AnimSchool is now accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career
Schools and Colleges (ACCSC).
In February 2020, AnimSchool gained accreditation status from the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC).
ACCSC is a recognized accrediting agency by the U.S. Department of Education.
Both AnimSchool’s 3D Animation Program and 3D Character Program are accredited by ACCSC.

What is accreditation and why is it important?

Accreditation is an evaluation process for schools to maintain standards
of educational quality set by an accrediting body like ACCSC.
It helps establish the validity of the programs of study a school offers.
Internal and external processes evaluate AnimSchool’s programs to ensure that they meet relevant academic standards.
The accreditors themselves are regulated by the the U.S. Department of Education.

Accreditation shows students and potential applicants that AnimSchool has met and is maintaining high level of standards set by the accrediting agency.
To become accredited, schools must demonstrate compliance with the agency’s standards of accreditation, which monitors areas like student success rates, educational assessment, advisory board reviews, financial soundness, advertising statement accuracy, and admissions policies.

The goal of accreditation is to ensure that the education provided by schools meets the level of quality expected by the accrediting agency, which helps students in deciding which institution to attend.

More Info…

Accredited institutions are evaluated through external reviews and
internal review processes to ensure that the accreditation standards are
being met on an ongoing basis.

Most schools like colleges,
universities and K-12 schools are accredited. Accreditation helps the
public, other schools and potential employers by ensuring that the
educational programs offered have attained a level that meets standards
developed by experts in that field.

ACCSC: 2101 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 302 Arlington, Virginia 22201 Phone: 703.247.4212 www.accsc.org

More info: https://www.animschool.com/Accreditation.aspx

To find out more about accreditation, see http://www.accsc.org/Accreditation/Overview.aspx

With this announcement, AnimSchool is now authorized to teach students
residing in the state of Texas. Texas residents may now apply to
AnimSchool. Look for announcements for other states to follow.

 

pose by AnimSchool student Arturo Rosado

Announcing!

Many professional animators believe that the planning phase is the most important part of animating a good shot, and take a good amount of time to plan even when on a tight schedule. We’ve discussed planning within your sequence and directing your audience, and now it’s time to work on what could make or break your shot – acting choices. As instructor Rahul Dabholkar mentions in our class clip for this post, your acting choices are what will set you apart from other good animators. Even an action as simple as sitting and reacting to what another character is saying can be acted out in hundreds of ways, and it’s up to you as the animator to choose the most appropriate, believable, and relatable way to portray it.
 




What are some ways you could act out a simple reaction shot? Rahul goes over a few ways to portray different characters in this clip from our Animating Appeal and Entertainment class:

 

These are the kind of skills you can learn in our online animation classes and animation workshops. If you’re interested in 3D animation programs, check us out at our website link below!

Many professional animators believe that the planning phase is the most important part of animating a good shot, and take a good amount of time to plan even when on a tight schedule. Last time, we talked about taking into account the emotional state of your character in relation to the surrounding shots in the sequence. Once you’ve figured out the flow of energy within your shot, you’ll want to be sure that you’re delivering your ideas clearly. What will help you here is staging, which is using the composition and layout of your scene to direct your audience to where you want them to pay attention. 

Many professional animators believe that the planning phase is the most important part of animating a good shot, and take a good amount of time to plan even when on a tight schedule. As anyone who has acted out their own reference would know, there is a lot of work that goes into planning. However, many students are so used to animating their one main shot for an animation class that they can make a big mistake when animating for a production – not taking into account the flow of energy and emotions throughout the entire sequence that your shot is in.  

As our instructor Rahul Dabholkar explains in this clip from our Animating Appeal and Entertainment class, it’s important to think about the state of the character within the entire sequence and how the character is feeling in comparison to the previous and next shots. You can do this by visualizing a graph of the character’s emotional state across the different shots and communicating with your fellow animators about what would be the best way to approach this part of the sequence. By doing this, you’ll be able to make your shots flow seamlessly and put on the best performance for your character.

These are the kind of skills you can learn in our online animation classes and animation workshops. If you’re interested in 3D animation programs, check us out at our website link below!

    So you’ve blocked in your poses for your animation – now what? You could hit spline, but you can already imagine the cringey, floaty movement that will come out of it. How about taking another pass at your blocking and getting it to blocking plus?




    If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at instructor Jean-Luc Delhougne’s blocking plus workflow in Maya (from our Body Mechanics animation course). He takes a blocking pass of a jump from basic poses to a well-timed blocking plus pass with arcs and natural movement. Here’s part 1, where he starts out by adjusting the timing of his poses:
 

Today we have an interview with AnimSchool graduate, Harrison Smith. He has been involved with Feature Films like Hotel Transylvania 3, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and is now currently at DreamWorks Animation working on Abominable.

Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us Harrison!

My background in animation is really really limited. I went through middle school and high school a little home school, but I was more self-taught, while in high school and middle school – but then at the end of that I just jumped right into AnimSchool. But what got me into animation is I was super young and, you know whenever you watch a film it’s just really exciting, and I felt like I connected to the characters – and it’s like acting, but, you don’t have to be in front of the camera. Which I really like.


Do you have any favorite movies that or artists inspired you?


Yeah, a bunch of the 2D stuff is what really got me into it; All Dogs Go to Heaven is one of my all-time favorite animated movies – I don’t know why, but I love that movie… it was just awesome. Titan A.E. as well. I’m a sucker for Don Bluth films, even though they’re kind of over-animated. But I saw that stuff when I was younger and I’ve just been hooked ever since. And it feels like animation is what I was born to do. So I finished high school, and then right afterwards I joined AnimSchool, and I just went through and pounded through the courses; did a ton of animation, and right after that I got into the industry.

So what are some of the projects you’ve worked on?

The first project was Hotel Transylvania 3. I rolled onto marketing for that show after that, and then shortly after my contract was done I went to work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and worked on that, and then I got a call from DreamWorks, and now I’m on Abominable.



So what were some of the favorite shots that you had in those projects – Or do you have a favorite character from those movies?

Property of Sony Animation

The favorite character that I did for Hotel Transylvania was Harry 3 Eyes and all his tentacles. I had to animate his tentacles by hand, and there were 6 of them, and they were flapping crazily and it was very rig-intensive, even though it looks super simple. But I felt so excited completing Harry 3 Eyes. And on Into the Spider-Verse, it was Gwen Stacy, hands down. She was one of the most appealing Spider-Man rigs I’ve ever seen. Her character was awesome and more unique and kinda ‘punky’. I animated one shot with her “webbing” through and kicking a thug, and it was super dynamic and action-packed. I had such a fun time animating her, and making her feel super powerful. So I just really enjoyed working on her.

So what’s the part that you enjoy the most about your job?


I enjoy… Animation (Laugh)! It feels really good to be an artist. I know it’s cheesy, but it’s the people that I get to work with; everybody is into animation and film, but everybody also has different backgrounds, so it feels like an enriching, awesome social environment, where you get to make some really nice friends. But yeah, working in film, and basically being a digital actor, it’s one of my favorite things.


And what’s the toughest part of being an animator?

And also when you get really crazy, demanding, work-intensive shots, and it has the same deadline as like, let’s say, a talking head, or a mid to upper shot of somebody just expressing. Sometimes on Hotel Transylvania I had 35 characters in one shot, and it’s super slow in Maya, and it’s a lot of work, but it’s the same time frame to get it done.

Property of Sony Animation

So when you’re animating on a feature film, do you have a playbook for poses or speeds hit, or characteristics that you have to mimic to make sure that it stays consistent with all the other animators?


So it varies between studios. At DreamWorks they have a “Character Bible” which helps you know the character’s personality, faces, and they have libraries for set poses that help keep it all on model. And then they have character leads who come by and look at it, and check the shot before and after to make sure it looks good. Most of the time I just want to come up with a good performance with the character’s personality; And working with a character for a couple months helps you get into a rhythm of how the character is acting. And with movies like Hotel Transylvania 3 for example, there’s already 2 movies with Mavis in there, so you know her character already and you can already see what the she should act like.


What is your process, or workflow like? What is your process for taking a it from nothing all the way through to a finished product?

So it changes depending on the shot. If it’s an acting shot for instance, I look at the animatic, listen to the audio, and I look at if it has a rough layout or storyboard; just to see what the general idea is of what they want to be done in that shot and what the purpose of that shot is. Then I come up with my acting ideas. I don’t create much reference right now, but I should do more. Sometimes I do a 2D pass to get the timing for the story beats down. Then if I like where it’s at, I’ll do a blocking pass all the way through on the character. After that, I show the character lead and director to see if he likes the ideas and get approval. Once the rough blocking gets approved, I spline it out and polish it, and that’s pretty much it. Also, I normally do ‘straight ahead’ – going in order from A to B to C, because I feel like I can get a little bit more detail into it for when I spline it out.


But for something like an action shot, like in Spider-Man, it’s really hard to choreograph in a room if you don’t “web around” or explore the available space. So it’s something that’s a little more difficult. I just go straight ahead and with another 2D pass, just to get the timing of all the motions like a bouncing ball, and thinking to myself: “I want it to hit here at ‘this’ frame and then at ‘that’ frame”, and then from there I normally go straight ahead with body mechanics and auto-tangents. And then once the leads and directors pass it off, I just clean it all up and make sure everything’s fancy.


What do you do to continue learning, to stay sharp and up to date?

Personal Animation Project

I always look around my surroundings, other people’s shots, and always studying if somebody I find does an amazing shot. I just thumb through it at work, and see what they did that I really like, so I can incorporate it into my next piece of work, and if it translates well. I also continue reading, I watch a lot of films, and studying acting, because once you get to a certain point in animation, what separates you from the next person is all acting choices, and making more complicated or unique choices, so I’m always studying films that have really good acting and trying to see what I could pull from that. And sometimes I occasionally do personal animation tests on the side at home, just for myself to keep my chops up, and continue learning that way too.


Do you have any advice for up and coming animators, who want to break into the industry?


I think if I have any advice for that, it is you just have to remember that when you’re competing for jobs like Sony, DreamWorks, and Disney, you’re not only competing with with classmates and peers, you’re also competing with people that have been in the industry for a while. So study animation as much as you can. Thumb through videos or film; anything that intrigues you or that catches your eye. Also, if you have any weaknesses or are having a hard time with a concept, just make a couple of animation tests at home and go through those to strengthen your weak points, then you can incorporate those principles and not have to ‘find’ it while you’re working on that shot.


What’s the one thing that you wish you would have known as you were first getting into studying animation?


Yeah, It’s work-intensive, but fun (laugh). If you’re super serious about animation, it’s going to be a long, interesting journey, but once you get in the industry, you find out it doesn’t matter where you’re at studio-wise, it just matters if you like the craft, and if you feel fulfilled there.


Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us Harrison! We can’t wait to see Abominable, and all the other great films that you’ll be working on in the future.

Looking for the best 3D Animation schools? For more information about AnimSchool and our online animation programs, visit us at www.animschool.com

    The first step to animating more efficiently is setting up your workspace in Maya the way that works best for you. This often means having a certain viewport layout, toggling the visibility of certain types of objects on and off, showing certain UI elements, etc. Why not turn all those clicks in menus here and there into a single click of a button? In this short clip, instructor Tony Bonilla shows us the easy way that he uses to set up his workspace and ultimately save himself time when getting situated in a shot.

AnimSchool’s new VFX Creature Animation class uses our new detailed creature
rigs.

“Towerback” is our new VFX character. He’s taller than a building and
shakes the earth when he moves. These creatures are eager to wreak havoc
and create mayhem in the cityscapes we provide.

Our students use Towerback in our new VFX Creature Animation class,
integrated with our custom HDRI background plates. To apply to be a
student at AnimSchool go to www.animschool.com.

Towerback was designed by artist Yishu Ci and modeled by AnimSchool founder Dave Gallagher, and textured by AnimSchool alum Paul Bellozas.

Come join our VFX and other animation classes to learn with AnimSchool rigs!