For 2012 we are improving a few things and have some exciting changes! First be aware we are limiting the enrollment and session number this year for our full mentored courses.

Mentored Session Dates:

 Session 1:  March 5th through April 16th  – Full, Welcome back returning students, we are happy to have so many of you back for more training in 2012!

Session 2:  May 28th to July 6th - Open to qualifying applicants that have preregistered. Space is still limited since Alumni and existing preregistered applicants get first choice but we currently have spots available.

Session 3:  August 6th to September 14th – Open to qualifying applicants that have preregistered. Space is still limited since Alumni and existing preregistered applicants get first choice but we still have space.

New!

New for this year is an expansion of our training options to include a series of guest workshops and seminars on a variety of subjects. They will cover VFX, Specialty Rigging topics like props and monsters and a Tech Art Core series for students that are not yet ready for Mentored sessions. We will have more details on new instructors, specific classes, pricing and availability once we have them finalized.

We continuity work to improve our process for training and are working hard to cultivate a learning network that supports our students and Alumni. To foster this growth we will be for the first time ever allow in qualified applicants in to the education site regardless of session start date so they can get more from their time training with us and be part of the community early on.

Expanded:

We have had very successful pilot programs like Train the Trainers. Train the Trainers allows us to work with traditional colleges and universities to improve their animation, game design and media programs while we train and support their educators, instructors and curriculum developers .  We are continuing to open this up to more schools and offer graduate portfolio reviews and job preparation for students of those schools for much lower cost than our professional 6 week mentored sessions.  Students and faculty get in touch with us to improve your education experience today.

Josh, Brad and Chad

Either way, take a second and comment on this post.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!

Josh, Brad and Chad

*not responsible for lost socks

First up, we know that many of you want to see the video from our Live event with Jason Parks covering all the Python and Pymel goodies. Expect it to be released over the coming weekend. May sweeps coming to a close and this will give you something to watch until your favorite show comes back on.

Also for many of you, school is coming to an end as summer break  approaches.  Rigging Dojo can help your school refresh its curriculum, evaluate and train up teachers and staff and/or plan a workshop for your campus.  Check out our Co-Founder Chad for an example with is recent Lecture at Columbia College and Ohio State University and you can read what others had to say.

Josh and Brad are both also available for on site or virtual workshops and lectures as part of the Rigging Dojo Education Support Service.  Contact us for more information on what we can do for your school.

Speaking of speaking, Twitter has become a great place for industry conversations, job leads and even mini twitorials on cool animaiton and rigging techniques. If you don’t have a twitter account and want to still benifit you can search for #rigtip or #animtip and find a wealth of interesting links or you can check out or just check in on our page for weekly updates.

Some of our video #rigtips can be found on our YouTube channel or you can check them out here.

Keep watching for the video release of our Python talk.

Thanks!

QUESTION:  “I am continuing in learning Rigging by myself. Now I’m really struggling with one question, what to learn first, second and so on…. I’m going back and forth at the moment I really would like to have a bit of a clue which learning path to follow“

ANSWER:

Start with what excites you most. If you are learning something on your own the best way to learn it is to have a clear goal and work on something that is exciting or interesting to you.

Most of you have done or own many of the existing rigging books and DVDs that are out there and are great reference to have.

Any of these resources will work to learn from if you use them correctly. How do you do that you say? Well first before you spend time blindly charging step-by-step through a tutorial learn the tools that the tutorial  covers by reading the manual! Max and Maya have detailed documents describing the tool and how it works. If you don’t know what the tool is and what the options are for it, then you won’t have an understanding of why it is being used by the tutorial author.

So the start to any learning path should be the software docs, RTFM, they work hard to write them, if your learning something new you should read them. Learning to search and find answers is going to be your best skill during production.

Start with Scripting or Rigging? If you do not know how to rig, you will not know how to script a rig. Learning to script and program is important and if your very excited to code then learn how to program.  Learn python and proper programing skills before trying to hack away at a MEL/PYTHON/MAXSRIPT code in the application.   This will loop back to reading the manual because in order to script and program tools, it helps to know what is in the software, know your tools, speak the language and then you can extend and code for it.  Listen to ROB make the case better than anyone (He and I argue the details of his point but he is mostly right:) but don’t tell him I told you that.

Now that you have read the manual and are ready to go through your chosen resource (DVD, book, web tutorial ) just do it! If you want to make rigs, do the rigging section or if you want to learn deformations and skinning first, learn to make a skeleton and then work on weight paints and test joint positions.   Rigging and Skinning and Scripting can all be learned non-linearly but work on one at a time to start.

None of this is fast, it takes practice and research and more practice.  Once you get through and are comfortable with the tutorial then check out the same information in a few other places. Compare them and try adjusting or working on editing your first rig to try out any new techniques in the new tutorial.  Examples might be changing your ik stretch from scale to translate on the joints or change a reverse foot from skeleton joints to group nodes or replace expressions with math nodes.

Editing your first rig will help you learn very quickly because you all ready know it and tearing out bits and putting in new bits will give you great production troubleshooting practice.

Hope this helps some of you out.
Brad

We have gotten a great list of prizes to give away this year including Eat3d training DVDs for Max and Maya and a tablet from Wacom.
Rigging Dojo will also be donating a prize or to and we have lots more fun surprises lined up for the event.

We also have updated the details for the Saturday workshops, space is still available for this unique learning experience being offered in Austin for the first time this year!

…..

It is that time of year again, time for 3December!

The Austin event once again is being put together by our own Brad Clark.
This marks the 7th year that Austin has celebrated 3December with Autodesk, starting with Keith Langos animation lecture back in 2004.
This year we have a wide range of speakers and using a mix of software from Autodesk and crossing games, film and short form animation.

This year for the first time, there are three master workshops being held the next day, Saturday  December 4th.

Morning Workshop

9:00 to 11:00 am Rigging Dojo: Rigging Basics Boot Camp  (all skill ranges).

Brad and Josh from Rigging Dojo will will cover the big beginning rigging mistakes and how to avoid them. This workshop will help anyone that has to work with a character TD or is wanting to be a character TD. For Modelers that want to understand how to build rig ready meshes to Animators that feel like the rig controls them, we are here to help.

Get Tickets for Rigging Basics Boot Camp workshop tickets

Luncheon Workshop

11:30 to 1:30 Radioactive Labs: Demo reel secrets standing out and landing a job.

The folks at Radioactive Labs will help people rework their demo reels, portfolios, and resumes. Our friends in the industry see a lot of people we know are good but their demo reels don’t seem to show it. Let’s make sure that your work really represents the skills we know you possess! Let’s also work on our networking, job searching, and resume/written materials. Since you also need to be able to speak to potential employers, let’s make sure you have good interviewing skills as well.

Get Tickets for DemoReel (getting a job) secrets tickets!

Afternoon Workshop

2:00 to 4:00 pm The Dynamic Animator: Essential techniques for Animation Acting and animation critiques

Get Tickets for Animation Acting and animation critiques

For complete details on Austin Autodesk 3December 2011 and to Register click here ->Austin 3December

See you there!

Join us Wednesday November 17th, 2010 @ 8:00 CST
as Rigging Dojo presents: Modular Character System (MCS) under the hood
Come get a peek under the hood of this much anticipated rigging system for Autodesk Maya and learn what makes it such a super cool rigging solution.

Watch it live on our Rigging Dojo Live page or RSVP on VOKLE.

The Modular Character System is an advanced animation and rigging solution for Autodesk Maya.
In this live event, Jan from Suntoucher labs will give us a look under the hood at the techniques that were used in making the MCS.

We will find out how it differs from other rigging solutions, how to rig and animate using the Modular Character System
and some non-conventional uses for it.

See you there!
Josh, Brad, Chad

About Jan Berger:

Jan Berger studied Graphic Design in Berlin and then moved on to study animation at the Academy for Film and Television “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam Germany, where he would become a teacher later. Ever since he has dealt with creating digital characters and content for various computer games, film and television companies. Last year he has joined the Disney Animation Studios to work as Character Technical Director and Technical Animator on Tangled and other projects.

Being interested in searching for more flexible rigging and animation solutions, Jan spent a couple of years on and off designing and developing a unique system to describe kinematic hierarchies which allows to build more flexible and easy to use digital characters. This is intended to be the foundation for further research and development to advance the art and science of character rigging for animation.

Jan just recently returned to Berlin and will continue to work as an academic assistant at the Academy for Film and Television teaching rigging and modeling and doing artistic research with motion capture.

I have talked about it a bit before but I wanted to give you a few tips to get the most out of your time here.

1. Ask Questions! related to your learning topics-there is no training with out this.
   
2. This is not “the other guys” training- so your course builds slowly and speeds up as we go. Trust your mentor to guide you and we trust that you will work hard with us.
3. If you feel your work is [to easy,to hard,you need more time, you hate the word "moose" etc.] Talk with your mentor about it and offer an idea, we are flexible with in reason.
4. SAMPLES-SAMPLES-SAMPLES- While you wait for your course to start prepare an example of work for us to critique or help you with.  These are private courses so you can upload files for us that will remain private (as long as you set access levels correctly) between you and your mentor.
   

Simple really, work with us like you would a co-worker or lead artist and we will, based on your learning requests, work with you to achieve those goals.

Many, if not all of the students here have done all the other types of training (books, dvd,workshops) and came here because all those methods lack interaction with a live working TD.

Everyone, students and mentors, have diffrent work experience and backgrounds and we are all here to make each other better.

Brad

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/

Update: The recording of this live lecture is now available on our Archive page.

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

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.