Tutorial: master essential acting skills for animators

The Gnomon Workshop has released Acting for Animators: Become Your Character, a guide to creating believable character animation recorded by animation suprvisor Sarah Arduini.

The workshop, which comprises over two hours of video training in Maya, reveals how to avoid creating lifeless or unconvincing animation by building empathy with your 3D characters.

Master the acting skills needed to animate believable CG characters
In the workshop, Arduini reveals lessons that animators can learn from method actors to get into character.

Topics covered include how to extract information about a character’s personality from a script, and how to analyse the subtleties of live actors’ performances to inform your animation work.

Arduini then moves into Maya for a step-by-step demonstration of how to put the theory into practice, providing tips and tricks for creating better character animation in less time.

About the artist
Sarah Arduini is animation supervisor at Italy’s Rainbow CGI. She has worked at some of the world’s leading VFX companies, including Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, and MPC, where she was a senior animator.

Her movie credits include The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, on which she was one of the animators for Supreme Leader Snoke.

Pricing and availability
Acting for Animators: Become Your Character is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 detailed tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year.

Read more about Acting for Animators: Become Your Character on The Gnomon Workshop website

Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.