Kevin Richards to Teach Dinosaur Animation

Kevin Richards Teaches at Escape Studios

Animator and Escapee Kevin Richards will be coming to Escape Studios on Wednesday and Thursday to teach our 2nd year animators.

Kevin is a traditional 2D animator who took our short course in animation at Escape Studios, and successfully made the transition to 3D animation in Maya, working as an animator on "Shane the Chef" at Cloth Cat animation in Cardiff.

Kevin will be teaching our students dinosaur locomotion, showing how to use live action reference of birds and reptiles to create believable dinosaur animation. 

Dinosaur by Truong

Dinosaur Locomotion Tutorials
We also have a series of animation tutorial videos at our Vimeo channel on dinosaur locomotion.  The video can be found at our Vimeo channel, along with the rest of the digital content we're creating to supplement our classroom studies.  Missed a class due to illness? We've got a video tutorial that covers the same - or similar - ground.

Using the excellent  free Dino rig by Harry Geoghegan, available for free download at Creative Crash, the tutorial explains how to create a believable dinosaur walk cycle and performance.

Dinosaur Animation
Dinosaurs have been a staple of visual effects movies ever since Jurassic Park in 1993.

London's FrameStore then created the astonishing Walking With Dinosaurs series in 1999 when such work barely seemed possible.

With the visual effects industry expanding rapidly globally, and employing more and more animators - dinosaur action is something every animator needs on their demo reel.

Tutorial Contents
In the tutorial students will learn how to:

• create a dinosaur walk cycle based on research and reference
• use offset curves to add flexibility
• create a believable set
• animate a moving camera
• add special effects such as camera shakes
• bake your curves
• create a performance 

Dinosaur Rig by Harry Gladwin-Geoghegan
The tutorial uses the dinosaur rig by Harry Gladwin-Geoghegan. It's a great free rig for Maya animators, and you can download it here. To see how the dinosaur rig works in detail, read this blog post.

Truong Rigs
However you can also use many other free dinosaur rigs, such as those created by Truong.  To see a detailed review of the excellent "Indominus Rex" rig, "Jurassic World" fan art  created by Truong, read this post.

You can also see some excellent dinosaur animation using the Indominus Rex rig by our very own animation tutor Lee Caller, below.






How did dinosaurs really walk?
We don't really know, of course. But we can take a look at their closest living relatives - birds - to get an idea. For example, check out this video of an ostrich below.




Like all our Vimeo videos, this tutorial series is password-protected. If you're a current student or Escapee, send me an email at alex.williams1@pearson.com

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