ANgiE tAYLoR 🧷

Tag: character animation

  • Character Animation Courses

    Learn how to bring your artwork to life with Angie Taylor’s character animation courses at Creative Cabin.

    • Discover methods for setting up artwork for animating in Adobe’s new Character Animator software.
    • Learn the principles of animation and how to apply them to your characters.
    • Learn useful scripts and add ons for Adobe After Effects, including DUIK, Puppet Toolsand Head Rig.
    • Find out how to compose a scene and a storyboard and get hundreds of tips and tricks for making compelling and enjoyable character animations.
    • Enjoy focussed attention from our trainer on our unique, one-to-one character animation courses.

    Book now to hold your place at the special introductory price of £249.95 per day.

    More about character animation courses at Creative Cabin

    At the Creative Cabin guests can enjoy custom, one-to-one, Adobe software training from a professional industry expert.

    In this indyllic location near Brighton – Angie Taylor creates her own motion graphic designs and animations from her studio in the Creative Cabin.

    Creative Cabin

    In between freelance jobs she offers this lovely self-contained studio/ apartment to other designers, editors and artists who need a quiet, inspiring place to work, learn and relax.

    Benefits of one-to-one character animation courses

    Angie Taylor’s courses are one-to-one and totally unique. There’s only you and Angie in the Cabin so you get her complete attention for the entire course – unlike corporate training courses where you often have to share the training with several other delegates.

    Employers!

    You can have employees trained individually for less than the cost of a group training course at a dedicated training centre – making sure they learn exactly what the techniques they need. It’s more cost-effective than you may expect.

    No need for all of your designers or editors to be out of the office on the same day, leaving you short-staffed. Send them to the Cabin one-at-a-time for the individual training they need.

    Go at your own speed

    With a one-to-one training course at the Creative Cabin you can explore the software at your own speed while Angie guides you and suggests best practices with the software.

    Work on meaningful projects and files

    Angie provides well-designed, structured training exercises for you to follow that will get you up to speed in no time. If you prefer you can bring along your own projects so you and Angie can work on those together.

    Solve problems and come up with solutions

    Problem-solving and coming up with new ideas is Angie’s speciality – she loves to suggest ways to improve and refine your workflow to get the very best from your software.

    Be trained by a working designer and author

    Angie only offers training for a few days every month. When the Cabin is not being used for training Angie creates motion graphic and animation projects from the Cabin for her own clients who she works for on a freelance basis.

    Over the past 20 years Angie has trained hundreds of motion graphic designers, video editors and artists on software applications such as; Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator and Maxon Cinema 4D.

    Angie is a published author with five books published on the subjects of Adobe After Effects and motion graphic design. She is also an author of training courses at Lynda.com.

    Make your training a vacation

    The Creative Cabin is situated in an idyllic spot near Brighton in the UK with panoramic views across the English Channel.

    All training packages include accommodation in the private, comfortable self-contained studio apartment – this is yours for the duration of your stay. Kick back and relax when you’re not training, enjoy some home-cooked food while watching movies on the HDTV or playing Playstation games. The more adventurous guests may want to take a trip into the centre of Brighton to unwind in style.

    Accommodation

    Designers and Artists can rent the Cabin for as little as £99.95 per night. It is a completely self-contained studio apartment with sleeping area, shower room, kitchen and work area. Find out more about the facilities here.

    Training packages

    At the Cabin Angie offers customised, one-to-one training courses, tailored to suit each individual’s needs. Previous clients include designers from BSkyB, ITV and Barton Willmore.  Find out more about these affordable courses near Brighton and to view course outlines, please visit the Training page.

    Booking the Cabin

    Please use the Contact page to contact Angie for more details about course content and availability. If you’re interested in booking the cabin accommodation,  training or a package that includes both, please book here.

  • Tip of the Week

    Tip of the Week

    Animating Characters with the Puppet Tool
    from: Adobe After Effects CS5: Learn by Video.

    Animating characters with the puppet tool

    Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Week feature in a brand new video format. After Effects has great tools for character animation called the Puppet tool. The Puppet Pin tool places a mesh over your footage using the alpha channel. You can add points to this mesh that allow to distort it and animate it, using gestural animation with your pen or mouse. This provides some really natural movement for your animations and motion graphics projects. You’ll see an example of what can be done with the Puppet tools in this video.

    December 7, 2011

  • 12 rules of animation

    Digital Arts has featured – 12 Rules of Animation – an excerpt from my “Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist” as their feature article this month. The article is now FREELY AVAILABLE on the Digital Arts website.

    Animation as we know it has been around since Horner invented the zoetrope in 1834. Since then animators have developed rules of animation that help us to draw viewers into the world we have created. From Disney classics to the latest stereoscopic 3D productions, we’ve plundered them all to find the 12 key techniques you need to master to be a top-flight animator.

    Some of these rules are based on real-life physics, and others on observations and reactions. They provide a set of invaluable ‘tricks’ for animators that have been proven to work in almost every situation.

    In the article I delve into the world of animation to pick out the 12 rules of animation that every animator and motion graphics artist must know. Drawn from the forms 150 year history, you’ll learn a wealth of dos and don’ts that will help you produce more engaging projects, whether you’re working in 2D, 3D, graphics, stop-motion or a mixture of them all.

    You can pick up both printed copies and digital downloads from the Digital Arts website where you can also find some of my tutorials, tips and tricks.

    I’ll also be talking about some of these golden rules of animation in my “Dynamic Text Animation for Motion Graphicswith After Effects” presentation at the Production Fiesta in London on May 6th.

    In this session, I will share an in-depth look at the options for working with text in Adobe After Effects. I’ll show examples of successful motion graphic designs and will discuss the components of design that make them work. In this session you’ll earn about the rules of typography and how to apply the rules of typography to your designs to make them easier to read and more dynamic. I’ll also take an in-depth look at the typographic controls available in After Effects and will also show you how you can use hand-drawn text to bring a unique aspect to your designs.

    I’ll also be presenting four other sessions at this event which you can find out about here. If you want to register for a full day of valuable creative sessions by me and all the other speakers you can do so here on the Eventbrite page. I hope to see some of you there, please make sure to say hello if you can make it along.

     

  • Free video training & discounted classes

    Free video training & discounted classes


    I’m giving away lots of goodies this week. In this blog I’m offering you some free sample movies from my ‘2D Character Animation in After Effects’ workshop from video2brain. I’m also pleased to announce some fantastic discounts on my training courses in London in March.

    A one-off funding offer means that there’s currently a massive 80% off my Photoshop and After Effects courses at the Bridge Training. You can find out about these offers here. Just to give you an idea of the sort of savings on offer, my After Effects training 2 day training courses (Fundamentals, Intermediate and Advanced) have been discounted from the usual price of £504 to the incredible price of £108 for anyone based in the London Westminster area. Please contact The Bridge Training here to book a place.

    I’m so excited to be able to introduce a set of video training products specifically aimed at character animation in Adobe After Effects CS5. I’ve included a link to a free sample from this workshop here, just click on this link to watch it in HD. There are also some other free videos available here.

    As a freelance illustrator and motion graphics designer, I use After Effects every day to create artwork and animations of various styles. As a result, I’ve developed some powerful techniques for creating quick but compelling 2D animation, and in this workshop I share them with you. You’ll learn how to import layered files and paths from Illustrator into After Effects and how to animate flat vector artwork in both 2D and 3D space.

    Topics covered include:

    • Setting up After Effects for creating 2D character animation
    • Using input devices to capture motion and apply it to your characters
    • Creating animation and lip-syncing with audio files, using expressions and scripting to make the process easier
    • Applying grouping techniques and using parenting to create hierarchical animations
    • Following the best working practices for outputting your animations for the web, TV, and mobile devices

    All this is presented in a series of short, focused, and solution-oriented videos that steer clear of technical jargon. Whether you’re a motion graphic designer, animator, storyboard artist, video editor, or illustrator, if you want to create 2D animation from flat, vector-based artwork, this is the workshop for you.

    The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. This course also includes project files so you can follow along and try out new techniques as you learn them.

  • A busy After Effects week

    A busy After Effects week


    Wow, what a busy week. I’ve just finished the first day of Broadcast Video Expo 2011 where I’ve been presenting After Effects and the Production Premium workflow on the Adobe booth. It’s been great being back with the Adobe UK team again and seeing lots of friendly faces.

    I’ve also got a brand new product released today. My new Character Animation with Adobe After Effects workshops with video2brain are now on sale. You can check out some free sample movies here by clicking the link. Enjoy and please let me know what you think.

    Happy Keyframing!

    Angie

  • Creative After Effects Bonus Tutorials

    Creative After Effects Bonus Tutorials

    These Creative After Effects Bonus Tutorials are ones created specifically for readers of my “Creative After Effects”books but are also freely available to everyone who visits my website.They were designed for previous versions of After Effects but still contain useful tips, tricks and techniques. These books contain many more in depth tutorials on Adobe After Effects and related topics. It also includes a free CD full of goodies and training materials for your delectation!I welcome feedback from readers as it is essential to the growth and development of the book and website. If you have any comments or feedback please feel free to leave comments.
    Keylight Training movie This is a sample movie from my book “Creative After Effects 7″. The tutorial focusses on how to use The Foundry’s Keylight in After Effects to key out really badly shot DV footage. Angie shares tips and tricks on how to avoid problems and to fix them once they occur.
    Character Animation tutorial I’ve done a fair bit of character animation using After Effects, mainly cut-out animation, similar to the style Terry Gilliam used in the Monty Python animations and not too dissimilar to South Park’s style of animation.Till Parenting was introduced, I always used complex nesting procedures to link the individual parts of my characters together. I would draw them in Illustrator with each part on a separate layer, bring it in as a Comp and then Pre-comp the body parts together as needed.Parenting gets rid of the need for complex nesting hierarchies, I can now link the body parts together in one composition. This tutorial simplifies and demystifies the processes, making them less intimidating to those who have never used Parenting.
    The Talking Dog Lip syncing Tutorial for After Effects 6 is based on the After Effects 5.5 Production Bundle but can also be followed using the version 5.0 PB. If you want to get hold of an updated After Effects CS5 version of this tutorial, complete with new footage, it’s available as part of my After Effects CS5 Learn by Video DVD in association with Adobe’s Todd Kopriva.
    This tutorial shows you how to use Motion Math scripts and Time Remapping on a 3D – rendered character to automate the process of lip-synching. I used this technique in an animated program which was broadcast on a major UK TV network.
    Multipass for After Effects 5.5 and Cinema 4DXL These comprehensive tutorials cover techniques for creating multipass renders as well as importing and manipulating the multiple passes in After Effects 5.5.Using a whole host of old and new features to bring your 3D scene to life you will learn the basic principles and discover the power and flexibility that can be achieved by rendering out your 3D scene in passes.

    Download files:

    Cinema 4DXL (Version 7.303)

    Multipass tutorials

    Tutorial notes: Cinema 4D Multipass Project files: Cinema 4D project files

    After Effects 5.5

    Multipass tutorials

    Tutorial notes: After Effects Multipass Tutorial Notes

    Project files: After Effects project files Footage files: Movies, Lights, Footage files
    The Cinema 4D tutorial was co-written by myself and Tim Clapham of HelloLux. Find out more about Tim and HelloLux by here.