Michael Morgan Teaching Acting at Escape

Michael Morgan

Next week Escape Studios will host a special guest tutor: animator Michael Morgan, an animator with an extensive list of credits in video games, TV Commercials and Feature films.

At one of our recent "Evening with...." events, Michael shared his experience of working on projects such as Star Wars - The Clone Wars, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2, Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast and Planet of the Apes.  In particular, he talked about how to get "From the Classroom to the Studio".

Next week Michael will be teaching our 2nd year animators the secrets of acting and character performance.

Animators are actors, and Michael strongly emphasises the importance of animators filming themselves acting out a shot - shooting live action reference and then using this reference for their animation.

For example, on Guardians, there were 70 animators, with maybe 10 animators on a team. And nowadays even junior animators have to be able to "hit the ground running". If you "get a Rocket shot", you "have to act it out".

Everybody is acting out all the shots - you even "act out other people's shots".  And someone else might have given the best performance - in which case that's the one you pick. It's a team effort, and you "have to get comfortable acting stuff out".

We're excited to welcome Michael to Escape Studios next week and see what our students are capable of.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2017, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.