How Long Does It Take To Learn Autodesk Maya?

Many of our first year students at Escape Studios will never have opened Maya before.  Or, at least, they won't be very familiar with it.  Maya is a big, complex piece of software - the interface can look daunting at first.  But don't be discouraged, with time and practice - you will get there in the end. 

How to Get Screen Credits Right

Get your screen credits right

Screen Credits are important to get right.  Don't leave people out, and don't mis-spell their names.

Most important - be sure to credit all the key roles on your film.  Credit for the key heads of department should go to one person.  There should be only be one director, and usually one producer and one writer. 

If you need to credit someone else, give them a title such Associate Producer or Assistant Director. Extra writers can be credited under "Additional Story".  Make sure you credit (at least) the following roles; Director, Director of Photography (DoP), Producer, Writer, Editor, Art Director, VFX Supervisor, Animation Director (or Head of Animation), CG Supervisor.  

Animation Resources from Toonboom for Harmony

Andy Wyatt and Isabelle Bilodeau visit Escape Studios

For all our students studying 2D animation with Toonboom Harmony, Toonboom have supplied many free Resources for learning  Harmony. 

On a recent visit to Escape Studios from the Toonboom team, UK Toonboom rep Andy Wyatt and Toonboom Director Isabelle Bilodeau were keen to make sure that our students have the necessary resources to make the best use of their software.  Below are some resources from Toonboom on how to make the best use of Harmony.

The Art of Walt Disney in the Animation Library

The Art of Disney Animation

We're delighted to add a new book on the Art of Disney Animation in the Animation & VFX Library.

This classic book, donated by animation tutor Kevin Richards, features some of the best artwork created for the Disney studio on classic films such as Snow White, Pinocchio, Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, showing just how important a strong sense of design was to the Disney Studio during its first golden age.

Our students at Escape Studios grew up with the Pixar movies in the modern digital age, but it's still important to study the classical Disney era, and learn from the masters who designed and created the medium that we work in today.

Thanks to animation tutor Kevin Richards for the kind donation.

Adventures in Animation for the Anim & VFX Library

Adventures in Animation

We're delighted to add Richard Williams' new book "Adventures in Animation" to the Animation & VFX Library at Escape Studios. 

"Adventures in Animation" is Richard Williams' autobiography, a work-in-progress completed five years after his death by his wife and long-term collaborator Imogen Sutton.  The book fills in many of the gaps in The Animator's Survival Kit, especially the early influences on Williams' work, animators like Grim Natwick and Milt Kahl. 

At Escape Studios we recommend one key textbook for learning animation - The Animator's Survival Kit, arguably the only book you need to learn the art and craft of animation.  We have many copies in the 11th Floor Library for loan. 

Video Tutorial Library at Panopto

Tutorial Videos at Panopto at our Student Portal

Introducing the Escape Studios Video Tutorial Library at Panopto.  Escape Studios' Tutorial Channel at Panopto is now our main hub for our animation and VFX video tutorials, making it easy for our students to find tutorials to support their classroom studies. 

VFX Books for The Animation & VFX Library

VFX Books at Escape Studios Animation & VFX Library

We have lots of new VFX Books for The Animation & VFX Library to support our students studying the Art of Visual Effects.  

VFX textbooks include The VFX Handbook, Sculpting with ZBrush, The Visual Effects Producer and many books on Digital Compositing.  We also have hundreds of video tutorials for 3D VFX which can be found here, and 2D VFX (compositing) which can be found here.

To see some of the many learning resources that students have at Escape Studios, see this blog post. 

Free Beginner Animation Tutorials in Maya

Animate a squid in motion

Below is a list of simple animation tutorials aimed at junior animators just starting to learn their craft. Each tutorial has been chosen for simplicity; the goal being to learn the basics of animation in Maya. 

One or two are password protected, but most are free. Get started by learning how to Animate a Flag Waving, how to Animate a Telephone Ringing - or Animate a Submarine Travelling Underwater.  And, most of all, have fun animating. 

Writing and Directing Books For the Library

New Books: On Directing Film and Save the Cat

We have new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage. 

New books include "Save The Cat" by Blake Snyder on Screenwriting, and "On Directing Film" by Oscar-winning writer David Mamet.  Both books offer important insights into visual storytelling. 

And don't forget to make use of our Tutorial Channel - we have many hundreds of video tutorials on animation and VFX.

Why Escape Studios is Like a Gym

Monty in the Gym by Sam Baker

Escape Studios' Head of Creative Technology Michael Davies likes to say that studying at Escape Studios is like joining a gym. 

Joining a gym won't make you fit, but regular use of the equipment will.  The same principle applies at Escape Studios, where we offer a system of blended learning, a mixture of classroom teaching and also self study using our video tutorials, available exclusively for our students. We call this "The Escape Method".

More Books for the Animation & VFX Library

Hollywood Memoirs by William Goldman and David Niven

We have new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage.

New books include "Adventures in The Screen Trade" by William Goldman, double-Oscar-winning writer who wrote "The Princess Bride" and David Niven's Hollywood autobiography "The Moon's a Balloon".  

For all our students looking to understand how the movie business works, this is a great place to start.  And don't forget to make use of our Tutorial Channel - with many hundreds of video tutorials on animation and VFX.

The Visual Effects Producer - Now in The Library

The Visual Effects Producer

We have new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage.

The Visual Effects Producer by Charles Finance and Susan Zwerman is the comprehensive handbook for any student learning the art of VFX Production - a creative blend of art, technology and finance. 

For all our students learning the Art of VFX, we recommend this book as the principal guide to understanding what VFX producers do.  

And don't forget to make use of our Tutorial Channel - with many hundreds of video tutorials on animation and VFX.

New Copies of the "ASK" for the Animation Library

Animator's Survival Kit

We have new copies of Animator's Survival Kit - our most popular book on animation - for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage.

The ASK is now the standard textbook for animators and the most comprehensive book available for learning animation.  

We have many copies of the Animator's Survival Kit in the 11th Floor Library at 6 Mitre Passage. The ASK can also be bought as an eBook download for the iPad.  

For all our students learning animation, we recommend this book as the principal animation textbook.  And don't forget to make use of our Tutorial Channel - with many hundreds of video tutorials on animation and VFX.

New Books for The Animation & VFX Library

We have more new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage.

New books include Shamus Culhane's classic work on animation - "Animation - From Script to Screen". Shamus Culhane was a product of the Golden Age of Animation, contributing to classic films such as Fantasia, and working on iconic characters such as Betty Boop. Culhane's book explains the animation process from start to finish, a process which - despite new technology - has changed little in the past 100 years. 

Animate an "On the Spot" Walk with "Monty"

Monty Strolling in Cartoonland

Our newest Locomotion Tutorial Video explains how to animate a basic walk cycle "on the spot" (on a treadmill) with "Monty", the green pea, at our Vimeo Channel, available to all our students and Escapees.

The new tutorial videos add to our growing series of animation tutorials, hosted at Vimeo, with a tutorial on how to animate a basic walk, cycling the walk "on the spot". 

The tutorial uses the free Monty rig, one of the rigs that we recommend for student use in the early stages of learning animation.  

Tripod For Recording Live Action Reference

One of the best ways to get live-action reference for a piece of animation is to film yourself acting it out, capture the footage on your phone, and then import the footage onto an image plane in Maya.

The best way to film yourself is by mounting your smartphone on a tripod. 

We're recommending this excellent (and inexpensive) tripod, made by Linkcool, for mounting your phone/camera, while you do the acting and give the performance.

New Books for The Animation & VFX Library

New books on Storyboarding in the Anim & VFX Library

We have more new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage, Escape Studios' new home in North Greenwich.

New books include The Storyboard Design Course: The Ultimate Guide by Guiseppe Cristiano, a collection of Wallace & Gromit storyboards from Aardman Animation, and a new copy of Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit "Minis" - on Animating Walks. 

Anchor Tool at Escape Studios' Animation Shelf

Escape Studios has just released a new Escape Studios Animation Shelf for all our animation students working in Maya. 

Open up Autodesk Maya, load it as a shelf - Maya will automatically copy it into the right folder. You can find the shelf in UG shares. Just search in UG Animation under assets and look for scripts. 

The Animation Shelf has many useful tools in it, including a Tween Tool and an Anchor Tool, which allows animators to anchor a foot in world space for a set number of frames, solving the problem of sliding feet in walk cycles. 

Many thanks to Escape Studios' tutor Michael Davies for creating the Escape Studios Animation Shelf - a huge benefit for all our students. 

New Books for the Animation & VFX Library

The Visual Story by Bruce Block

We have more new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage, our new home in North Greenwich.

New books include the The Visual Story by Bruce Block, an important work on the visual language of film, and a compendium of British Illustrations from the last century, - inspiration for the visual style of animated films. 

New Animation Books for the Anim & VFX Library

We have more new books for the Animation & VFX Library on the 11th Floor at 6 Mitre Passage, our new home in North Greenwich.

New books include the Hue Book of Animation - a great guide for getting started if you've never animated before - and Cracking Animation by Aardman Animation, the team behind Wallace & Gromit (and the new Chicken Run movie, released on Netflix on 15 December).  We also have two new copies of "Producing Animation", by Katherine Winder and Zahra Dowlatabadi.