Level: Beginner
Students with no animation experience and no experience of Maya will learn to animate dinosaurs in a day with Alex Williams, Head of Animation at Escape studios.
One Day masterclass
This one-day animation masterclass will introduce students to Maya and show how to create a believable dinosaur walk cycle and performance.
Why animate dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs have been a staple of visual effects movies ever since Jurassic Park in 1993.
London's FrameStore then created the Walking With Dinosaurs series in 1999. Since then the visual effects industry has expanding rapidly globally, and employing more and more animators - dinosaur action is something every animator needs on their demo reel.
In the tutorial students will learn how to:
- create a dinosaur walk cycle based on research and reference
- use offset curves to add flexibility
- create a believable set
- animate a moving camera
- add special effects such as camera shakes
- bake your curves
- create a performance
How did dinosaurs really walk?
We don't really know, of course. But we can take a look at dinosaurs’ closest living relatives - birds - to get an idea. For example, we can use references of ostriches and emus to see how they move.