movement
• Homework Student exercises include Heavy Lift, walking and running

ADVANCED BODY MECHANICS AND PANTOMIME ACTING
• Fine tuning your Advanced Body Mechanics
• Overlapping actions
• Acting through pantomime
• Dealing with intense physical action shots with Weight pushes, pulls and lifts

FACIAL ACTING AND LIP SYNC
• Making the right acting choices
• Facial Animation
• lip synchronization techniques

POLISHING
• Tuning your shots
• Working with continuity across cuts
• Planning and blocking process for a substantial length of dialog
• Improve believability and appeal

PORTFOLIO AND REEL DEVELOPMENT (5 days)
• Putting It All Together/Work Day using Premiere Pro
• Adding Sound Effects and music
• Finishing and exporting the final 15 sec video
• Final Exam – Student must work on their character Project to finish their animation reel development for final Assessment. Instructor will review the finished piece for their personal portfolio and student will be graded.

FINAL VIEWING PARTY! Kick back, relax, and watch student reel