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Animation Courses: From Cartoons to 3D
Animation Courses: From Cartoons to 3D
Do you dream of giving life to your imagination by taking animation courses? If so, you should know what the study of 2D and 3D animation involves. Before you can be a professional character animator, 3D modeling artist, or special effects guru for film, television or gaming, you'll need to start developing your skills at a computer animation school that offers the right curriculum. Learning animation generally includes studying the following:
Foundation Courses for Would-Be Animators
It all begins with drawing. Without the ability to make quality sketches in 2D, you'll never be able to render believable characters and environments in 3D. So you need to arrive at animation school with a little bit of artistic talent, and whole lot of dedication to practicing the fundamentals.
Life drawing, or sketching the human form, is one of the most important foundational skills an animator must possess. The more you draw the human body, the easier it is to design convincing characters for your animations. Therefore, many schools make life drawing a required course, or set of courses, which may also include sculpture.
Also, because animators must be well-rounded artists, most animation programs incorporate other courses in art theory. You'll need to learn about basic principles like color, balance, contrast and composition.
The Art of Motion and Visual Storytelling
Animation links a series of still images together to create the illusion of motion. So the real art of animation is in creating fluid motion that helps your audience believe in your virtual characters, backgrounds and effects. Good animation schools emphasize the study of human motion and environmental interaction—they sometimes call it body mechanics or the animating force.
But, in the larger picture, animation is really about telling a story. It can be a narrative as grand as a feature film, or as seemingly simple as the way a background character in a video game walks. Even simple movements can have big meaning because they help shape the trust and expectations of your audience.
Storytelling techniques are so important that animation programs often provide courses that touch upon screenwriting, scene development, and the creation and editing of storyboards.
Putting It All Together Using Professional Animation Software
At some point, everything has to come together in one place. In today's world, that means computers. To become a master 3D animator, you'll have to combine proficiency in the fundamentals with expertise in the computer interfaces that professionals use most.
Software packages like Flash, Animate Pro, Maya, LightWave and 3ds Max are the professional tools of the animation trade. That's why animation schools incorporate so many software courses into their programs.
In these courses, you'll discover what nodal compositing means (hint: it involves the "building blocks" of computer animation). You'll learn how to design the spaces your characters move around in and interact with. You'll find out why lighting, texture and cinematography are so important in 3D modeling. And you'll develop post-production and rendering techniques.
Finding the Right School
Ultimately, if you want to be more than an amateur, you'll want to pick a school with the right mix of animation courses. With the demand growing for professional animators, there are now computer animation schools in many locations. So stop just dreaming about it—put your imagination and artistic talent to good use as a 2D or 3D animator by finding a computer animation school near you!
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