How to Use our Animation Tutorials at Vimeo

Tutorials are hosted at Vimeo - just login!

Here at Bucks we believe in giving our students the best possible experience, and that means having plenty of video content to supplement the classroom sessions. Animation takes time to master, but by carefully going through our video tutorials, hosted at Vimeo, all our students can take the time they need to master this complex craft. Here's how it all works:

Animation Apprentice, online animation course

What are the videos?

The videos are animation tutorials licensed to Bucks from tutor Alex Williams' online school at www.animationapprentice.org. They are a complete course in learning animation - from the very basics of Maya to sophisticated character and creature animation. They are absolutely free for all students at Bucks.

Start at Blackboard

Where can I find the videos?

Start by logging in to your Blackboard account - all students and staff at Bucks have an account of their own. Find the Module you are working on, such as DA405 - Animation 1. Scroll down on the left hand side of the screen down to the Video Resources tab - and click on that link. You will now be taken to a series of weblinks to copy and paste in your browser window. Make sure you use Explorer - for some reason the videos don't play well in Firefox or Chrome.

The videos play best with Internet Explorer

Once you have pasted the links, you will be asked for a password. You can find the password at the announcements tab at Blackboard. Enter the password, and you should be able to access the videos.


In what order should I watch the videos?

Watch them in this order:

1. Theory Videos
2. Technical Videos
3. Tutorial Videos

It will take you around 2 hours to watch the videos for each exercise, and at least 4 hours to do the exercise, so make sure you budget plenty of time to do each one. The good news is, if you do the exercise carefully, you will be well on your way to mastering the important principles of animation.

Two screens. Video tutorial on the left, Maya on the right

The ideal way to learn is to use two screens at once, and do the exercise as you go along. On the left hand screen you watch the videos, on the right hand screen - you do the exercises. Follow the videos carefully step by step, click by click - and you won't go wrong. One of our students watches the tutorial videos on his iPad, then does the work at his desktop computer.

One of the reasons why we give our students free laptops when they start at Bucks is so that each student has the flexibility to watch tutorial videos on one screen, and do the exercise on another.

iPad below, desktop display above

Once you're done, drop your Maya file onto a USB stick, or you can even email it to yourself and pick it up when you next log in back at Bucks. Make a Quick Time of your animation, upload it to your YouTube account, and then embed it at the Facebook page, for in-class review.

Welcome to the future of education!

---Alex

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.