In AnimSchool’s Class – Animating Characters, Character Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios Tony Bonilla analyzes some of the best animated works and explains reasons behind every decision. He even shows some of his own professional work.
This is just a small sample of the quality of education our students get.
Come join all the students learning online at AnimSchool
In Animschool‘s Introduction to 3D Animation Class, students get the chance to have an animation related Q&A session with their instructor Anthea Kerou. In this case, she answers about the industry, her experience in feature films and gives some great advice to students’ careers, among other things. You can’t miss it!
This is a clip from AnimSchool’s class Introduction to 3D Animation, the first term of the 3D Animation Program. To find out more, go to AnimSchool.com and apply today!
Orem, UT United States – June 25, 2014 — AnimSchool
announces today their new character, Mikey. Mikey is a film-quality boy rig. Mikey is exclusively for AnimSchool students.
Like all AnimSchool character rigs, Mikey is designed for maximum
flexibility and appealing poses. Animating with the most refined, advanced
characters allows AnimSchool student
work to stand out among competitors. AnimSchool Character students can
use Mikey and the other advanced character rigs to learn the arts of high-end modeling and rigging.
Mikey has clothing options: two shirts, pants, shorts, shoes, poseable toes, and UV’s for textured rendering.
Student Work: Carlos Rivas and Orkun Sanal
AnimSchool students are using Mikey in their animation assignments, enjoying his natural appeal. They appreciate having access to best rigs and tools available, making their animation work more enjoyable.
Here are some of their comments about Mikey: “This is quality!” “Awesome!!!” “He is so cute.“ “Oh man!!!! I can not wait to play with this character.”
AnimSchool characters are used by more
than 20,000 users worldwide, and have been used to win numerous
animation contests and for commercial needs. AnimSchool is known as the
most trusted name for appealing 3D characters.
With over 200 students, AnimSchool
was founded in 2010 to bring character-focused 3D animation instruction
to students all around the world, through live online sessions with the best film professionals.
Contact:
Isaac Nordlund
AnimSchool
admissions@animschool.com 560 South State Street, Suite F3
Orem, UT 84058
801 765-7677
In our very first Introduction to Game Animation class, students had a chance to learn from very skillful animator Jarrod Showers (Carbine Studios), responsible for 12 AAA titles including Star Wars: Jedi Academy, X Men: Origins: Wolverine, Wolfenstein, Doom 4 and his latest title Wildstar that has been published couple days ago.
Students got to work with rigs that meet all industry standards. They were created to prepare the students to work at any serious gaming studio. Their task was to create a situation or conflict between two characters and do all required animation. They finished the term with a Demo Reel that had all the animation required to apply for a job in the gaming industry.
Not only that – they are also prepared to deal with short deadlines, pressure and critiques on their work, as we strongly feel that every student that finishes Animschool represent us at their future studios.
Robert Joseph Vicks – Elwood Animations
INTERVIEW WITH JARROD SHOWERS, THE INSTRUCTOR
What are the challenges that 3D character animators deal when switching to game animation?
I feel the biggest challenges that 3d character animators deal with when switching to game animation is the speed at which you must work. Game animators must often times turn in rough animations in order to test out and get implemented in time. It’s important to learn shortcuts and ways to speed up your workflow. Since there are other departments that depend on each other to stay on schedule, it’s important to not be a blocker to anyone, even if that means coming back to a rough animation later on in the production schedule.
Some people consider game animation easier and less detailed – what do you think about this?
Even though game animations tend to be shorter and with a focus on body mechanics, that just means there is more to convey in a small amount of time. Every frame counts!
It’s important to understand also that being a game animator involves much more that just animating. A large amount of time is spent problem solving that requires a technical side as well.
We just have to ask – do you play games that you’ve worked on?
I do! Some of my fondest memories are of inviting friends over to play co-op together! I think it’s important for game developers to be able to work on projects that they can stand behind, because if they are having fun making the game, that will show in the final product.
What were the assignments that students had to do in order to complete the term?
Students were asked to create the essential animations required for every game animator’s demo reel, which include: walk or run, idle cycles, a player and enemy attack, jumps, pains, and a death. In many assignments, students are given choices so that everyone’s creativity can shine and differentiate themselves from each other.
What awaits the animators in the next term?
Some really exciting things are planned for next term as students move more into the realm of the Game Engine pipeline, using Unity! Students will be asked to import their animations to the engine in order to see for themselves the principals that have been taught.
Another exciting thing to look forward to is the introduction of the first Game Animation quadruped!There are many plans for this course as it continues to develop!
Do you feel our students are a step closer to the job in the gaming industry?
I feel that students are in fact closer to getting a job in the gaming industry with this course. The instructors keep a close eye on staying current with the gaming industry and want to pass along inside information on creating a streamlined path to employment. Students will get back what effort they put into the course by setting goals and staying focused on getting that job!
In Part 1 of AnimSchool’s Webcast Lead animator on The Lego Movie David Williams discusses the time he spent working on this movie. He shares his experience and motivation that led him to inspire life in Lego characters that are anything but simple.
In this clip, Blue Sky animator and AnimSchool instructor Thom Roberts helps to figure out how the body mechanics on a side step work. Watch it below:
This is a clip from AnimSchool’s class Introduction to Animation, the first term of the 3D Animation Program. To find out more, go to AnimSchool.com and apply now!
Hi Daniel! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, like your background, where you’re from and experience before AnimSchool?
I’m from California, The Sacramento area. I originally went to Expression College and studied animation and visual effects. I didn’t focus on animation initially but more of a generalist role learning a little of everything. Only near the end of my time there did I focus on animation. Later I worked over at Adhesive Games as an animator and wanted to polish my animation skills more and do some shot animation. I looked for a good school and that’s when I found Animschool.
Who are the animators that inspire you?
It’s hard to choose, I get inspired by all the animation I see. One animation that sticks out for me is Ryan Woodward’s “Thought of You”:
I love the movement and expression that he conveys with simple gestures. I also view Wayne Unten’s blog and love his simple quick animations. Its creative animations that make me just want to buckle down and get my own done.
Can you share your process from start to finish on your shots for the body mechanics class?
This was a really fun assignment. I started with a brainstorming session. I knew I wanted to get the most out of this animation that I could. I took some time to come up with a clever and fun way to tell a story. I made a web with all my ideas and how they could be done differently. I went through quite a few ideas before settling on this one. The next step for me was to plan out my shot, I didn’t want to build any props if the idea was going to fall flat. A few thumbnails later and I was confident enough to get into Maya a build my scene.
Thumbnail drawings for Daniel’s body mechanics assignment
I built the tree house trying to keep it simple as I could so it would match the character. I left out the rope till later and just imagined it as I animated.
Then I filmed reference. I didn’t have access to a rope swing so I found some reference online for that. I did have my brother and a friend drag me around the floor to get reference for the end:
After some notes on my idea in class I began to block out my scene. I did the main story telling possess at first and from there broke down the physicality of the movements. Then it was on to more blocking! I got it down to 3’s for most of it, I think, before I moved into spline.
Of course I had lots of notes from my teacher to improve my work. In the polish stage I would do a pass then play blast and write down everything that I could see and then do another pass. Then repeated that step a few times more. After I was happy with it I modeled and rigged the rope and put it in.
Continuing on that, your facial expression shot is very emotional, and the character really shows that. How was the process to convey such subtle internal feelings on the character, from start to finish?
My facial performance shot was a challenge. I had several different ideas and quite a few sound clips. I really tried to get into the head of the character. I explored how she would act, not just what she was saying. I wanted her body and face to tell what she was thinking as she said the line. Again, I shot a lot of reference. When I got into Maya and started posing I really took the time to sculpt each pose.
But after a round of crits I had to rethink my acting choices. I redid most of my shot and tried to catch up to the class. I was a bit nervous at this point because I had a long shot and had already been set back but I knew the changes really helped. In spline I actually did some exploration of subtle acting choices to find the ones I thought worked best. I was still behind schedule so I pushed through polish in a weekend!
What was the most valuable pointers that your instructors at AnimSchool gave on your assignments, in your opinion?
Planning pays off! If you don’t spend the time up front it doesn’t matter how well you polish a shot it won’t be as good. You need to lay the foundation of a shot and how its framed and how it plays out before you get started. Then you need to look at the foundation you just made and pick it apart and try it differently. Then you know you’ve got something good. Another great bit of advice is that if it feels wrong it is wrong. It might be animated perfectly but if it doesn’t feel right then it’s not. On the flip side if it breaks the rig but feels great use it.
Any advice for your fellow students?
Don’t be afraid to start an animation over. When you do it the second time it will be faster and better!!
Today we’re interviewing AnimSchool Student Diego Collell. Hi Diego! Tell us about yourself: where are you from, and how did you became interested in character animation?
First of all, I’d like to say thanks to David Gallagher, Animschool and all its teachers. In special, Juan Pablo Sans (former AnimSchool instructor) and Garrett Shikuma.
Hello! I’m Diego Collell, 35 years old and I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with my two kids Tiziana and Benicio, and my wife Cecilia.
Since I was a little kid, animated cartoons fascinate me (Chuck Jones and Tex Avery). When I started growing up, my willing to learn about these drawings and to really dive into animation.
By always watching cartoons, my love for animation grew everyday, a true hobby for me.
The first thing I did was to buy a bunch of animation related books and kept hours reading them.
In my free time I practice sports; I really like playing soccer and watch movies. Some of my favorite actors are Jerry Lewis, Rowan Atkinson (the guy that plays “Mr. Bean”), Steve Carell, etc. But one that amazes me is Jim Carrey. I really have fun with his performances. For that reason I chose to do a shot with his audio!
Did you have any experience as character animator before joining AnimSchool?
Yes! Here in Buenos Aires I’ve been working a lot in production companies for advertising, series and movies.
Tell us about your shot of your assignment for the Character Performance class. The character has some really cool and exaggerated poses! What was the process from start to finish?
Since the beginning I told my instructor, Garrett Shikuma, that I wanted to make a shot in the style of “Horton Hears a Who!”, and with the help of my instructors, I was able to improve it every time.
Research:
I’ve searched for an interesting audio for the animation so it would have texture.
Listening:
Soon after I start listening it several times in loop so I can understand every beat and clue. After that, I analyse the beats carefully, keeping into account every high and low, so I can apply the emotions and intentions according to the tone of the voices.
References:
Once I got a clear idea of what I want, I go to the mirror and practice.
Recording:
When I have more precise acting choices, I record myself doing it several times.
Editing the reference:
Somtimes I do, sometimes I don’t. When I do, I use After Effects.
Blocking:
I use my reference to nail all the main story poses, not worrying with any extra detail.
Blocking Plus:
I take the key poses to the extreme so they can clearly convey the character’s feeling in that shot. I also refine some facial expressions.
Spline:
I clean all my curves. Approximately, I spline my blocking every 50 frames.
Polish:
I made sure of polishing everything possible, frame by frame, checking everything!
I’m very happy with the final result of the shot. All of my instructors were essential for this.
How do you think your instructors helped most in achieving the quality of animation you wanted?
In general, my instructors are all very kind and solicit. The General Review classes have been a huge help. The instructors there care for your shot and your progress just like your main instructor.
Truth be told, all of Animschool teachers are AMAZING!
Are you working as a character animator at the moment?
Yes! At that moment I’m working as a character animator.
Any tips for your fellow students?
Work hard! The more you animate, the more you lern.
Today we are interviewing not one, but two people! Xin and Florent are the makers of “The Answer”, a short animation film using Animschool’s Malcolm Rig.
The short is now featuring in Vimeo’s “Staff Pick”collection. Check it out:
Both of them are now applied to our 3D Animation Program. Lets begin the interview!
Hi guys! Can you start by telling us where you’re from, your experience with character animation and background?
Xin: Hi, I’m Xin. I’m from Beijing. I always wanted to be a animator since I was a kid and they told me knowing how to draw is going to be benifical even if I want to be a 3D animator in the future. So I started my professional Fine Art training since I was in primary school. Since then I learn Fine Art for nearly 10 years before I went to Teesside University to get a Bachlor of Art Degree in Character Animation in the UK, where I gained a lot of 3D Generalist skills as well as animation skills.
Florent: I am from Toulouse, in France. I have always been a big fan of animation and video games but for some reason I thought about it as a possible career pretty late and I studied different subjects (including food processing…) in the end, after graduating in computing science in France I decided to move to England and learn animation.
We both studied at Teesside University, in England, where we graduated from Bachelor of Art in character computer animation. After our studies, we both got hired as animation interns by Ubisoft in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. We are now still working at Ubisoft and we decided to study at Animschool on our free time to learn more about animation as our University course was very oriented on CG generalist skills.
How did the idea for the script came up? Who was in charge of what in the short?
Xin: Of course, it is slightly based on real events. My partner Florent was shaving in the bathroom with his electric razor, and some minutes later, he came back in the room with a half shaved beard and his razor which was out of power and the cable was nowhere to be found. With this idea in mind, we also wanted to find an idea about how he could finish up shaving in a funny way. I remembered reading a famous self-helping book based on “The law of attraction” and which marketing is based on a “secret” linked to many historical figures and conspiracy. And so we decided to make a parody of it.
Florent: We shared the different tasks according to our skills and what we wanted to do.
Both our dreams were to become character animators after university so we evenly shared the animation.
For the pre-production, after defining our story and getting some rough shot ideas, Xin draw an amazing storyboard (see panel). Xin’s storyboard was so clear we even used it as the main reference for the environment design.
A panel from the storyboard
We both modelled and textured environment and assets.
Xin took care of Malcolm rig modifications, the 2D/motion graphics and compositing Florent did the shading, the lighting and the rendering.
And just a word about the book narration voice actor: Fernando Zamora. Who worked with us remotely and did an amazing job. Thank you again 🙂
 Can you tell how much time did you guys spent per day on it and how long did it took from start to completion?
We started over the summer to be ready to animate at the start of the academic year so it took a part of the summer and half of the academic year (because we had another project), so around 5 months spread on a year.
The days were busy, we did everything from home and it was an average of 9-10 hours/day. A lot of hard work but it was worth it in the end 🙂
What did you guys think of the Animschool Malcolm rig? Did it meet your expectations on the production of the short?
From the start, this project goal was to produce the best character animation we could make to showcase our animation skills. To get the best results, we had to give up the idea of using our own character.

Quickly, we decided to use a Free Rig which allow us to have maximum performance of the character animation. We choose Animschool’s Malcolm Rig due to its flexibility after we saw many great animations including a short animation called Mistakes on the 11 Second Club website. The runner-up of March 2012 gave us a great idea of how flexible and controllable the Malcolm Rig’s hands are.
The Malcolm Rig has an amazing facial rig. The eyebrows and mouth in particular allowed us to have greater facial animation without being limited by the rig itself. Of course, the body rig of Malcolm is fantastic too. The controllers on his limbs enable us to have great line of actions during the animation.
Malcolm flexibility and deformations
Can you share the main process for the character animation and model modification?
This is the animation workflow we used for this project:
Video Reference Recording – Record video references of ourselves for the animation.
Character Animation Thumbnail – Decide the character’s actions by drawing out the storytelling poses.
Example of thumbnail drawing for animation
Blocking Animation – Blocking of the storytelling poses of the animation and establish the rough timing of each movements.
Spline Animation – Change stepped animation curves to spline curves.
Polish Animation – Add textures to the spline animation and clean the curves in Graph Editor.
 Model Modification
Geometry Modification
To fit our purpose, we wanted to personalized Malcolm geometry and textures. Considering the complicity of the rig, Xin didn’t dare to make too much changes on the geometry, otherwise it might result some problem on the rig. The main modifications are the general face shape was sculpted to be rounder and the hairs were removed to leave space for a Maya hair system
Malcom face modification
We also gave him a shirt collar to add some detail. The collar is animated by 6 blendshapes to reduce shoulders intersection once animated.
Blend Shapes for Malcom’s collar
Our issue was that only Malcolm’s face was UV mapped. We did not know at that time that uv mapping a rigged character would not end well 🙂
When we though skinned character’s UV were still movable
After doing some research, Xin found an article from a blog called Anim Bizz, talking about how to transfer UVs after rigging. A “Shape Orig” node includes the information of the character before rigging. Therefore, a UV transfer can be applied to this and it allowed us to UV map Malcolm’s body.
 Hair System
For the hair, we wanted the non-dynamic hair system since dynamic hair is not necessary and it requires more work to do with the simulation which is way too complicated for us. Xin followed a course talking about hair system on DigitalTutors.com and had a basic idea how to build up the hair system with curves.
The idea was to create curves where we wanted the hairs to be and apply hair systems on them. Three layers of curves were created to had more realism and volume to the hair.
Layers of curves for more realism
These little guys were quite an inspiration 😉

For the Beard and Eyebrows, we used the Maya Fur system.
So after all these modifications, the character looks like this:
Malcom after a complete makeover
Detail of Malcom’s new textures
The “new” Malcom
What were the main challenges for this short?
Hahaha… Everything. We basically had no experience using Maya for more than animating a basic walk cycle and lip sync exercise for University. Every aspect was new and we were constantly doing research and learning: how to rig, how to shade, light and render, how to use hair and fur .. and well .. how to animate. Thanks to a lot of great ressources online (including AnimSchool Youtube channel, Digital Tutors, countless blogs, univeristy feedback) we managed to get to the result we wanted.
Hair and fur were particularly difficult because there is less content about it ( how to create, how to render)
Oh! and having a big mirror in the first shots didn’t make things easy ^^ (Camera angles, lighting, rendering and compositing)
What was the technology involved in the creation of the short (render, software, hair system, etc)?
The render was done using Mental Ray in Maya. It was done in parrallel with the lighting and shading. It took a lot of time and a lot of experiment. Here is an example of the process to find the lighting:
Several attempts in finding the correct lighting
And so on until we could get it right:
The final lighting set that made into the final version of the short
Most of the shiny/reflective materials are Mental Ray’s “mia_material_x”, the rest are Lambert materials:
Mental Ray’s architectural materials are good for cool a realistic look.
Another example of Mental Ray Area light and shadow transparency node use.
The other software we used were:
Maya 2013 for all the 3D (including non-dynamic hair system and fur)
Adobe After Effects for compositing, 2D and motion graphics
Nuke for some of the compositing (motion vectors)
Any advice for animators that want to start production of their own short?
The only advices we can give to people who want to produce a short film are the ones we wish we had heard/followed before we get started most of them are probably obvious and specially relevant if you are still studying:
Keep it simple: Especially if you are alone, it is hard to find the line between challenging yourself and putting the bar too high.
If the goal of your short is to demonstrate your animation skills, We advise you not to try making your own character/rig. (Unless you have time and you are an amazing character TD/ rigger 🙂 ). There are a lot of rigs available out there, and as far as we know, Malcolm is by far the best. (No, Animschool don’t pay us to say that !) 🙂
Find a subject/story that get you really engaged. So you don’t throw everything by the window some months down the production.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us through Vimeo or our websites:
We thank Florent and Xin for this interview and hope to see more works from them in the future! If you want to learn real character animation taugh by professionals in the industry, come apply now!