Masterclass

We're encouraging 13-18 year olds from across the UK to make an animated short this summer and enter our competition to find the best young animators in the UK, register on our website to enter and also get feedback on your animation as you make it! https://summerofanimation.com

Story is the most important part of any animated film and understanding how to tell a good story is an essential part of being a good animator.

Andrew Gordon is the Head of Feature Animation at DNEG, and before that spent 20 years at Pixar Animation Studios, perfecting the art of animated storytelling on films such as Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo.

In this video he shares invalable tips on how to make stories that audiences love.

Download the storytelling template PDF at www.summerofanimation.com/go

Storyboards are the visual blueprints for making an animated film, so understanding their purpose and how they are used is essential.

Francesca Adams is a highly experienced Storyboard Artist at Blue Zoo Animation Studio, having worked on shows such as The Adventures of Paddington, Numberblocks and It's Pony.

In this video, Francesca shares invaluable workflows and tips on how to visualise stories that audiences will love.

Download the storyboarding template PDF at www.summerofanimation.com/go

Concept art is used in animation to explore how the animation's characters, locations, props and vehicles will look like.

Bimpe Allui is a Junior Concept Artist at Industrial Light & Magic, creating concept art for hollywood feature films.

In this video, Bimpe shares invaluable workflow tips on how she devlops the design of an environment.

3D modelling is used in animation to build every character, environment, prop and vehicle. Every object made up for small flat shapes called polygons, these small building blocks can make every shape imaginable.

Alfie Vaughan is a Junior 2D Artist at The Mill, creating animation and VFX projects for TV adverts.

In this video, Alfie how you how to make your own models using Blender, the free to donwload 3D animation software.

You can watch more of Alfie's videos on his own YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uV...

3D texturing and "shading" is used in animation to set the colour and material of every character, environment, prop and vehicle.

Alfie Vaughan is a Junior 2D Artist at The Mill, creating animation and VFX projects for TV adverts.

In this video, Alfie how you how to texture and shade your own models using Blender, the free to donwload 3D animation software.

You can watch more of Alfie's videos on his own YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uV...

3D rigging used in animation to allow animators to bend and pose 3D models in order to animate them. The process involves creating virtual bones inside the 3D model, connecting the model's surface to the bones, then adding easy way for animators to control the bone's movements.

Stefan Mayr is a Senior TD at Framestore, creating rigging tools used to create creatures in many famous blockbuster films.

In this video, Stefan shows you can using Blender, the free to donwload 3D animation software.

Video #1 - Rigging part 1

Video #2 - Rigging part 2

Character design is used to explore the shape and look of the characters that will be modelled into a 3D character, to make sure the modelling artist know exactly what shapes they need to make.

Tena Galovic is a professional 2D Character Artist at Blue Zoo Animation Studio, having designed characters for cartoon on channels such as Nickelodeon. In this video, Tena explains how she approaches designing characters and gives tips on how you can make amazing characters designs too.

3D animation involves posing 3D objects in different positions at different points in time, the 3D software then blends between these poses to bring the objects to life!

Dane Winn is a professional Animation Director at Blue Zoo Animation Studio, having created animations for brands such as Pokemon and LEGO. In this video, Dane explains how he approaches animating 3D characters in Blender, the free 3D software.

You can also download the files he's used to give it a go yourself! https://summerofanimation.com/go

In animation, lighting is used in a similar way how it is used on a real film set - without it animations would be pretty dark! It can then be used to change the emotion and mood of the shot, by changing the positions, brightness and colours of the lights.

Once the lights are set, the images need to be rendered. Rendering means coverting the low-quality models you see in the 3D software view into high quality finished images.

You can watch more of Alfie's videos on his own YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uV...

This video focuses on the importance of reference

We'll dig down into some of the most important principles in animation for this example, posing and timing, and illustrate how to create a believable performance through the interpretation of video shot reference, and how to relate it to the 3D character (in this case Bumblebee) to achieve the action we set ourselves to do. This is a pose to pose approach and it explains how to bridge multiple obstacles as the 3D character does not have the same proportion as our human counterpart shot in the reference. and how and when to deviate from our reference when need be to achieve a better performance.

Compositing is the final stage of finishing a 3D animated shot. It is used to adjust the position and colour of the different visual elements in the shot, such as background environment, foreground objects and characters. It is also used to add special effects to the shot, such as smoke, fire and other atmospheric effects. This video demonstrates how.

Sound design is vital for the animation process, it helps add emotion, explains more story and make the action even more engaging. It also helps to tell a story that might be hard to animate, for example, rather than showing an explosion, you can use the sound of an explosion combined with camera shake and smoke to convey the same story. In this video, Stuart shows you how.