Stuart Sumida in London 12 December

Paleontologist and animal locomotion expert Stuart Sumida will be in London next week, and on Wednesday 12th December at 4.30pm he will be giving a free talk at Escape Studios at 190 High Holborn, London WC1.

Stuart occupies a rare cross-over space between science and entertainment, advising Hollywood studios on the development of movies such as "The Lion King" and "Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron".

Bucks New Uni's Annecy Survival Guide

Annecy - an ancient medieval town in the French Alps

The International Festival of Animation at Annecy is the world’s biggest animation festival. It can be a slightly overwhelming experience; there are so many things going on at once that it can be hard to feel like you really get to make the most of being there. Alongside the film festival is MIFA – the world’s biggest animation marketplace, a brain-boiling congress of industry types furiously buying and selling. But Annecy is an event that we believe that every animator should go to at least once – if only to get a feeling for the sheer size and diversity of the modern animation industry.

Animation Masterclass at Bucks on Friday 27th March

This coming Friday 27 March we welcome veteran VFX animator Marc Stevenson who will be coming to Bucks to teach a masterclass in animal locomotion. Marc's credits include Moon, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, X-Men Last Stand, and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Marc is an expert animator with a wealth of professional experience who will be teaching our students some special techniques for animal locomotion, strategies that are directly relevant to finding work in the growing VFX industry in Soho.

How to Use Live Action Reference to Create Believable Animation

Horse in Motion by Edward Muybridge

How can animators use live action reference to create believable animation?  Back in the old 2D days of hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping (as it was called) was a legitimate, if much debated, method of achieving a realistic look and feel to your animation.  Today, the technology has changed, but 3D animators can also benefit from using live action to help inform their animation, and this is especially the case when doing complex animal or creature animation. So how, in practice, does a MAYA animator use live action reference to get a great result? Below are some techniques for making it work.

Bucks Animation Student Kalim Momen is Rusty - For a Day

As everyone at Bucks knows, Rusty is our official university mascot, the big furry character with antlers who welcomes you to our University Open Days and to Freshers’ Week. This week we did some filming for a short video about life at the university, and we needed someone to play Rusty. Fortunately, Kalim Momen, one of our 2nd year animation students, was game to try out the Rusty suit, and see what life is like as a loveable cartoon deer.

Bucks Animators Go to Blue GFX

Blue GFX

Last week Bucks New University students went to the Blue GFX Expo in London – a massive annual visual effects event sponsored by Autodesk, and a great opportunity to find out about the latest developments in our industry. There were presentations about Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, a chance to try out the latest Cintique tablets, and best of all a talk by Framestore about the work they did on Gravity, a film that looks and feels like a live action movie, but is entirely animated. OK, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock were real – but the rest is CG magic.

The Best Free Rigs for Learning to Animate in Maya

Morpheus - endlessly flexible

We do not design and build our own rigs here at Bucks - there are just too many excellent free rigs and sets provided by Maya enthusiasts for student use. We point our students to the very best freeware rigs from the web and show you where to find them. In the end though, it is up to our students to find the rigs that they most enjoy animating with. There are so many; all have their strengths and weaknesses. Below is a list of some of the best, and where to find them.

What Makes a Great Animator? Mike Nguyen Explains

Korean Goshawk - animation by Mike Nguyen

Mike Nguyen is a veteran animator who has worked on many classic Hollywood feature films such as "Beauty and The Beast" and "Space Jam".  He was a lead animator on Brad Bird's classic "The Iron Giant" and also on "Osmosis Jones", and has been working for a number of years on his own independent animated feature film  "My Little World".  Here he talks to Bucks about what makes a great animator.

James Chiang Explains What Makes a Great Animator

The animator who brought you surfing penguins

Animator, Director and artist James "JC" Chiang has worked as an animator on many feature films including Robots, Ice Age - The Meltdown, Surf's Up and Open Season, and was animation director on the 2008 Veggie Tales movie. He teaches animation, and is a also an accomplished fine artist in his own right. We asked him to explain what, exactly, makes a great animator.

How do you pick the best place to study animation?

Life at University

One of the most important decisions that any of us will ever make is what to study at University, and where. How do you choose? Even if you know you want to study animation and the digital arts (good choice!), there are at least 80 courses in the UK to select from. So how do you pick the right one? The simple answer is - pick the best. But how you tell which courses are the best? There are a number of ways of making the right decision, but we think that there are two that are by far the most important.

Bucks Animation Showcase 2013

We're proud to showcase the best work from our students at Bucks over the past year. Included in this compilation video is work by Dave Berry, Monika Dzikowicz, Kristof Michalski, Allan de Leal, Mike Swan, Paula Gillin, Andre Spencer, and others.

Our talented graduates are now taking a well-earned summer break before starting their careers in the animation, games, visual effects and design visualisation industries. Anyone looking to hire one of our talented students should contact us at alex.williams@bucks.ac.uk or david.creighton@bucks.ac.uk

----Alex

How should you get ready for September?

What kind of preparation should students do before starting with us in September at Bucks? Here's a checklist of stuff to get you started. It's not comprehensive, and you don't have to do all of it, but tick off a few of the things on this list and you will be a making a great start on your animation career here at Bucks.

The Animator's Survival Kit - now available as an app for the iPad

The Animator's Survival Kit came out around a decade ago as a book, and a few years later as a DVD set. Since then it has been the leading resource for students wanting to learn animation. Anyone who is serious about the medium should have a copy of the book - until now. Here at Bucks our animation dept has just had a sneak peek at the new The Animator's Survival Kit - as an iPad app. Below is our review of this new electronic addition to the animator's library.

The Twelve Principles of Animation - start learning today!

What is Animation all about? For a general introduction to the medium, and a beginners guide to the language and basic principles of animation, watch this video above.

Student Showcase - Jens Kopke's "highly commended" work for AD&D

This very stylish short video is by Bucks graduate Jens Kopke, who entered it for the Design and Art Direction (D&AD) awards and was "highly commended" for his work.

Building a great animation reel - the problem of weight

The secret of a great animation reel is simple - it must be completely free of mistakes. As Aardman animator Matt Rees puts it: "you are only as good as the worst thing on your reel".

Animation History Quiz!

Call yourself an animator? Think you know the history of animation? Sharpen your pencil, get yourself a piece of paper, and test your knowledge with our brand-new animation history quiz! The story begins 18,000 years BC....

The Animation Internet Revolution

The Animation Internet Revolution: There is a revolution taking place in media and content creation. Any animator with talent, a laptop and a story to tell can now take on ...

How to Make an Animated Film

One of the biggest challenges for any animator is to tackle a short film project. Most working animators don't - they're usually too busy. But at the very best animation schools, students usually tackle a group film project - or possibly an ambitious solo project - in their graduation year. Short films are a ton of work and they present a huge variety of film-making challenges. So how, in practice, do you make an animated film?