Digital Animation

When: Duration 10 Weeks

Thursdays 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PST

Animation is a technique of making films or videos that gives one the power to make anything happen - from a cat playing piano to aliens attacking earth with large spacecrafts - bringing almost every imagination to life. In this course we will focus on training you, both theoretically and practically, the possibilities that different animation techniques can help you turn your imaginations into videos. All you will need is some basic materials, an electronic device like laptop and/or ipad, some softwares and your creativity.

What You'll Learn

• How animation was/is being created by Disney, Pixar or Warner brothers, and what does it take to create cartoons like Mickey mouse, Tom and Jerry, Toy story and many more!
• Create animation using digital softwares like Flipaclip, Synfig studio or Blender as well as handmade techniques like flipbook.
• Learn the fundamentals of animation and digital drawing, like resolution, pixels, frame rates, lip sync, layers or morphing
• Exploring creativity in designing characters, backgrounds or 3D models
• Learn about digital animation tools like brushes, opacity, scale, keyframes, timeline, import/export, onion skinning, effects, transition, selection tool etc.

Materials Needed

• Pencil 
• Pencil sharpener
• Eraser
• Pen/marker
• Colour (any)
• Sketch book/ any drawing sheet/ a4 size paper (optional)
• Sticky notepad/small notepad/notebook
• Some objects to animate, preferably toys or action figures
• A roll of thread (might come in handy)
• Clay dough/any coloured clay
• Clay modelling tools (optional)
• An ipad/tablet/smartphone with apple pen/stylus
• A laptop/a desktop with webcam
• A microphone (any, for recording audio)
• Google Chrome Stop Motion animator (free chrome app extension)
• Flipaclip (free version)
• Hitfilm Express (open source)
• Synfig studio (open source)
• Blender (open source)And most importantly,

Schedule

• Week1: Introduction to history and techniques of animation, both handmade and digital, till today. Also, try our hands in making a flipbook animation
• Week 2: Learn Stop motion animation, and create stop motion video using Chrome stop motion animator 
• Week 3: Learn Claymation, and how to make a clay model and animate it
• Week 4: Character design for animation, and how one can design and draw a new character digitally
• Week 5: Animating a character in Flipaclip
• Week 6: Designing a creative background and adding sounds to animation
• Week 7: Creating and adding own voice to animation 
• Week 8: Introduction to Keyframe animation and photo morphing in Hitfilm Express 
• Week 9: 2D bone animation with Synfig Studio
• Week 10: Introduction to 3D modelling, Texturing and animation on Blender