3D Animation Career Education Options

Do you burn for a career as a 3D computer animation artist? Maybe you're checking into some of the heavily advertised trade schools, but you're not sure about spending all that money. These schools cost a lot of money and they never guarantee you employment. As is the case with many of the applied arts, a trade school degree is no guarantee to employers that you have the skills to carry your weight.
Some of the best chefs work their way up from dishwasher, and some of the most incompetent ones have culinary degrees. Likewise, in the 3D computer animation field, your track record and portfolio are a lot more important than any trade school degree you might have paid for.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not disparaging education. On the contrary, a degree from a competitive university enriches your life and returns its cost many times over.
What matter most to animation houses are your skill at design and your facility with the leading 3D animation software such as Maya and 3D Studio Max. Before making any investment in technical education, you can begin to develop the latter skill set by actually learning any one of the available free 3D animation programs. By experimenting in the field, developing your facility with the software, and doing some pro bono work that leads to real paid projects, you will be learning the trade without blowing tens of thousands of dollars on a purely technical education that may never pay for itself.
After establishing yourself in the field you will either realize this isn't for you and explore a more traditional education at a four year university, or you will find that you have a great passion for the field and will now have a much better chance to qualify for admission to a reputable, selective art school like The Art Institute of Chicago, Pratt or RISD. Or perhaps you will have begun a lifetime of productive and lucrative computer animation work, with no thoughts of turning back.
The advice here is basically to try before you buy. Trade schools have their place, but they are marketing machines. Due diligence reveals that diploma mills - private trade schools with low or no admission standards - do less to help their grads get jobs than more selective schools do. Rather than make a bad choice about school, why not get your hands on some 3D animation software, really learn it well, give the work a try and put yourself in a much stronger position to make the next step in your career a smart and prudent one?

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Basics of Animation

Animation
Animation is an art of presenting a series of pictures or photos in a sequence rapidly in order to create an illusion of a motion. It is shown in either 2D, 3D or through a motion capture. Usually the animation was a series of images hand drawn by an artist movement by movement and are presented in a flipbook format or photographed each image and presenting them through a video program which is very painstaking method. Today with the advent of highly technical animation like motion capture which can be seen in the success of movie Avtar, the animation cannot be distinguished from the real world.
Principles of animation
Often considered as the bible of animation, the principles of animation are written by Ollie Johnston, and Frank Thomas in "The illusion of life: Disney animation". The twelve principles are:

1. Squash and stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight ahead action and pose to pose
5. Follow through and overlapping action
6. Slow in and slow out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid drawing
12. Appeal.

Till today after 30 years, still the principles are followed by the industry and consider as the basis of any animation.
In education
Animation is the best way to attract children. It creates interest in them and with the animated characteristics telling the stories and rhymes with music, it can be easily understood and learnt by children. Apart from children, it can be used in the higher education to design the complex models like the architectural animation, and for medical studies. It is mostly used in medicine to design the complex parts of the human body which otherwise is not possible to use and explain the students. It is also useful in teaching the surgical procedures which are always not possible to practically show.
Animation software
The industry has gone a long way with the advent of computer. Today with 2D and 3D computer animation it is often tough to find the difference between the real and animation. The computer animation often referred to as CGI, uses various software to design the graphics. Some of the commonly used software are:

1. Toon boom studio
2. Animationish
3. Flip boom
4. Flash
5. After effects
6. Pencil
7. Synfig
8. CreaToon
9. sWiSH
10. ULead GIF animator
11. 3D studio max
12. Maya
13. Lightwave
14. Blender
15. Swift 3D

Animation techniques
The method of animation has seen many transformations since its entry in 18th century. Right from the traditional animation, the technology has developed rapidly and gave wings to the creativity. Today we have many techniques that create great movies, which are stop motion, computer animation, drawn on film, paint-on-glass, erasure, pinscreen, sand animation, flip book, character animation, chuckimation, multi-sketching, special effects, animatronics, stop motion. The stop motion is very creative in which live images are captured on a camera in a way that on broadcasting, the animation creates a moving images animation.

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Discover The Difference Between 3D and 2D Animations

A quick and speedy demonstration of a string of images of 2D or 3D artwork so as to create an illusion of motion can be understood as animation. The skill of building moving objects with the usage of computers is known as computer animation and is also sometimes referred to as computer-generated imagery or computer-generated imaging (CGI). A motion picture is one of the forms of presenting animation, as is also a video program and a number of other forms of presenting animation exist. The cartoons that one watches on television are also an example of animation. Animated objects can be turned and moved around just like real objects.
This article highlights some points of difference between 2D and 3D animation. For starters, 2D animation (hand drawn) happens on a 2 dimensional platform and hence, images are flat and only one angle can be seen. 3D animation (CGI) happens on a 3 dimensional platform and therefore images have depth and numerous perspectives similar to real life can be seen.
In general, 2D animation calls for drawing or movement on, say, a flat surface or in the horizontal and vertical (X and Y) planes respectively. On the other hand, 3D includes modeling, that is to say, creating images in 3-dimensions using computer software. 3D gives the image the 'Z' dimension and this third dimension permits rotation of the image.
Additionally, 2D and 3D animation can be differentiated by comparing them to a painting and a sculpture respectively. The difference can also be seen by understanding that since 3D animation offers a depth perspective, we can not only see a rectangle (2 dimensional figure) but also a cube, which is a 3 dimensional figure.
Also, there is a difference between 2D and 3D animation with reference to the usage of tools to build 2D and 3D images, the effort involved, the cost encountered and the quality of the final product. 2D animation is a hands-on course of action and requires hand-drawing hundreds to thousands of individual frames. These are then transferred to clear plastic cels, hand-painted, and then filmed in a series over a painted background image. The amount of time, labor, and tools involved in this entire process can be incredible. In contrast, in case of 3D computer animation, the need for many of the additional tools required to create an animation is minimized and also the time and effort involved is cut down to a great extent.
In a nut shell it can be said that basically 2D and 3D animations mean the dimension in which the animation is crafted and that 3D animation makes objects or images look more realistic when compared to 2D animation.
The advantages of 3D animation:
You might have wondered why we should go after the 3D animation, when the whole process itself takes a number of stages and appears to be very complex. Apart from the complexities involved, it does offer a lot of advantages. Once the modeling process is completed, the 3D software allows very flexible control over the scene and animation. You can rotate the model in any angle you want (unlike 2D). 3D animation software also gives a rich collection of tools that aid the process of modeling and animation. You can choose from a wide variety of modeling techniques based on your requirement. Lighting and camera setup is the exact replica of a real world movie shooting environment. Apart from all these, the ultra realism offered by the 3D rendered scenes makes 3D graphics the best solution for the emerging animation industry.

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The Beginners Guide To 3D Animations and 2D Animation Styles

The domain of animation is now a well developed and fully fledged career and education sphere. If you are set to get into the animation industry then there are some decisions that you will have to make as you face a lot of options. One of the first options that you will face is to determine whether you will want to go the 2D animation or the 3D animation route.
What you also need to do is to establish the specific career line that you need to get into. You will also have to understand the kinds of skills that are required in the particular field that you want to settle for. In any domain in the animation world you will always need to have the basic skills that can be your foothold in any particular animation sector that you want to settle for.
What you need to know at this point is that in the case of 3D it would be expedient for you if you have some experience or some knowledge in model building as well as sculpting. In your choice for the 3D animation you will quickly pick up that the concepts that you will be picking up in the 3D animation education or carrier are closely related to 2D. 2D was the ground-breaking animation concept in design and animation and most of what has made up 3D animation is based on 2D animation.
Some of the computers are still bullet on 2D in terms of their dimensions. The 2D concepts have been extensively used in the cyber landscape. Many web pages entail the 2D concepts in their structure and this is used to make the presentation some material better.2D concepts are largely used to produce frame-by-frame presentations of scenes as well as characters.
Many 2D designers are comfortable with drawing their images and then scanning these images into their computers. This is largely because of the fact that drawing gives you much flexibility and then you can transfer you drawing into the computer by scanning them. If you have become tech-savvy in the graphic design domains then you can make the most of the various graphic design software that will enable you to simulate drawings making your job a whole lot easier.
There are some quite handy design and animation software and applications such as Flash. With software like this you can draw your images on the computer and animate them there. If you have a good grasp of the 2D concepts and you want to move to the next step the next thing to focus on is 3D animation. Now 3D animation will empower you to land a good job in the booming animation graphics industry.

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How to Become an Animator - Do You Have The Necessary Qualities?

Are you interested in learning how to become an animator? While many of us think of 3D animations only as they relate to films and movies, there are several other industries like advertising, websites, and game software companies that all use computer animation, as well. All of these industries need talented, skilled artists to create the graphics that they use.
As the popularity of 3D movies, games and website animation increases, the demand for talented, skilled animators has also increased. There are several skills and qualities you'll need to be successful in an 3D animation career. Following are the basic things you need to know if you're considering a career in this fast paced, exciting field.
There are traditional and more modern methods of creating 3D animated graphics, and most animators use a combination of these methods. An aspiring animator will need to learn about both conventional and new methods of creating 3D graphics, and become skillful at both types.
3D animators are working in a constantly evolving field. As technology improves, the software and skills needed to be a successful animator change. As techniques and methods change, new animation software programs are developed and updated to keep up with the new methods. These computer programs can be quite complex and take a significant amount of time to learn.
To be successful in the world of 3D creation, an animator is going to need to be willing to change with the times and be ready to learn new skills continually.
A successful 3D animator is constantly practicing and honing his or her skills. One way that many artists learn about, and keep up with the industry, is by taking college courses in art and animation. If you choose to go to school for art, be sure that the school places a heavy emphasis on studio time. It's during this time that you'll become familiarized with the various software programs and processes used in creating graphics.
Some of the many programs you'll want to be comfortable using include Maya, CAD programs, Adobe Photoshop and Lightwave. The more experience you have with these programs, the more marketable you'll be when you graduate and start looking for a job.
Whether learning at school or in your own home, it's important that you begin building a portfolio that shows off your very best work. A portfolio is the best way for you to build credibility as an artist. It will show potential employers what you have to offer, and provide a good representation of your skill set and creativity.
I hope that this article has shed some light on how to become an animator. With a lot of dedication and hard work, an exciting career could be awaiting you.

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Animation Career

If you're interested in getting into the movie special effects industry, an animation career could be one of the best options. As you already know, computers have become indispensable in filmmaking these days. Even for movies that don't have any kind of special effects in the script, a lot of behind the scenes special effects work is still done which is never detected by the audience. In fact, some of the best special effects are those that are not detectable on screen as "special effects". That's a real tribute to the ingenuity of the gurus of movie magic.
Removing unwanted objects from the background, introducing new backgrounds into a scene, placing live characters into realistic-looking computer-generated sets and a host of other filmmaking techniques are routinely used these days that people watching the movie are never aware of. Most of this work is done by animation experts using sophisticated 3D animation software like Maya or 3DS Max. The level of realism that can be achieved using these software packages is truly phenomenal. Nowadays, filmmakers rely so much on animation to bring their scripts to life on the movie screen. So an animation career can really take you into the very heart of the filmmaking process.
If you have basic drawing skills, you can pick up animation with a little effort. The wonderful thing about these 3D animation software packages is that they are available free of cost for people to download and use, legally. The companies that create these software packages offer trial versions that are fully-functional packages that work for 30 days. People wanting to learn these tools can download these software programs and learn them without having to pay for the software. There are excellent resources on the web, like video tutorials on YouTube for instance, which help beginners master the art of 3D animation without much effort. So if an animation career is what you're interested in, download one of the latest software packages for free and learn to use the package by watching some of the video tutorials on YouTube.

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Advancement of 3D Animation Industry

Animation; the term gives an instant thought of cartoons and films based on computer graphics but prior to this a technique called Phenakistoscope was there which had simple drawings which moved simultaneously giving the effect of animation. There were several animated features created by using these drawings which differed from the previous one. This method disappeared by the end of the twenty first century and drawings were directly scanned or drawn into computers. The computer animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. 3D animations give the impression to look at characters from all angles like in real life. It can be grouped under various terms:
Cel-shaded animation:
It is also called cel-shading or toon shading which is designed to make the computer graphics to look as if hand drawn. It is used to copy the style of a comic book or cartoon characters.
Morph target animation
It is stored as a series of vertex positions. In each key frame of the animation the vertex will move to a different position. This can be used for animating cloth, skin and facial expressions.
Skeletal animation
This is also referred to as rigging and is an technique for the vertebrates. This technique works by constructing a series of bones and each bone is associated with some portion of characters visual representation.
Motion capture
It is a procedure for digitally recording the action movements. It can be used in video games to animate the characters of the game and in film making it refers to the technique of recording the action of human actors.
Crowd simulation
It is the process of reproducing the movement of a large number of objects or characters and used when there are more characters than that can be animated using the other methods.
The industries that are using 3D animations are interior designing, medical visualizations, architecture naval architecture and corporate presentations. There are several interactive 3D animation software that enables one to visualize and redesign a room. These are used by architectures for designing homes for their clients. This can be used in medical field training for explaining various concepts, phenomenon and surgical techniques to give a better and clear vision to the scholars. Then in naval field it is used in designing of ships by making a 3D ship model which helps in quick progress of ship building projects. In corporate world too it is used for preparing impressive presentations and interactive websites.
The 3D animations are very realistic and are used for giving special effects in movies. The film and advertisement sectors provide ample opportunities for the growth of animation industry. The employments of computers and software's have fastened the pace of animation industry. The growth of its use in gaming industry has made it a fast growing and dynamic field. To provide an in depth description of product we now no longer depend on still images, 3D animation is the answer to create an interactive environment where an individual can relate to the objects and enjoy the virtual world created around him. We can say that with its diversity and effectiveness has left no field untouched by its impact.

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