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Introduction to Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-1016-A
  • Day(s) M
  • Dates Jun 03 - Aug 05
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:00PM
  • Ceus 3.00
  • Cost 395.00
  • Additional Fees 100.00
  • Status Open
  • Location To Be Announced

Description

Designed to familiarize students with all of the basic elements and language of the art of animation, this course will focus on character development and its surroundings. The character is essential in animation, and illustrating mood and emotions is paramount. We will animate the character in many stages of motion, i.e., walking, running and rotating, while considering the elasticity of its form and volume in "squash and stretch." In addition to exploring basic elements of character animation, students will create and finetune their personal work, and precisely match their characters "mouth action/lip sync" to a recorded soundtrack. A short video of student work will be recorded.

Instructor

Doug Crane

Animator, animation director

education:

School of Visual Arts

Television projects include:

Fat Albert, Flintstones, Spy Groove, The Gnomes, Scooby-Doo, Really Rosie, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Downtown. Animated more than 450 television commercials for clients, including IBM, Texaco, Campbell’s, Burger King, 3M, Wall Street Journal, Sears

Film projects include:

Nutcracker Suite, Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Heavy Metal

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Animation as a Fine Arts Medium

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-1022-A
  • Day(s) W
  • Dates Jun 05 - Aug 14
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 3.50
  • Cost 470.00
  • Additional Fees 100.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

Animation can be applied to many media: studio cartoons, web design, computer graphics, illustration, fine arts and experimental film. But where does it all start? By learning traditional drawing techniques and making your imagination come to life. From storyboard to finished film, all of the production steps of an animated film will be demonstrated and applied in this creative workshop. Students will develop and refine personal style through exercises and assignments directed at making their images move. By the end of the course, students will have worked on or completed their own animated short.

Instructor

Martin Abrahams

Producer, director, designer, animator, video editor

Education:

School of Visual Arts

Animated projects include:

ABC News, Sesame Street, Great Bear, Burger King

Music videos include:

Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Lords of the New Church

Fashion projects include:

Vogue, Bazaar, CFDA Awards

Multiple monitor exhibitions include:

Xerox, Sony, Nynex

Awards include:

Alumni Award, School of Visual Arts; CLIO

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Animate Your Stories From Start to Finish

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-1027-A
  • Day(s) T
  • Dates Jun 04 - Aug 06
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 3.50
  • Cost 470.00
  • Additional Fees 100.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

Students will learn how to create an animated short working in all stages of animation such as continuity design, layout, character development and soundtrack mix. Emphasis will be placed on timing, gesture and body language in animation. To develop and refine drawing skills, students will draw from the model. Students will also learn how to complete a short by adding soundtracks of voice-over actors, sound effects and music.

Instructor

Don Duga

Animation director, producer

Education:

Chouinard Art Institute

professional experience includes:

Animiation director, UPA Pictures; Pelican Films; Cartoon Films, Italy; Polestar Films; Rankin/Bass

Storyboards include:

Owen, Mr. Magoo, The Last Unicorn, Underdog, Tom of Thumb, Frosty the Snowman, Wind in the Willows, The Jackson Five, Little Drummer Boy, A Year Without Santa, Sesame Street, Mad Monster Party

Film projects include:

What in the World, Love, Jungle Madness, Bust Bag, Sea to Sea; co-director, Good Night Gorilla, Island of the Skog, Chicken Little, Owen, How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World

Publications include:

Illustrator, Who's That Hippie in a Headband; co-illustrator, Amigo; Animation Magazine

Awards and honors include:

Carnegie Medal, ASIFA-EAST

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Character Acting for Animators

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-1070-A
  • Day(s) W
  • Dates Jun 12 - Jul 24
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:00PM
  • Ceus 1.50
  • Cost 210.00
  • Additional Fees 25.00
  • Status Open
  • Location To Be Announced

Description

Offering a unique perspective to sketch comedy and drama, this course will engage students in creating characters based upon human behavior. Through the discovery process and acting sessions, students will explore how to bring empathy to comedy with techniques used in pantomime, and by clowns and dancers. Sketching performances will be routine.

Instructor

Stella Pulo

Actress; singer; columnist, The Age (Australia); acting coach; member, The Actors Studio

Education:

B.Ed., Melbourne University

Professional experience includes:

Founder, artistic director, Stel Productions; No Grant Theatre; Theatrix; Other People's Business World; Speeches. Peaches.

Film projects include:

Sarah, Whadda Ya Doin' Here Anyway?!, Maltese Connection, SBS, Every Night Something Awful, Crossroads

Television projects include:

Australia's Most Wanted, Truckies, Flight of the Conchords

Theater projects include:

Rashomon, Walking on Sticks, The Maids, Alien From Down Under, Crazed!

Publications include:

Victorian Lifestyles; Right Words at the Right Time, vol. 2; American Theatre; Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature; Shrimp Shells in My Cleavage

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Writing an Animation Feature-Film Screenplay

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-1226-A
  • Day(s) TH
  • Dates Jun 06 - Aug 15
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:00PM
  • Ceus 3.00
  • Cost 395.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 214 East 21st Street

Description

How to transform an original idea into a strong story treatment and then a final script is the focus of this course. Each student will take his or her concept and develop it into the 12 steps of a hero's journey by learning how to create strong characters (hero, villain, mentors and sidekicks), compile a mythology of rules for their special worlds, and then incorporate those ingredients into a strong story. We will discuss how to keep the project both specific and broad, unique yet familiar (a mind-boggling reality in Hollywood), in order to achieve the ultimate goal: franchise status. Throughout the development process, students will strengthen their stories and explore how to monitor the marketability of their characters, with an emphasis on honing dialogue, so that it appeals to both children and adults. Students will complete this course with a polished animation script, a command of the development process, and a much fuller understanding of the animation film industry.

Instructor

James Grimaldi

Screenwriter

Education:

BA, University of Toronto; MSW, Yeshiva University

Clients include:

Disney, Hyperion Publishers, Imagineering

professional experience include:

Film development, 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema

Screenplays include:

Bubbles, Faster!, Stewart and the Stewardess

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Composition and Design for Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-2056-A
  • Day(s) TH
  • Dates Jun 06 - Aug 15
  • Hours 06:30PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 3.00
  • Cost 395.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

This course will enrich each student's visual vocabulary through projects, demonstrations and supplemental material with an emphasis on individual instruction. Topics will explore: utilizing principles of composition to direct the viewer's interest; applying camera dynamics and staging guidelines to thumbnail sketching, storyboarding and layout; perspective as an expressive tool; creating depth without perspective; value, arrangement and color fundamentals; character analysis and construction. Projects are designed to replicate actual job assignments and will include developing exterior and interior locations and character placement. Composition and design skills are essential for creating compelling images that will engage your audience.

Instructor

Donald Poynter

Art director, Animation Collective; designer; storyboard artist

Education:

BFA, University of Cincinnati; MFA, School of Visual Arts

professional experience includes:

Storyboard supervisor, MTV Animation

Film credits include:

Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, Little Shop of Horrors, Predator, Predator 2

Television credits include:

Daria, Doug, Downtown, Beavis & Butt-Head

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The Drawing Workshop: Concentrated for Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-2060-A
  • Day(s) T
  • Dates Jun 11 - Jul 30
  • Hours 06:00PM - 10:00PM
  • Ceus 3.00
  • Cost 395.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location To Be Announced

Description

In animation, the ability to draw anything, especially the human figure, as a believable thing in a believable space requires these three d's: discipline, desire and diligence. We will work through a series of proven practices that will enhance your drawing abilities no matter what your level and put you on a knowledge path about drawing that will give you the freedom to create into the future. The pencil and brush will be the primary tools to make investigative and effective line drawings that capture ideas of structural anatomy, rhythm and movement. An animator must learn to be able to tap into the powerful creative process to quickly combine observational response and archetypes of form. We will concentrate on 3- to 10-minute poses, working with nude and clothed, male and female models to explore the in-class demonstrations and exercises that will give you a more comprehensive understanding of the human form as well as the variety of processes in drawings made from the past to present. Based on a unique combination of ideas and practices derived from both academic and modern drawing principles, students will be taught to think of drawing the human body in a radically different, yet profoundly rooted way. While continually striving to improve observational and conceptual skills, students will learn to see that energy and rhythm-forces inherent to the living body-are useful and insightful means to approach other more fundamental aspects of drawing. The lessons that cover structural anatomy and the use of lines to create spatial and dynamic drawings are essential to the often inter-related fields of animation, cartooning and illustration. To see examples of class and student work, please visit: stephengaffney.tumblr.com.
NOTE: Please bring a pad of smooth, white drawing paper (18x24"), soft graphite pencils, pencil sharpener, eraser and drawing board to the first session.

Instructor

Stephen Gaffney

Fine artist, muralist, designer

Education:

BFA, School of Visual Arts; MFA, New York Academy of Art

One-person exhibitions include:

Galerie Timothy Tew, Atlanta; First Street Gallery

Group exhibitions include:

Samson Fine Art; McKee Gallery; Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, CT; New York Academy of Art

Projects include:

Sogno Ristorante, Fairfield, CT (interior design); Church of St. Agnes (altarpiece); Marine Park Playground; Playground for All Children; P.S. 58 Library; Paul's Daughter (signs and design)

Clients include:

Hazelwood Foods, UK; New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

Awards and honors include:

National Academy of Design, Edwin Austin Abbey Fellowship

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Stop-Motion Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-3020-A
  • Day(s) TH
  • Dates Jun 13 - Aug 08
  • Hours 12:00PM - 05:30PM
  • Ceus 4.00
  • Cost 520.00
  • Additional Fees 115.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 214 East 21st Street

Description

Stop-motion animation is an art form as well as a viable career. In a workshop setting, students learn to make easy-to-build foam rubber animation models and sets, using established industry techniques, and animate them using state-of-the-art digital animation equipment. Students are encouraged to make films of their own designs with a focus on creating a piece for a "demo reel"-the single most valuable tool in finding a job as a stop-motion animator. Lectures revealing the day-to-day, inner workings of the stop-motion business from an industry professional will be included.

Instructor

Aurelio Voltaire Hernandez

Director, stop-motion specialist. Creator, Chi Chian, the first stop-motion/Flash series on the Internet

Clients include:

MTV, Epic Records, Nickelodeon, Palladium, Dentsu Japan, Budweiser, Parker Bros.

Awards include:

Gold Award, Telly; Gold Award, Broadcast Design; International Film and Television; Flash Forward Film Festival

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Producing Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-3142-A
  • Day(s) M
  • Dates Jun 10 - Jul 29
  • Hours 06:30PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 2.00
  • Cost 270.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 133/141 West 21st Street

Description

This course will be taught from the perspective of a producer and will examine the key elements required to produce a project from conception to final delivery. One of the goals will be to encourage students to think beyond the creative mindset and learn the basics of production, business and finance issues that are also critical to producing a project. An overview of the animation industry will be given, and the skills necessary to become a successful producer will be discussed. Topics include: pitching an idea, forming a production plan, budgeting, scheduling and preproduction through postproduction. In addition, we will visit a working production and meet key production people in New York. By the end of the course, students will have enough knowledge to plan, schedule and budget an animated project.
NOTE: Suggested reading for this course is Producing Animation by Catherine Winder and Zhara Dowlatabadi.

Instructor

John Paul Catapano

Producer

Education:

BA, Rutgers University; MFA, University of Miami

Projects include:

50 Cent: The Money and The Power; Friday: The Animated Series; Where My Dogs At; Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa; Buzz Lightyear of Star Command; Hercules; Recess; Stanley; JoJo's Circus

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Digital Compositing Workshop

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-3181-A
  • Day(s) W
  • Dates Jun 05 - Aug 14
  • Hours 06:00PM - 10:00PM
  • Ceus 4.00
  • Cost 720.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

This course will cover digital animation production. Students will learn tools and techniques to create digital movies, motion graphics, effects and animation for broadcast and the Web. Projects are designed to give students production and interface knowledge covering Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and After Effects. Live action, digitized hand-drawn images and photographs will be assembled in sync to sound. Compositing exercises will cover a wide range of features. Green screen, motion tracking, stabilization, timeline effects, 2D and 3D space, cameras and lights are some of the motion graphics techniques we will use. Methods of digitizing traditional animation will also be included.
NOTE: Students have exclusive use of a computer during scheduled class hours. Lab time is included in the instructional hours; additional lab time is not available.

Instructor

Eric Eiser

Designer, director, 3D artist

Education:

BFA, MFA, School of Visual Arts

Clients include:

Lifetime, Nickelodeon, MSNBC, MTV, NBC, CBS, Showtime, VH1, The Movie Channel

Awards and honors include:

Emmy Award, Ciné Golden Eagle, Broadcast Design Association, Telly, U.S. International Film and Video Festival, ADDY

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After Effects for Animation

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-3256-A
  • Day(s) M
  • Dates Jun 10 - Jul 29
  • Hours 06:30PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 2.00
  • Cost 480.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

Adobe After Effects has quickly become a standard tool for creating and supplementing the sharp animated graphics that surround us. While some animators use After Effects as a postproduction tool for traditionally produced projects, there is a world of possibilities for creating animations completely within the program itself. In this course, we will explore the basics tools of manipulating, enhancing and creating simple animations in After Effects, including moving basic shapes, layers, creating masks, color manipulation and compositing multiple assets.

Instructor

Eric Eiser

Designer, director, 3D artist

Education:

BFA, MFA, School of Visual Arts

Clients include:

Lifetime, Nickelodeon, MSNBC, MTV, NBC, CBS, Showtime, VH1, The Movie Channel

Awards and honors include:

Emmy Award, Ciné Golden Eagle, Broadcast Design Association, Telly, U.S. International Film and Video Festival, ADDY

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The Animation Studio: Putting It All Together

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-3276-CE
  • Day(s) T,TH
  • Dates Jun 11 - Jul 09
  • Hours 10:00AM - 04:00PM
  • Ceus 4.50
  • Cost 700.00
  • Additional Fees 150.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

Designed as a working studio, this course will take students through all stages of the animation process to create personal animated projects. Using Wacom tablets and scanned drawings, we will begin with animation drawing basics such as character development, squash-and-stretch and follow-through. Working with Adobe After Effects and Flash, we will begin with exercises in panning a background with a walk cycle, as well as creating abstract shapes. The remainder of the course will be spent on layout design, animation, scanning and color styling, audio tracks and digital composition for postproduction. Students will work on finished personal films and After Effects exercises.
PREREQUISITE: A basic drawing course and familiarity with the Macintosh computer.
NOTE: This course is open to animation students and those from other disciplines who have experience working in a digital environment. Lab time is included in the instructional hours; additional lab time is not available.
This course may be taken for undergraduate credit. Please refer to AND-3276-CE in the credit courses section of this website for details.

Instructors

Martin Abrahams

Producer, director, designer, animator, video editor

Education:

School of Visual Arts

Animated projects include:

ABC News, Sesame Street, Great Bear, Burger King

Music videos include:

Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Lords of the New Church

Fashion projects include:

Vogue, Bazaar, CFDA Awards

Multiple monitor exhibitions include:

Xerox, Sony, Nynex

Awards include:

Alumni Award, School of Visual Arts; CLIO

View Profile »


Eric Eiser

Designer, director, 3D artist

Education:

BFA, MFA, School of Visual Arts

Clients include:

Lifetime, Nickelodeon, MSNBC, MTV, NBC, CBS, Showtime, VH1, The Movie Channel

Awards and honors include:

Emmy Award, Ciné Golden Eagle, Broadcast Design Association, Telly, U.S. International Film and Video Festival, ADDY

View Profile »


 
 

Introduction to Toon Boom

Course Details
  • Course Number ANC-4122-A
  • Day(s) T
  • Dates Jun 04 - Aug 06
  • Hours 06:00PM - 09:30PM
  • Ceus 3.50
  • Cost 520.00
  • Additional Fees 0.00
  • Status Open
  • Location 380 2nd Ave

Description

This course will introduce the basics of Toon Boom software, beginning with Storyboard software (layers, pens, storyboarding, copying assets for reuse and adding shadows to layers). We will also explore the Toon Boom Animate interface, including basic background design, character design, compositing and the draw and paint tools. Animation basics and storyboarding for film and television will be discussed.

Instructor

Celia Bullwinkel

Digital animator

Education:

BFA, School of Visual Arts

Professional experience includes:

Digital animator, Flickerlab; Little Airplane Productions; Asterisk; Nickelodeon Digital Studio; Curious Pictures; nickjr.com; Augenblick Studios

Projects include:

Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Hair High; Mutant Aliens; Chicago 10; Stepford Wives; Little Bill; Classical Baby; Friday: The Animated Series; Little Einsteins; Ugly Americans; Wonder Pets

Clients include:

HBO, Nick Jr., MTV, Playhouse Disney, Comedy Central

Award:

Rhodes Family Award, School of Visual Arts

View Profile »

 
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