Meet Sam and Amy - Two New Maya Rigs

Amy and Sam

We\re liking two new Maya rigs - Amy and Sam, made by Freelance 3D Generalist Gabriel Salas, and released to the animation community. The rigs are not free but are priced competitively for student use at $15.

Sam and Amy are Asian-American characters through which Gabriel hopes to "balance the limited choice in terms of race that animators have when picking a character rig, so that they have the tools to generate more racially diverse content in their animation exercises".

The rigs include diffuse textures for the body and shoes, and you can find them on Gumroad.  Sam is available here and Amy can be purchased here. Both rigs are priced at $15, and are for educational use only. 

So, how do our students get the most out of Amy and Sam?

Rookies Deadline June 1st 2020

At Bucks New Uniiversity we encourage all of our students to enter The Rookies Awards, the international competition for young creatives, which opened on 7th March, and closes on 1st June.

The Rookies was founded in 2009 to "showcase the most talented student designers, illustrators, film makers, animators, developers, digital artists, and launch them into the career of their dreams."

This year the deadline is 1st June 2020, so there is plenty of time to start crafting a great project.

Free Motion Graphics Webinar on April 1st

Learn to animate client storyboards

Now that our students are studying and learning from home, it's important to take advantage of all the opportunities available for online study.

Next week, Escape Studios is hosting a free Motion Graphics Webinar on April 1st.  In this free webinar, students will learn how to animate client-approved storyboards; Adam will explain how to import storyboards into Adobe After Effects and create a rough animatic, before moving onto final animation.

Anchor Transform Tool Stops Feet Sliding

Anchor Transform by Robert Joosten stops feet sliding

As we move all our animation teaching online, including at undergraduate level, it's important to remember how many tools can be accessed online by our students working from home. 

Sliding feet can be a problem when animating a character walk or a walk cycle. Fortunately for Maya animators, Robert Joosten’s Anchor Transform Maya plugin offers animators a simple solution.

Rather than manually tweaking your animation to stop the feet sliding, rigger Robert Joosten has develped a free script that lets you anchor a transform for any given time range in your animation.

OBS - A Free Tool for Online Delivery of Classes

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) offers a useful option for our lecturers and tutors at Bucks, who are switching to online delivery of our courses. OBS is easy to install and completely free to use, for Windows and Mac devices.

Maya Student License - Free Download

Now that our students are transitioning to online study, it's important to remember that Autodesk, the makers of Maya, offer free education licenses for teachers and students.

You can download the latest version of Maya from the official site here, in the education section.

Online Resources at BNU

Working from home

In these uncertain times it's important to remember that we have many online resources at Bucks New Uni, lots of ways of supporting our students who are currently working from home.

As long as you have a laptop and a decent broadband connection, our students can continue to work remotely, following tutorials, working on projects and also working in teams on platforms such as Facebook and Slack.

Our Online MA in 3D Animation already offers feedback and support to all our students via email, online classrooms, bespoke video feedback, and through our online learning resources with our partner school Animation Apprentice.

Online MA in 3D Animation - Business as Usual

Covid-19 may be causing a good deal of bother around the globe, but fortunately for our students studying the online MA in 3D Animation at Bucks, it's business as usual,

The Online MA is delivered entirely remotely, through our partner Animation Apprentice, with no bricks and mortar facilities to worry about.

For now at least, it's business as usual. Our students continue to work from home, and we will continue to send feedback and support our students in our online classrooms.

"Flame" in Golden Nugget Film Fest 19 March

"Flame", the short film produced by Bucks New Uni MA student Amedeo Beretta, is in The Golden Nugget Film Festival "London Edition" next week.

The festival takes place on Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8 PM – 11:30 PM in the Dreadnought Building, 30 Park Row Greenwich, SE10 9LS.

You can find more about GNIFF screening at the official Facebook Page, and you can buy tickets for under £5 (just £1 for students) at the Event Brite page here.

What Kind of Laptop Should Our Students Buy?

"What kind of laptop should I buy?" is a question that we are often asked at Bucks New University, both by our undergraduate students who want the flexibility to be able to work from home and - of course - by our online students, who will need a laptop of their own to complete the course.

It's a tricky question to answer, because computer specifications change all the time and - of course - it all depends on exactly what you want to use your laptop for.

But, let's say you want to buy a decent laptop capable of running Autodesk Maya, for computer animation and to render out your shots.  What sort of laptop should you buy, and how much do you need to spend? MA Animation student Amedeo Beretta offers some advice to other students at Bucks.

Meet "Flame"

Many congratulations to Bucks MA animation student Amedeo Beretta whose short film "Flame" is now being entered into international film festival competitions, with multiple acceptances and considerable success. Amedeo is an animation tutor at Escape Studios in London, and Flame is a project completed by his students, overseen by him, and an excellent example of the superb work being done by our online students at Bucks.