CG Essentials 2022: Term Three | One-Shot

This term, we'll push our character skills to create an epic one-shot

Overview

This course covers Term Three for CG Essentials 2022. For our final term, we’ll be looking to push our character creation skills and integrate the character into an epic action shot. We’ll start by breaking down the creature design, concept sculpting, topology, rigging and surfacing. Following on from this, we’ll look at creating a believable performance and photorealistic render for final presentation.

Throughout the term, you will learn:

Concept creature sculpting
Creating suitable topology for deformation
Creature surfacing
Pitchvis, Previs and Techvis
Creature rigging
Creature FX
Motion Capture and animation

To strengthen the technical skills, we will underpin the teaching by exploring fundamental topics such as:

Breaking down a script for VFX
Anatomy and kinesiology
Muscle, skin and hair
The principles of animation
Newton’s Law of Motion
Mindset and Acting for Animators
Pushing the narrative

Term Details

Type: Online
Level: Intermediate
Duration: 12 weeks
Format: Online live lessons
Assignments: Weekly and 1 final
Tools: Maya, Arnold, Nuke, Resolve, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Houdini, PTGui, Unreal
Course Access Time: Lifetime

Industry partners

Lessons in this course

Week 01. Character Design | Concept Blocking

This term, we’ll kick things off by analysing the concept design, discussing appeal before jumping into ZBrush to start blocking out our primary forms. We’ll be working with scan data this term, so we’ll look at how best to start the character creation process.
Week 02. Artistic Anatomy 1001 | Concept Sculpting

In order to create a believable character, let’s first study human anatomy. Following on from this, we’ll continue to develop our concept sculpt using ZBrush and look at finalising the design of the costume.
Week 03. Artistic Anatomy 1002 | Topology for Deformation

We’ll continue our study of anatomy this week along with developing the topology for our character. We’ll look at existing base meshes to understand what works and what does not, before designing our own topology from scratch.
Week 04. Skin, Hair and Fabrics | Character Surfacing

This week, we’ll study the physics behind skin, hair and also fabrics. We’ll then look at techniques to create photorealistic textures and materials for a CG character.
Week 05. Kinesiology | Character Rigging 1001

With our character now modelled and surfaced, we’ll now begin to create our animation rig. This week, the focus will be on creating the rig for the upper half. This includes the torso, neck, head, arms and hands.
Week 06. Animation Friendly Rigs | Character Rigging 1002

This week, we’ll continue to build our character rig with a focus on the lower half, covering the pelvis, legs and feet.
Week 07. Muscle Analysis | Character Rigging 1003

With our animation rig ready to go, we’ll now look at painting the skin weights, allowing us to deform the character mesh.
Week 08. Mindset and Breath | Layout and Blocking

Here we will look at how developing the mindset and breath for our character can inform its movement. Once we’ve figured out the “why” behind the movement for our character, we’ll then look at character animation tools and techniques.
Week 09. Becoming the Creature | Character Animation 1001

This week, we’ll dig deeper into the psychology of our creature to bring it to life and add emotion to the performance. We’ll also look to finalise the performance and look at caching out the animation.
Week 10. Pushing the Performance | Character Animation 1002 and Shotsculpt

With our animation ready to go, we’ll look at how to go about pushing the performance, adding subtle nuances and also ‘plussing’ the deformation.
Week 11. Refining your Eye | Lighting, Compositing and Grading

This week, we’ll focus our attention on lighting and compositing our shot and creating the final grade. Throughout the process, we’ll look at what makes an image cinematic and how we can use this information to push our work.
Week 12. Contracts and VFX Business | Final Dailies

For our final week of the term, the focus will be solely on completing the VFX shot to a high-end industry standard. We'll also look at breaking down contracts, freelancing and starting your own the business.

Tutor: Jahirul Amin

VFX Trainer

Jahirul Amin is a Computer Animation and Visual Effects Trainer and Consultant. He specialises in designing and delivering courses to create solid and diverse production ready skills in all 3D related departments and across a number of facilities worldwide. His background in academia feeds into his ongoing connections with Universities and Colleges which provide Computer Animation and Visual Effects courses. He is also involved in course and examination design as well as lecturing, running workshops and mentoring.

This course is part of the CG Essentials 2022 Programme

Click on the link below to find out more about the programme and to apply.

APPLY FOR THE CG ESSENTIALS 2022 PROGRAMME

CG Essentials 2022: Term Three | One-Shot

For our final term, we'll be working on creating a full CG character from scan data. This will allow us to explore areas such as Concept Sculpting, Rigging and Animation.

This term, we'll push our character skills to create an epic one-shot