In the second of our VFX masterclasses, we will look to cut out the cutesy stuff (or at least save it for later), understand workflow for creature animation; what everyone does and above all – get down to some realism.

We’ll be keen here to show you what creature animation is, within the context of vfx and how important it is, to teach and learn the animators craft within the context of getting something that is animated to be believable when integrated into a film plate.

Creature animation for vfx needs to be taught via the idea of mimicry of movement first. The study of and eventual ‘copying’ of how real creatures move is so much more important than notions of character and exaggerated performance. Although a little of these can come in later, once mimicry is achieved. ‘Cartoony’ and homage to Pixar type work needs to be avoided – although this could come under the heading of ‘feature animation’ or ‘cg feature animation’, it muddies the water when it comes to understanding what creature animation for vfx is really about.

Case studies in Creature Animation
MPC, and Rushes (tbc)

Key creative talent from these VFX companies will talk through some recent projects that show off creature animation and lip synch, modelling, rigging and creature effects skills. You will see how projects are planned and how Creature TD's, modellers and animators work together to produce realism with some bizarre and unexpected results.

What an animator does all day
Brad Silby, Senior Animator from Framestore

Brad will explain what the VFX Animator's job entails as he talks through his experience of animating the death of Dobby the house elf in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One. He will discuss the different stages of animation production from initial briefing through to layout and blocking, as he and the team inch towards final animation. Brad will be candid as he explains the process required to create realistic animation of a dying elf, via production clips of the many versions, tweaks and changes it takes to achieve the end result.


An overview of creature set-up for animation
Nick Savy, creature effects artist

Nick is a seasoned expert in creature design and creation. He has a broad experience to talk from; from video games to tv and film, where his work includes Batman Begins, Doom and Harry Potter and Philosophers Stone, working for companies as diverse as Saga, Double Negative, Cinesite and Passion Pictures.

Nick will talk through the considerstions needed to design, build and rig a good creature, for animation either using keyframes or motion capture data and then subsequent integration into live action plates. His insight will show how skills learnt for creature work in film and tv are now equally applicable to the games industry as well. Nick is keen to describe how people from both technical and artistic backgrounds need to be skilled observers of the world around them, as well as being inspired to learn skllls in modelling, UVing, rigging, skinning texturing and lighting.

He'll show how constraining and bending parts of a creature present particular challenges for modelling and rigging that quite literally need to be ironed out before the primary animation work begins.

A look at realism for animators
Rob Hemmings, Animation supervisor

During the last ten years, Rob has worked as an animation supervisor for companies such as MPC, Framestore and Double Negative. This has been a crucial time, as we have seen the Harry Potter series enable London VFX houses to become serious rivals to US houses in producing realistic creature animation.

Despite this worthy acolade we'll examine why creature animation hasn't become the prevailing form in cgi animation study within the UK. What might be done to provide specialist teaching and learning to help talent answer the VFX industry's call for skills in realism?

From his work, master training aspiring junior animators for work in companies such as MPC, Cinesite, Double Negative, the Mill and Framestore, Rob will highlight some examples of good practice in teaching realistic creature animation and point towards how important observing the creatures around us is, in making for more nuanced animation work.

Running Order

The morning session is about Creature TD skills

The afternoon session is about Creature animation skills

1020        Structure of the day and welcome        Ian Murphy

1030        The role of an animation TD: Rushes case study        Mark Pascoe       

1120        Creature design and set-up        Nick Savy       

1200        BREAK

1220        Creature TDing Q&A        Mark Pascoe and Nick Savy

1200        LUNCH

1350        What does and animator do all day: Framestore case study        Brad Silby

1440        BREAK

1500        Lip sync and the process of teaching creature animation        Alex Williams

1545        Pure performance aanimation: A skills audit        Rob Hemmings

1615        Creature Animation Q&A        Brad, Alex and Rob

1630        Closing remarks