2D Animation Program

Starting with the 12 Principles of Animation, you'll learn 2D animation fundamentals and begin putting them into practice with your first 2D pieces: the bouncing ball, flour sack jump, and a walk cycle. 

You'll discover how to add personality and emotion to your work while creating the illusion of three-dimensional space; learn key features of Toon Boom; and get familiar with drawing tools, posing, timing, spacing, the timeline, and X-sheet. 

This course focuses on drawing skills, advanced physical human and quadruped animation, and animating pantomime and simple dialogue scenes. You'll study the greats and discover what makes their work so captivating, learn the importance of silhouettes, how to use a variety of timing in your story, and gain speed creating thumbnails and key poses. 

By this stage, you’re ready for more advanced aspects of 2D: creating appealing characters, solid drawings, expressive acting, and FX animation. Increase your technical skills while working towards creating a polished dialogue scene. Finish the course by polishing your portfolio and exploring next steps with your mentor. 

Building on principles gained in prior courses, you'll add cutout animation to your skillset, learning techniques using Toon Boom Harmony’s peg and node animation system, then moving onto complex physical animations and rigging and animating bipeds and quadrupeds. With your instructor's guidance, you'll analyze strong cutout scenes and apply lessons to your own work. 

Push your skills further than you thought possible in this course. You'll jump into a variety of projects, including single and two-character dialogue acting scenes, using the cutout animation technique. You'll be introduced to Harmony’s FX and compositing tools and use them to add these elements to your dialogue scenes. 

In this semester, you'll discover how to polish and present your portfolio to impress employers, learn how to network and market yourself effectively, and understand how to tap into the hidden job market.

Learn all you need to know to take your visual work and package it up for post-study employment. You'll explore avenues to host your work on industry websites to gain visibility, as well as ways to host work on your own site in a professional manner. 

As a student you also get access to career services to get clear on your career goals, polish your CV/resume and portfolio, write appealing application letters. You'll also get an insight into freelancing: finding work, discussing finances, and applying standards for private client-based work. 

Graduate feeling ready and confident to kick-start your career in this exciting industry!