Rigging Dojo

We are back for another live web event,
Join us Wednesday September 8th, 2010 @ 8:30 CST
as Rigging Dojo presents: Anatomy for rigging and modeling with Jeff Hesser
Improve your work and understanding of joint movement in the Human Body. A must see if you’re a TD, Animator or Modeler.

Find the broadcast at Rigging Dojo Live or RSVP on VOKLE

Anatomy is the foundation of art and animation. To improve our understanding of anatomy in motion,
Jeff will go beyond the books and showcase the articulation of the human skeleton as a 3d form.

To quote the great Chuck Jones,  “Show me the skeleton of an animal, and I will tell you how it must move.”

See you there!
Josh, Brad, Chad

About Jeff Hesser:

Jeff Hesser is a digital artist and an expert in anatomy, traditional sculpture and drawing. His experience with game art includes working on the character modeling team at Harmonix and as an anatomy consultant at Turbine.
Jeff is an award winning faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design. He also taught graduate students of figurative art at the New York Academy of Art for years. He has taught well-received workshops in sculpture, anatomy and drawing at Turbine and Fisher-Price.
In 2006, he was honored with RISD’s award for excellence in teaching.

http://www.jeffhesser.com/

This week only- LIVE , it won’t be recorded.

I am doing a late lunch Q and A on Maya rigging or MotionBuilder every day this week.

It is about an hour of me taking questions and going over tips and tricks.

http://www.riggingdojo.com/live/

You can log in with twitter, chat and ask text or video questions.

It is driven by those asking questions, so come over.

You can also find the link at http://www.vokle.com/lineups/5718-rigging-qa

see you there.
Brad

We have lots of news to cover for July. We hope everyone had a good and safe 4th of July.

Software:

First off if you have not seen the posts on Facebook we have obtained some great deals on software and training materials for our students and alumni.

• We offer 13 month licenses of Autodesk software like Maya, Mudbox and MotionBuilder thanks to the Autodesk Education Community.
• Thanks to Keith Lango,  you get 25% off the price of the VTS videos. The Video Tutorial Service is an excellent resource for any one wanting to improve their animation skills. VTS Back Issue videos- Keith Lango’s Animation Clinic, First Aid for your F-Curves!
• ROB O’NEILL and Kickstand are extending student discounts to our Rigging Dojo students, for their excellent Stretchmesh plugin for making advanced deformations a snap.
• Our first Live presenter, Raf Anzovin and Anzovin Studios, is offering discounts on the Setup Machine and Face Machine plugins.
• The always amazing Jason Schleifer is giving us a sweet discount on his rigging opus, the Animation Friendly Rigging Masterclass set

We thank them all for their continued support of Rigging Dojo and our students.

Speaking of software , AWN has posted the latest review, Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2011 Review: Killer Productivity by our Co-founder and Mentor Brad Clark.

September session:

This is will be our last session for the year and it is filling up fast so don’t delay if you want to get in some training,  Contact us now.

Free learning resources:

We often link to interesting and excellent tutorials for artists wanting to learn more about character setup and rigging on our Rigging Dojo Facebook Link Page, our Twitter feed and YouTube channel so take a look over what we are sharing and follow along with us.

As we are about to celebrate the 4th of July and kick off our next 6 week session, we wanted to share a great comment from one of our students.

“Even though I’m a broke college student, it was definitely worth the money -especially when I think of the cost vs. amount learned and time saved. Thanks a bunch!!!”

Our students have all done great work and we are honored  many of them have continued training with us, coming back for two or more sessions in a row.

If your a broke college student or *working professional, make the animators in your life happy and improve your skills, sign up now.

* We provide certificates of completion at the end of each session, allowing
working artists to be reimbursed from their employer for continuing education.
Check with your HR department and ask if they offer tuition-reimbursement programs.

Austin, TX – May 3rd, 2010

RiggingMentor.com is pleased to announce a site name change to RiggingDojo.com!

We are still the same group of guys that are solely focused on training and educating students, professionals, and companies, in the art and science of character rigging and setup.  We feel that to help set us apart from the rest of the CG training and mentoring sites that you can find out there, we needed a name that is unique to the field, as well as a name that describes the type of education that you can receive from us.  We are a mentor-based education online school, which means you will always get a professional that is working in the field to train you in the technical arts.  Our training adjusts to your skill level to give you the best possible education you can get, whether that means you’re trying to get your first job, or you’re simply wanting to update your current skills.

Our current and past students have been a mix of professionals in the industry as well as beginners that simply want to break into the field.  The range of topics that we cover is anything from basic rigging, to advanced python, facial rigging, and even tool and pipeline development.  We cover both Autodesk MotionBuilder and Maya training, and have mentors that are experienced with 3dsmax if you’re trying to convert between packages.  Rigging concepts can certainly be software-agnostic, so even if you use other packages, we can still offer advice and mentoring for not only the correct way to rig, but effective, industry and production-proven methods for rigging.

For all the latest news and information subscribe to our RSS feed, our facebook page, or follow our tweets on twitter.  If you have any questions that you cannot find answers to in the FAQ, please feel free to contact us from the contact page.

We are back on for our live web event, we can take live video and web questions with the really cool Vokle site, so come prepared.

Join us March 31st , 2010 -Wednesday

as Rigging Dojo presents: Inside The Setup Machine 2 with Raf Anzovin.

Raf Anzovin, creator of The Setup Machine 2 for Maya, shares some of the
design philosophy and rigging tricks that went into the popular auto-rigging
package and some useful ways to modify it-in a live webcast.

About Anzovin Studio and The Setup Machine 2 plugin:

Company president Raf Anzovin started drawing when he was 3 and animating when he was 8 and has never looked back. You’ll find him on the animation credits of Blue Sky’s Robots. He was also supervising animator for Hasbro’s G.I.Joe Valor vs. Venom and Action Man: X Missions.The Setup Machine 2 enables Maya users to easily and quickly rig a wide variety of CG characters. With just a few clicks, TSM2 installs a high-quality skeleton and proxy, adds a control rig, and applies basic but accurate skin weighting to human, animal, and creature models, a task that normally takes days.

To find out more about the rig and Anzovin Studios, check out http://www.Anzovin.com

Today Registration emails went out to the very large list of preregistered students.
Josh, Chad and I are very excited at the great response that Rigging Dojois getting.
We are working on other exciting things for both students and the public that I hope I can announce once all the details are worked out.

To top it off we just hit 200 fans on our Facebook fan page! Thank you everyone we really appreciate it.

And as promised Here are the Rigging Dojo 2010 start dates:

Session 1- February 1st-Full
Session 2- April 19th-Full
Session 3 – July 5th-Full
Session 4- September 13th

Each session is 6 weeks long.

Brad created an exclusive video just for Steven Roselles blog post over at Autodesk “The Area”.
Brad talks details about the school, the training and there is a sneak peak into the social learning network that students will use!

Click the link and check out the video, available only on the My Oh Maya! blog.

-> http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/to_rig_or_not_to_rig <-

And just a quick mention about the types of training you can receive from us.

• Custom classes for character rigging and setup (for example skeletons, deformations, face rigging ).
• MotionBuilder training both beginner and advanced.
• Max and Maya transition cross training for artists that switch jobs or have to use both in production.

Thanks for watching and reading.

UPDATE: A big thank you to all who participated , two winners were chosen, a grand prize winner and a runner up (details on Facebook and Twitter).
We also released a short video tech demo of our Rigging Review Tool for Maya.

Today on Twitter and Facebook we are doing a giveaway in celebration of 3December with Autodesk. We will we be posting prize details later today and also keep an eye out for a sneak peak at our Rigging Review Tool for Maya.

If  your in Austin and can get out to the local 3December meeting (register now), Brad and Josh will both be there and you will have one more chance at winning a prize from Rigging Dojo.

Rigging Dojo.com is LIVE!

Rigging Dojo is currently conducting private invitation-only training.
Contact us if you would like to be added to the waiting list for the upcoming classes.
If you would like to know more you can subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or become a fan of us on Facebook for the latest news and updates leading up to the official launch.

Thank you,
The Rigging Dojo Team