Creature Animation:
Fight or Flight
Pro Animators Mentor You to Be Successful
Your mentor is a veteran studio animator who works with you 1:1 every week, sharing feedback and reviews directly so you can improve your craft and animate reel-ready creature work.
Why Take Creature Animation: Fight or Flight at Animation Mentor
1-on-1 Feedback From a Studio Pro
During this 6-week workshop you'll have live Q&As with your mentor each week in addition to receiving a recorded training video from a working animator and an assignment designed to build your skills. Plus, your mentor will review and critique each of your assignments and provide you with a weekly video of their feedback so you can improve your work.
Gain Access to Pro Animal and Creature Rigs
You'll gain access to professionally designed rigs like dragons, dinosaurs, ogres, and other quadruped animals. After you finish learning you can keep them for future projects.
Live Weekly Q&As
Join weekly 1-hour live Q&A sessions with your mentor, on top of recorded lectures and animation assignments that build toward your creature sequence.
Ongoing Rig Access
Keep access to the creature and animal rigs you train with so you can keep building creature combat and flight shots for your reel.
What You'll Be Able to Do
- Animate a believable creature fight sequence with weight, force, and impact
- Take a flying creature into the air and animate convincing flight
- Use the fundamentals of flying-creature locomotion to drive the wing and body mechanics of your shots
- Stage and animate predator-and-prey dynamics between two creatures
- Apply basic cinematography to frame and present a creature action shot
- Refine and polish a fast-action creature shot into a finished, reel-ready piece
- Work the way a studio creature animator works in Autodesk Maya
Skills You'll Gain
Reel Pieces You'll Walk Away With
Creature Animation: Fight or Flight is built around hands-on creature exercises: fast-action combat and flight shots that become polished, reel-ready pieces for your demo reel.
Flying Creature Sequence
A believable airborne shot built on the fundamentals of flight and flying-creature locomotion.
Creature Fight Sequence
A creature combat sequence with predator-and-prey dynamics, staged, blocked, and polished into a finished fight shot.
Final Cinematic Shot
Your fast-action creature shot framed with basic cinematography and refined to a polished, reel-ready final.
The Creature Animation: Fight or Flight Curriculum
Flying Creature Essentials & Fight Set-Up
Cover the theory and walk-through of flying-creature animation and set up the world of your sequence.
Get the foundations of flying creatures, then start exploring and setting up your fight world.
- Flying Creature Essentials: Theory and Walk-Through, demonstrated by a working creature animator
- Exploring the World of Flying Creatures: fundamental flying-creature locomotion and the unique anatomy of flying creatures
- A breakdown of a dragon rig over the Golden Gate Bridge
Integrating Your Creature & Fight Dynamics Part 1
Bring your creature into the real world and begin animating the core fight interaction.
Place your creature in a live-action plate, then start the combat.
- Integrating Your Creature Into the Real World: demonstrating how to animate your creature into a live-action background
- The Fight Dynamic Interaction Part 1: animating a creature fight sequence from conception to completion with your mentor
Fight Dynamics Part 2 & Cinematography
Build out the fight sequence and learn to frame it with basic cinematography.
Develop the combat and learn to present it like a shot.
- The Fight Dynamic Interaction Part 2: continuing the fight sequence while maintaining the essential power of the fight
- Basic Cinematography: a comprehensive introduction to cinematography, basic composition, camera moves and much more
That's a Final! & A Day in the Life
Refine and polish your sequence to a final, then hear from a working studio animator.
Take your creature shot across the finish line.
- That's a Final!: refining the smaller animation polish that ties the entire sequence together to a finished shot
- A Day in the Life of an Industrial Light & Magic Animator: a peek into the studio of a working animator
Ready to Start Animating?
Creature Animation: Fight or Flight is a 6-week, mentor-led course. Apply at Animation Mentor, choose your mentor, and register for class.
- 6-week mentor-led workshop
- Weekly live Q&As + 1:1 feedback
- Taught in Autodesk Maya
- $3,499 USD
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Creature Animation: Fight or Flight focuses on animating creature combat and flying-creature sequences (predator-and-prey fight dynamics and convincing flight), not stick-fight animation.
Selling the weight, force, and impact of the creatures so the fight reads as believable. Across the workshop you'll block, refine, and polish your fight sequence while maintaining the essential power of the fight.
No. Alongside the creature fight sequence, you'll learn to animate flying creatures, taking a flying creature into the air using the fundamentals of flying-creature locomotion.
This workshop is built around creature and animal rigs: dragons, dinosaurs, ogres, and other quadrupeds. It teaches you fight dynamics, body mechanics, and impact through creature combat rather than human-on-human fights.
Creature Animation: Fight or Flight requires you to have a working knowledge of, and experience with, Autodesk Maya. If you're unfamiliar with Maya, you can take our Maya Workshop first.
Creature Animation: Fight or Flight is application-based. Apply at Animation Mentor, choose your mentor, and register for class.
