Modeling a Character for Rigging and Animation

EBook Description: When rigging and animating, it's always nice to have an appealing character to work with. However, if you don't have a lot of experience modeling, it can be difficult to create a character you will be happy animating. There are free characters and rigs out there, but many have been used over and over, and it would be nice to create something you can call your own. In this course we'll cover the building of a simple character, with emotive eyes and eyebrows that you can then rig and animate. We'll look at methods for building the head, body, arms, and legs and connecting them all together. We'll talk about building the topology with an eye towards rigging and animation - building it to deform well. The ultimate goal of this course is not to give you a new pre-built model to use, but rather to teach you to use the techniques shown to create your own custom character, ready to rig.

Easily learn proper body mechanics for creating believable animations with 7 hours of project-based training developed specifically for character animation and body mechanics. Perfect for intermediate artists.

"The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation"

Take an in-depth look at the art and techniques of stop-motion animation. The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation helps experienced stop-motion artists enhance their craft by exploring the professional methods and advanced technology used by top film studios today. This book features expanded coverage of the basic principles of animation, including specific applications for character performance and visual effect compositing techniques. All the newest technology is touched on, including detailed information on camera rigs, effects, and shooting stop-motion in stereoscopic 3D. Discover new puppet building techniques, including the technology behind the rapid prototyping of computer models for stop-motion production. You'll even find a thorough history of early feature-length stop-motion films. The practical techniques and skills presented are enhanced by interviews with many of the most celebrated stop-motion artists as well as coverage of the work of several artists working in the online stop-motion community. Whether your focus is low-budget indie filmmaking or big studio productions, The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation provides a comprehensive look at both the latest methods and the artists who are driving the revival of stop-motion animation.

HTML5 Graphics and Animation with Canvas

One of the most exciting additions that HTML5 offers to designers is the ability to draw free-form graphics on a drawing surface known as the Canvas. In this course, author Joe Marini introduces the technical concepts behind Canvas and shows how to perform drawing operations directly in a web page. The course covers drawing basic and complex shapes, setting colors and styles, adding shadows, patterns, and gradients, more advanced techniques such as scaling, rotating, and compositing objects, and how to incorporate Canvas elements in a slideshow and an animation. Exercise files are included with the course

fter Effects Apprentice Basic Animation Training

Trish Meyer leads beginners through a gentle introduction to Adobe After Effects: from creating a new project and importing sources,
through arranging and animating layers, applying effects, and creating variations, to rendering the final movie.
However, this is no paint-by-numbers exercise.
Trish demonstrates how she makes creative decisions and saves time through the use of keyboard shortcuts and smart working practices.
Additional movies explain further details about how After Effects works under the hood. Her measured pace helps even those completely new to After Effects understand the program so that they can use it effectively on their own projects.
Exercise files are included with the course.

Introducing Character Animation with Blender

Introducing Character Animation with Blender, 2nd Edition is written in a friendly but professional tone, with clear descriptions and numerous illustrative screenshots. Throughout the book, tutorials focus on how to accomplish actual animation goals, while illustrating the necessary technical methods along the way. These are reinforced by clear descriptions of how each specific aspect of Blender works and fits together with the rest of the package. By following all the tutorials, the reader will gain all the skills necessary to build and animate a well-modeled, fully-rigged character of their own. The character built over the course of the tutorials is included as a .blend file on the companion website, for the reader to experiment with and learn from.Introducing Character Animation with Blender, 2nd Edition is inspiring as well as educational. A color insert includes sample characters and frames from animations by many of the Blender community�s most talented artists, which help to illustrate the impressive potential of the software.

From the Back Cover
Find source files for the tutorials in the book, useful Blender links, and much more on the companion website. www.sybex.com/go/introducingblender

Tap the power of Blender, blend in your creativity, and build memorable animated characters with this practical guide from Blender guru Tony Mullen. Covering the new Blender 2.5, this book offers clear, step-by-step tutorials, a complete discussion of all tools, and illustrations that will both enlighten and inspire you.

Follow all the projects and you�ll soon have the skills you need to build and animate a well-modeled, fully-rigged character of your own. A full-color insert presents dazzling examples from some of the most talented artists in the Blender community.

* Get up to speed on Blender 2.5′s extensively redesigned user interface
* Master organic mesh modeling tools and build a complex character mesh
* Fashion skin, hair, and clothing with material shaders, textures, and slots
* Use Blender�s new Rigify add-on to create complete, professional-quality character rigs with ease
* Learn to sync lip movements with a sound file
* Understand function curves, keyframes, and the basics of animating
* Learn to link assets and use Armature proxies to organize your productions
* Analyze the Blender short film, Sintel, and read what its creators have to say

Animate a rigged character to get him running
Use particles and subsurface scattering to create hair and skin
Explore open content from the Blender Foundation Open Movie Projects

Character Animation Fundamentals with Maya

In Character Animation Fundamentals with Maya, author George Maestri employs the basic principles of animation to bring to life simple 3D characters in Maya. Starting with an overview of the character rig, the course provides guidelines for arranging stock characters into strong poses and explains how to generate locomotion between poses in a modular fashion. The course includes step-by-step instructions on animating realistic gestures, walks, runs, facial expressions, and dialogue, and culminates with an animated scene built entirely from scratch. Exercise files accompany the course.

"The Animator's Workbook: Step-By-Step Techniques of Drawn Animation"

The Animator's Workbook offers a complete course on the principles and techniques of drawn animation. Stressing that animation is a subtle and exacting art form which breathes life into inanimate drawings, Tony White, an award-winning animator, covers every aspect of the process. He provides technical information and explains in easy-to-follow text and step-by-step illustrations, how to capture movement, expression, and emotion. He shows you how to convncingly animate birds and animals and explores special effects - wind, water, fire, and solid objects - that can add realism, drama, and atmosphere to animation.

This book takes the mystery out of the animation process and provides sound, reliable guidance and information. Topics include:

Content
The Process of Animation
The Animator's Toolkit
Inbetweening
Head Turns
Walks
Runs
Realistic Touches
Technical Information
Exaggerated Action
The Animal Kingdom
Dialogue
Animated Effects
Backgrounds

Learning 3D Character Animation with Jeff Lew

From the Lead Animator of Matrix Reloaded, the �Learning 3D Character Animation with Jeff Lew� series is one of the few real character animation classes on DVD. There are so many how-to videos on the market showing you how to setup a character or model a character in a specific 3D software package, but very few training videos showing you actually how to animate a character in 3D. This 3-part DVD series will teach you strong fundamentals necessary for creating great character animation in any 3D animation software package.

"Graphics and Animation on iOS: A Beginner's Guide to Core Graphics and Core Animation"

This introductory text teaches programmers in Cookbook style how to write iOS apps that take advantage of Core Graphics and Quartz Core and the SDK?s great graphical capabilities, such as using custom fonts, loading and using colors, drawing gradients, moving, scaling and rotating images and whatnot.

Character Design for Games and Animation

In this second of two DVDs, Cameron Davis discusses how he brings a character to life by fleshing out the design in Adobe Photoshop . Not merely coloring, the design continues to evolve in the digital stage. Cameron takes you step-by-step through this process, covering Photoshop techniques, color studies and color theory, and understanding the psychology of audience reaction.

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