CoLab and ZON launch summer Digital Animation Lab

29 Mar 2011

The ZON Digital Animation Advanced Lab @ UT Austin will bring ten animation students and professionals to Austin for two months of intensive training.

The 2011 summer course builds on the ZON Intensive Script Development Lab held in 2010, which resulted in eleven short films by new filmmakers.

The aim of the  ZON Digital Animation Advanced Lab is to train professionals in a multicultural environment, offering them access to specialized instruction of international caliber. ZON will support travel and living expenses while the UT Austin|Portugal CoLab will provide training.

The course will be taught by Ben Bays and Geoff Marslett of the UT Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film. Bays and Marslett also taught a week-long ZON Monstra Workshop on 3D digital animation at the Monstra Lisbon Animated Film Festival in March.

Films resulting from the Lab can be submitted to the 2011 Prémio ZON competition and may be shown in the ZON Lusomundo cinemas and online through the ZON Videoclube.

Applications are now closed. For complete details, please see the Prémio ZON site or the call on this site.

Course description

ZON-UT Austin Portugal Lab on Animation
University of Texas at Austin
June-July, 2011
Instructors: Geoff Marslett and Ben Bays
Location: Studio 4B, CMB

The ZON-UT Austin Portugal lab focuses this summer on animation, offering three tightly coordinated classes that will enable students to make fast progress toward a high level of competence in this domain. Two courses will meet Monday and Wednesday, one course in the morning and one in the afternoon of each day. The third course will meet on Friday and focus on discrete modules with guest speakers in various areas of expertise.

Animated Project Conception, Monday and Wednesday

Geoff Marslett will teach Animated Project Conception and Management. Students will develop a short animated project. They will learn the basics of animated film writing, character design, storyboarding, animatic creation and project management. Though they will only produce a "proof of concept" sample during the class, they will write and plan for the entire animated short (which they can then complete back in Portugal).

Next they will focus on designing compelling characters and developing the style in which they will animate their finished short. We will use Flash, Photoshop, and After Effects to to create individual styles of animation for each student. We will also explore stop motion and rotoscoping techniques.

Finally students will use compositing techniques to bring all of these elements together into one cohesive project. We will work on text designs for credits and titles. We will also go over rendering into specific formats and finishing out the the short in a professional manner.

The final week of the course will also focus on bringing the two halves of the workshop together allowing for integration of work done for Ben Bays and work done for Geoff Marslett to be merged into one finished film.

Compositing and Image Integration, Monday and Wednesday

Ben Bays’ class will address the integration of image, video and 3D surface: compositing and projection in Maya and After Effects. Students will explore the projection of texture onto 3D forms and learn how to leverage those techniques to create matte paintings, facades and digital environments.

A second component of the course will focus on translating the human performance into 3D with Matchmoving, Tracking, Rigging and Deformations. Students will capture performance footage and use tracking data to build articulated skeletons for use in 3D animation.

The third component of the class will examine building spatial volumes and physical simulations: clouds, fluids, rigid body, soft body and cloth. Students will create procedural simulations and explore advanced materials/particle rendering.

Animation Techniques: Visitors and Modules, Friday

The class will meet on Fridays for enrichment lectures from various specialists in certain areas. Austin has a wealth of excellent animators who will visit the University to share their techniques and ideas.