Marc Stevenson Moves L4 Teaching Online

Marc Stevenson

Like all our animation tutors, Marc Stevenson has moved his teaching of animation basics to purely online delivery.  To communicate with his students, Marc is using a combination of Google Meet, SyncSketch and Facebook, and has in addition created a new animation tutorial channel at YouTube. 

In this guest post, Marc explains what's involved in teaching the fundamentals of animation from an online platform, and how his first-year animation students can make the best use of the resources available. 

Google Meet

Online Classroom

"When teaching remotely my main priority is to try, as much as it is possible, to replicate teaching in a classroom. This is of course a tall order considering the reduced level of contact that you have with the students using remote devices, but it's working pretty well overall.

GoogleMeet, Facebook and SyncSketch 

I've tried to streamline my workflow down to a few programmes: GoogleMeet for all dailies and Q&A sessions (Google Meet is simple and easy to use), Facebook and SyncSketch for feedback (all students are encouraged to submit their work to Facebook for comments (more in depth analysis can be made on SyncSketch).

YouTube Tutorials

For the bulk of the my teaching I've uploaded tutorials onto YouTube, as opposed do doing live online tutorials, which tend to be tricky because most students don't have double-monitor set-ups that allow for easy workflows in this area. 

The idea to upload my own videos - as opposed to having them work exclusively from those already posted at the Escape Vimeo site - was to try to keep continuity with the teaching methodology of my previous classes, which makes marking and feedback easier. To be explicit, if they've used my step-by-step guide to put things together I can immediately see where they have made mistakes.  For all other areas of vfx and animation the students have sourced the tutorials on the Escape Vimeo Channel.

YouTube was an obvious choice for tutorials as the videos can be streamed, which means the students don't have to wait for individual videos to be downloaded, indeed the students advocated this as their preferred solution. 

OBS Screen Recording Tool

All the videos themselves were recorded on OBS without any editing. Initially I thought that this might be an issue, but realised that this actually works in their favour as the videos have a more spontaneous and conversational feel that is more like being in a class. Anyway, the feedback on the videos from the students has been very positive so this all seems to be working."

To find Marc's YouTube videos for his first year animation students, follow the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdDhTb0YNzZPGqRRbbnxR1Q?view_as=subscriber 

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 2020, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.