Character Animation is HARD!
if you’re used to animating 3-4 things at a time and working straight-ahead as you animate, you might be a bit overwhelmed when you get a character rig with 30-40 controls on it. Where the hell do you even begin?
Character Animation requires a different methodology called Pose-To-Pose, and the types of things you must focus on are a bit different than what you’d look for in a more “mograph-like” piece.
Morgan Williams, a Pose-to-Pose ninja, is ready to show you the way.
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In-Depth Instruction from a Master
Upon registration, you gain lifetime access to the Character Animation Bootcamp program.
The course is taught by Morgan Williams, a character animator with decades of experience both as an animator
and as a teacher. Your brain will explode with all the info we cram in.
- 1. Learn how to use a professionally rigged puppet rig in After Effects..
- 2. Learn the ins and outs of Pose-to-Pose animation.
- 3. Discover what makes a good Pose, and why that’s so important
- 4. Learn workflows to help you achieve more complex movements and scenarios
- 5. Develop a killer sense of Timing for your Character Animation
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You’re not in this alone
Go on this Character Animation journey with a group of brave souls who, like yourself, are willing to tackle a very difficuly discipline. You’ll gain access to a private Facebook Group for your session. In this group, you will share your work, and discuss any struggles or accomplishments you’re encoutnering.
Bootcamp is not easy, but you’ll be going through it with a bunch of other motivated and excited students. The Character Animation Bootcamp Private Facebook group runs 24/7.
Image may be NSFW.
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Laser-Focused Critiques
NOTE : We have extended our Critique Window to 12 Weeks! You now have an extra 6 weeks to get feedback from our TA’s if you fall behind.
We bring on Teaching Assistants who have actually gone through the course themselves to make sure that the critiques you receive are on-point, personlized, and ACTIONABLE. Our amazing staff of TA’s will kick your butt, encourage you, and help you see the areas of your animation that need a little love.
We use an incredible tool called Frame.io to handle our critiques. We can give you frame-accurate feedback, draw directly over your video, and point out on a pixel-level what you need to work on
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Access to hundreds of Project Files
With every student completing the same assignments, you’ll see a TON of different takes on the same exercise. If you see something you like (or don’t know how to pull off) you can download any students’ project files via a shared Google Drive.
This is an opportunity that you won’t get in any other setting, take full advantage of it!
Image may be NSFW.
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Weekly Recaps and Deep-Dives
Each Wednesday, a one-hour episode of “This Week in Bootcamp” airs. You’ll get to see featured work critiqued by your TA’s, as well as deep-dives into the topics you’ve been learning about. We open up After Effects projects and show you how to fix common issues, tweak animation to get a better result, and other workflow tips.
Go even deeper into the language of Animation every Wednesday at 2pm EST!!!
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A Cast of Characters and Content
There is a ton of content in Animation Bootcamp, but it’s given to you in measured doses to ensure you don’t burn out. The course contains:
- • Over 16 hours of video instruction
- • Custom artwork and rigged characters designed just for this course
- • Exercises & Project Files for every lesson and assignment in the course
- • Interviews with 5 brilliant Character Animators including Frasier Davidson and Henrique Barone
- • Private class Podcasts dealing with all kinds of topics
- • In-depth PDFs to break down technical information into bite-sized chunks
- • Personalized critiques on your work from our amazing TA‘s available for 12 weeks!
- • A private Facebook Group for Bootcamp students ONLY
- • Weekly episodes of This Week in Bootcamp
- • Shared Google Drive filled with every students’ project files/li>
Image may be NSFW.
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What will you learn?
The course is designed to make you an animator in 6-weeks. It’s structured to build lesson-by-lesson until you’re pulling off very complex and sophisticated animation.
This is not a course that shows you a bunch of “tricks” that you may or may not use ever again. You will learn the secrets of Animation, knowledge that you will be able to use on every single project you do for the rest of your career.
Whether you’re just starting out or a veteran, your skills will improve IMMENSELY if you complete the course.
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Orientation
Get familiar with the Bootcamp system, learn how to post work, and dive right in with a lesson on using rigged puppets and an Evaluation exercise designed to let us see where you are starting from.
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Week 1
Find out what makes a good pose, and then start working on your first key-test. What’s a key-test? Well, you’ll find that out as well as get a crash-course in physics while you learn how to make a character jump.”
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Week 2
Learn how to tween your keytest, and start learning the basics of what makes a convincing walk-cycle. Walk cycles are a deep topic, and you’ll dig below the surface to learn all about the forces and Timing behind good walks.
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Week 3
Tween your walk, and start getting into more advanced movements. Morgan will show you how to approach a complex animation, and you’ll find out how to shift weight around by exploring the classic “ball throw.”
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Week 4
More practice going from a key-test to a polished, tweened animation, plus the beginning stages of planning out a longer, more complex scene. This is where everything starts to come together.
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Week 5
This is the ass-kicker week. You’ll learn how to string movements together, to use Timing in a very precise way, to think about Clarity and Motivation, and to use all the creativity you’ve got to make a full-scene.
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Week 6
If you survive this long, you’ll have created an entire animated scene and learned the entire Character Animation process. But the course doesn’t end here… your final project awaits!
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And once you’ve reached the end?
At the end of Bootcamp you are inducted into the Alumni Facebook Group where you can post your final projects, meet students from previous sessions, and continue to keep in touch with your new compadres. The networking that takes place in this group is priceless, and many students have gotten freelance work from the connections they’ve made in this course.
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Character Animation Bootcamp Talk
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During the final week, I was offered – and felt confident enough – to lead a 3D character animation project at our company. Before the course I often resorted to “this move feels wrong, but I don’t know why”, but I never had to use that phrase ever since.
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Character animation requires loads of practice and experience, but Morgan has made it feel easy. I loved the design of the characters and scenes we worked on and the very challenging assignments! But, all of this was pure fun.
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CAB offers so many important lessons in animation, with insight into techniques going far beyond only character animation. The course load is certainly challenging, but the satisfaction of completing each assignment was super rewarding. Being in a class with so many talented artists really encouraged me to try my hardest, because seeing all of the excellent work every week was inspiring. I would wholeheartedly recommend CAB to anyone looking to take the next step once they learn the ropes in After Effects.
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Morgan is an excellent teacher, and his passion for character animation definitely came through. The timely and detailed critiques and feedback on all work was very welcome and helpful. And the course was broken down and progressed at a nice pace. I came into the course not having done any legit character animation before, and came out of it with a lot of confidence in being able to do it.
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