CREATIVE THINKING & ANIMATION ONLINE COURSE

Remember we don't teach you how to use After Effects, we teach you animation skills using After Effects. If you just want to learn how to use After Effects, this course is not for you. This course is designed with 3 goals: Boosting your creative juice, Draftsmanship, Animation Principles and After Effects techniques.

COURSE INTRODUCTION

Animation is a great world to explore and also a place where you can unleash your tremendous creativity potentials. The only limit of Animation is your imagination. However, when stepping inside the animation world, apart from creative thinking, you need to possess basic knowledge of Animation with a view to creating fluid, appealing and smooth movements. Creative Thinking and Online Animation course of Red Cat Academy is specially designed for the following goals:

Develop creative thinking.
Build up strong Animation foundation.
Be able to independently carry out an Animation project from coming up with ideas and scripts to producing the final product.
Orientate you towards self-development and career.

Anyone who is passionately in pursuit of Animation/Motion Graphics and wants to work in this field is warmly welcomed to the course. If you only want to learn After Effects, then this course is not for you. The course particularly focuses on Animation principles and creative skills.

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?

With more than 50 lessons throughout over 28 hours of learning, you will acquire different areas of knowledge. The course will last in 10 weeks with 7 weeks learning and 3 weeks to do your graduation project. Check out the video below to see our past student works.

Class Structure

Every Monday morning we will upload the week’s lesson and assignment. They will be in written and video formats. Student’s will be able to log in and access these assignments.

Throughout the week, students can send in questions for help in the week’s assignment. Leo will answer them.

Each assignment is due on Sunday night. Leo will go over each student’s assignment and grade it privately.

2018 Animation Curriculum

WEEK 1: Learn how to draw

In the first week you will learn how to use Illustrator to draw a city landscape. Knowing how to draw and using Illustrator will give you a lot of advantages when it comes to Motion Graphics and Animation.

You will learn:

To explore Animation and Motion Graphics and find your own (way) to this amazing world of imagination.
To draw a street scene based on a ready sketch in Illustrator.
Basics of Illustrator.
Tips on how to create your own color palette.
Tips on improving workflow and illustrating techniques.

WEEK 2: Basics of animation

In the second week, you will learn how to animate your own street scene which you have drawn in the first week.

You will learn:

Basics of After Effects.
Understand frame rate.
Timing and spacing in animation.
Use Graph Editor to control your animation spacing
Principles of animation: Squash and Stretch.
Use shape layers for more controls when you animate.
Mask and Matte, what are they?
Use scripts to save time and create stunning animation.

WEEK 3: Character Design and Art direction

In the third week, you will continue to learn the working process of animation. The third week is heavy because you will start designing your characters from paper to digital. This is not a character design course but knowing the basics will give you more advantages in your career path.

You will learn:

Build your creative brief.
How to research on your own. Study each project before execution to guarantee you will win your clients.
Build moodboards
Design your characters on paper and bring them into Illustrator.

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WEEK 4: character animation

In this week you will learn how traditional animators bring their characters to lives and use the same method to animate your characters. After learning the traditional method, you will learn how to use DUIK and Rubber Hose to rig your character.

You will learn:

Timing for a walk and run.
How to use metronome to time your action.
Understand the traditional method.
Animate using pose to pose method.
How to inbetween.
Rig your character using DUIK and Rubberhose.
Advanced shape layer techniques.

WEEK 5-6: Kinetic Typography animation

You will spend these 2 weeks on Kinetic Typography. In these 2 weeks, you will learn all extreme techniques from handling camera to 3D effects and motion techniques to animate your animation lyrics. After learning you will be able to create a video like this.

WEEK 8-9-10: Final project

You will do your final assignment in these 3 weeks. A final list of lessons will be uploaded so that you can grab all important skills before doing your own animation works. Skills include:

Using Camera to tell your story.
Storyboard fundamentals.
Brainstorming techniques.
Preparing a proposal.
Animating a rube goldberg system.

Course Platform

All of the lessons will be hosted on Eliademy, so you can enjoy anytime and anywhere. Watch a lesson sample from our class.

WHO is your tutor?

MR. LEO DINH - CEO of Red Cat Motion and Founder of Red Cat Academy

Leo is the founder of Red Cat Motion, a group of talents working together to deliver memorable visual experiences in form of animation, live action, illustration, design and visual effects.

Since 2014 Leo has shared his animation knowledge to everyone anyone who wants to learn animation properly on his youtube channel at youtube.com/leodinhdesign

As the main tutor of the course, not only does Mr. Leo share his knowledge and experience but he is also an inspirational and passionate person for young people who want to pursue this creative field.

Check out his portfolio at:

Behance.net/leodinh

Vimeo.com/leodinh

PROJECTS CARRIED OUT BY our students

Take a look at the amazing achievements by our students throughout their learning process at Red Cat Academy. No matter how difficult the learning process was, we couldn’t have been prouder!