Learn the basics of Autodesk Maya. This 11-week course explores the Maya interface, working with objects, modeling basics, how to animate objects, apply materials and textures, and use lights and cameras to render your scene. Students will have the foundation they need to carry out the assignments in our programs. This course was specifically designed for students that are new to 3D, or for students that are transitioning to Maya from a different software package. Students with Maya experience can bypass this course. This course is offered at a lower tuition cost than all other courses.

An introduction to the principles of animation, applied to simple objects and scenarios. In seven assignments, students animate with balls of different weights, an alien tow-truck ship, and a ball with legs to learn about: timing, arcs, spacing, ease in and out, weight, gravity, drag, secondary action, overlap, follow through, squash and stretch, exaggeration and the basics of bipedal locomotion. Students learn software concepts such as: projects, workspace, AutoKey keyframing, hotkeys, graph editor editing, tangents, curve cycling, and playblasting. Demonstrating these skills becomes the foundation for more advanced techniques learned later in the Animation Track and Program.

This course teaches the principles of animation applied to character motion and locomotion. Students are now ready to tackle full biped character animation in three animation assignments. Students learn how to maintain balance, understanding where the character's center of gravity is located, sculpting poses for strong silhouettes, shape reversals, how and why a character anticipates a move, motivated action, secondary action and reaction, caricatured motion, how to avoid twinning, appeal in asymmetry, and staging. In the assignments, the students are given more freedom to explore secondary actions. Technical concepts and workflows like gimbal lock, rotation order, euler filter, constraints, breakdowns, avoiding counter-animation, and Tween Machine are covered so students will understand how to create clear actions while being expressive and creative with their character. By using AnimSchool's simple segmented "block" characters, students focus on the specific positioning and angles of body parts to properly communicate a biped's pose, without getting lost in the ambiguity of fleshy characters.

Students learn how to make characters move with more weight, solidity, and believability in action scenarios. They make a biped character move in two assignments, blending different actions to create complex scenes with an emphasis on weight during movement, balance, direction changes, action, realistic force, and Ik/Fk switching. Students also learn quadruped locomotion in a third exercise of animating a dog walk.

The class provides students with a strong foundation and understanding of body mechanics so they are able to tackle physical shots in real production environments. Students will continue to improve their workflows in order to work more quickly and efficiently and meet realistic deadlines.