Computer Animation Capstone Pre-courses

These three animation courses gave me practical experience with something I’d always been curious about but never had the skills to tackle on my own. Over ten weeks, I learned industry tools to design, model, and animate characters using a step-by-step approach that made the process manageable. I picked up scriptwriting basics, learned how story structure works, and got comfortable with Maya’s animation techniques like timing and spacing.

The facial animation class with Gary Faigin was particularly interesting—he showed us the science behind how faces express emotions and how to translate that into character rigs. It was cool to see how much psychology, physiological, and technical knowledge goes into making believable animations.

These courses introduced me to the role of technical artist, which combines art and science to build tools for other artists. It seemed like a natural fit for how I think about problems, but when I didn’t make it into the animation capstone (which was the whole goal of taking those classes), it was honestly disappointing and made me rethink my direction. Instead of continuing down the animation path, I ended up going deeper into computer graphics research. Looking back, that shift actually worked out better for my long-term goals, even though it wasn’t what I originally planned.

Here was the final project my group made in the animation course.