Overview

In this class, we'll look at the many ways today's digital animation tools can help you get an idea out your head and onto the screen. Like other revolutions of the last ten years — desktop publishing, desktop recording, desktop video — you've now got the tools to make entire animated movies with nothing more than the software on your laptop. What used to take years takes days. What used to cost thousands costs next to nothing. All you need is a story to tell. That and a perverse need to control anything and everything.

From week to week we'll look at a range of styles from the last hundred years of animation, including stop motion, cut paper, abstract and cartoon animation. And we'll use a variety of tools — like After Effects, Flash, iStopMotion and Motion — to illustrate many of the fundamental principals of animated storytelling. The idea is you'll be able to look at your own stories and ideas from a lot of different angles, using different styles and techniques. In that sense this class is more about process than about product. I encourage you to experiment and mix and blend and push the software beyond what's in the "getting started" guide.

We'll watch a lot of shorts and excerpts of longer films in class. I'll put copies of some of the longer pieces in the equipment room, so you can watch them on your own time here on the floor. I've listed most of the pieces we'll be watching on the resources page of the site.

I've also listed some books. I'll be recommending readings from these throughout the semester. I think they'll help put what we're doing in a broader perspective.

You'll find links to software we'll be using on the resources page.

You can e-mail me any time with questions... itp at talespin dot com.