I am an IT Teacher in the Toronto area. I am looking to start a new introductory computer art/animation course to senior high school students. To my knowledge there is no such course as this in Ontario (a computer art course yes - animation no). My thoughts on course content are as follows: stills -> people/creatures -> animate them. My questions are these: What software should I use? I thought Illustrator or Fireworks along with Photoshop for the stills. Poser5 and Vue Professional for the people/creatures and possibly the animation. 3DSMAX 5.1 is also an option for the animation. I do not know how much I can realistically cover in a year (approximately 100 hours in class). I realize some theory is necessary, but I don't want to get bogged down with it. The idea of the course would be to expose the kids to what can be done, as well as get them excited about it. If you have any thoughts please post. I am especially interested to hear from you if you are an educator, or a professional animator having completed some computer animation course. I would really like to pick your brain for the few questions I have. If you know of any such course elsewhere or a teacher/instructor who is teaching along these lines I would love some contact information. Moderator, if this post would be better off on a different thread please advise. Thank you in advance. Herm

moved to the animation forum... should get more assistance here.

What about Vue d'Esprit4 with or without Mover 4?

Or maybe even the latest come out Vue 4 Professional?

Vue d'Esprit 4 is a inexpensive Landscape and scenery generator. Very easy to learn and to use. It contains vegetation (never two of the same species are the same). It includes already Mover for animation.

Mover 4 is an Extra to purchase "plugin". It allows to import fully animated Poser scenes.

Please have a look and dowwnload a Demo (click Vue d'Esprit 4) and read all the pages to see what it can do.
e-onsoftware.com

Vu ed'Esprit is also available here at Renderosity's Marketplace for a special price for students.

You may want to have a look at this site with lots of animations done with Vue d'Esprit 4 and Vue d'Esprit 4/Mover 4:
http://www.belino.net/

You may also see still images created with it at the Vue gallery here at Renderosity or at my personal Homepage (click the link).

tutorials for beginners

Good luck!

Guitta

Perhaps you missed it in the second paragraph but I am already seriously leaning towards Vue Pro. Thanks for the response. Herm

If you're seriously looking into character animation, I reccomend Maya, (of corse :p ) or XSI, you can usually pick up educational lab licenses pretty reasonable. 3DS max with character studio may also be an option. For serious character animation, and a solid foundation behind it, I'll say I have my doubts...for example Gnomon3d.com is a CG school, and their "Fast track program" runs like 270 hours. The learning curve is pretty extreme. For 2D stills, PS is an excellent choice. Fireworks is nice for vector drawing...but more suited to web design stuff. (making buttons etc.) You may consider, if possible for "Character animation" to be a second (or third) year course, with something like "3D fundamentals" and or Computer Graphics to be a first year. My 3 cents -Modulok-

If you looking to start a new introductory computer art/animation course then I would also look at Flash, Macromedia have educational packages and Flash can not only do cel-style time-line based animation but also sophisticated action-script (programmable) animation behaviour, not to mention the possibilty of user-interactivity and ubiqitous web deployment. Just my 2c. :-)>

I teach a high school animation class using Poser4. It's a fairly good introduction to the world of 3d. It keeps things simple enough for the students to follow. The hardest thing I have to deal with is the way that our school locks everything down with fortress. It's hard having to work around the system to do some very simple things...and I think that confuses my kids much more than the classwork. I haven't used Vue, so it's hard for me to speak to that, though the images I see from it look nice enough. It kinda reminds me of Bryce. You might also want to take a look at Maya's website. They are going to be releasing a new educational version (this is my understanding anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong) that is both fully functional and free...it just can't be used for commercial purposes. The last time I checked on the release status was about three weeks ago and it was supposedly "coming soon." If you're on a budget, like we are...this would be a great tool to integrate into your class for the more advanced students. If there's anything I can do to help, please send me an IM. I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

Hi, good idea you have there. I just came outta high school and I am in university of Calgary taking Bsc in CompSci. After this 4 yr degree I am going to the university of South California and get my Master's in Animation. My high school had 3d courses and they used 3dmax r2.5 and r3 but 2 yrs ago they switched to maya. Now Maya is a pretty intensive software and I will not recomend as a introductory software unless your students already have some 3d background knowledge. Another thing is that 3d fundamentals is a MUST. If for some reason you do chose Maya, "Learning Maya 5" is a great book to start with. Its by Alias|Wavefront and comes with a tutorial dvd rom. As you and some others mentioned above about Vue Pro 4, its a great tool. Poser is a character animation tool whereas Maya is an allrounder (modelling, animation, environment, etc). If you do pick poser I will recomend Vue4 with mover/Vue Pro 4 with it. If you are looking more towards 2d then Flash. Either way fundamentals is a MUST and is the best way to get started on. Jot

I'm not a teacher myself, but I have worked in the (European) animation industry for a period of over 15 years now, doing traditional, hand drawn key-animation for commercials and theatrical feature films. As a hobby, I've been dabbling a bit with Poser; as the industry is shifting towards 3D I'm planning to get to grips with that and check out Maya. As far as software for teaching animation goes, there's a nice little program called Aura, by NewTek, that uses a traditional approach to animation; you can handdraw your animation in it (best with a Wacom tablet), and it has a very handy Onion Skin function that emulates a real world light table, so that you can see several animation drawings at once. Professional animation productions have been created with this software - and it is a very fast tool to learn basics like bouncing balls and that sort of stuff. For 2D, Aura and Flash are probably good programs to consider; as far as 3D goes I have not enough experience to give too much of advise. As an animation tool I have been frustrated about Poser's limitations, even if it is a very fast tool for simple scenes. I have worked in studios where Maya was used, and while it should be a near-perfect animation tool, I have been told that it takes well over year's worth of extensive training to get to grips with the software itself. It will mostly depend on the goal of the course what your strategy should be. If it is basically meant to be a Know Your Software sort of training, better choose one tool and stick to that. If it is animation you are interested in, the choise of software is less important; probably best go for a program that doesn't have a steep learning curve, and instead focus on the basics of animation, being (natural) movement and acting skills. 2D books like Disney Animation; The Illusion Of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, and The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams, are widely used throughout the industry, both 2D and 3D, and cover the basics of what animation really is all about; making things move in interesting and entertaining ways, and communicating ideas and emotions to the audience; basic musts for every character animator, whatever method or software used. Parts of the theory described in those books could be a solid base for your animation course. I learned animation on the job, snd the first director I worked for had the best possible method for me. Instead of telling me what to do, he would discuss scenes with me, making me aware of the problems, and forcing me to think about them and come up with solutions of my own. The basic principles such as arcs, spacing, pose to pose, etc, should be thaught, of course, but in my opinion the quality that determines a good animator is his ability to bring inventive solutions to creative problems, and to clearly communicate the main basic ideas of a scene in an entertaining way, rather than merely copying what has been done before. Good luck.

What you are attempting sounds very good but it will not be easy. I have been a professional animator for almost 20 years - traditional and 3d. I have also taught animation for businesses and at the Animation Workshop in Denmark. Here are my thoughts: Animation is a very difficult and in-depth subject. 100 hours will only scratch the surface. Since you are trying to simply get them interested and give them a taste, this isn't an issue. The real issue is that you don't want to turn them off with a bad experience. I think that if you use some of the higher end software, like XSI, Maya, or Max, the students will have to spend so much time learning the interface and functionality that they will soon become discouraged. Poser is easy to start with immediately and will give them instant satisfaction. Yes, it's animation abilities are quite limited but they will be more than adequate for what they will be doing. Having said that, the other alternative would be to use XSI or Maya but have the characters pre rigged and ready to animate. XSI has ready made default figures and rigs available with a couple of mouse clicks. One more consideration. Learning XSI or Maya will prepare students for future job prospects - Poser will not. Chris Derochie