Animation Fundamentals: Production Complete and Pre-orders ending
by I am pleased to say we are on schedule with production and are just about ready to send files off for DVD-R production!
Digital Downloads are being prepared and should be uploading to the server in the next few days. This means that the series will be available for regular purchase starting January 21st, 2012. This also means that Pre-Order Discount offer will be ending on Friday, January 20th, 2012!
All Pre-orders should be receiving their download links 3-4 days before the full release of the series. If the internet tubes play nice with us. 
Total file size for this series has ended up to be around 1GB of a download.
Animation Fundamentals in Blender By Beorn Leonard
This new training series covers all the fundamentals of Character Animation in Blender. Some highlights include fundamental exercises, timing and spacing, working with overlapping motion, animating walk and run cycles for film or games, understanding IK and FK, using the Grease Pencil for animation sketches, and much, much more! You can view the complete chapter breakdown HERE
This series makes use of a pre-built character named Clive that many of you may already be familiar with! We asked for name suggestions on our Facebook page a while back, we liked Rhui Trickster’s suggestion and so named him Clive
Training Overview
Beorn gives you a complete look at what he covers throughout the series in the video below; warning, it’s full of awesome! You can find complete details on what is covered, and view some sample training and animations from the series by visiting the full training page HERE
Who is Beorn?
Beorn is a very proficient Blender user best known for his work on Sintel, on which he did a large amount of character and creature animation. He also just recently finished working as part of the animation team on Happy Feet 2
Pre-Orders closed
Thank you to all of the Pre-Orders and early support of this series! We are hoping one day we will be able to build a device to save Gutter-Chicken.. our company mascot. 
Just kidding, but it will be fueling more Blender!
Discussion
76 Responses to “Animation Fundamentals: Production Complete and Pre-orders ending”Leave a Comment
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First I want to thank you so much for this series. It is realy great.
But i have one Problem while following the “meet clive” video. When I linked Clive and the armature to a new file, I cannot find the “clive layers” and so on on my properties panel. Whats wrong?
Oops. Shoud have watched the video until the end
Hah! Yeah, it would be good if the proxy system was able to take in python scripts as well, but at the moment sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. However, directly linking the script does the trick.
I enjoy this series very much. Thank you.
Where can I find an in depth series on how to make that Clive rig?
There are many rigging tutorials out there (including right here on BlenderCookie), however, Clive was rigged using a slightly modified rigify rig. Rigify is an addon that comes standard with Blender. Do a search for “blender rigify” and you should come up with plenty of info.
I think the main difference between Clive and the standard rigify biped rig is that Clive only has 2 fingers.
It’s the “slightly modified” that is the basis of my request. I can rig and I can employ rigify, but there are things about the Clive rig I can’t tease out by simply examining that rig. Your animation series is wonderful (I’m loving it!!), but in the end, I will need to apply these lessons to my own rigs and they aren’t as smooth as the Clive rig.
Perhaps the approach to take is to focus on animation first and later on put some time into learning rigging. Both are big subjects in their own right and learning them together can be daunting.
All the best riggers I know are also animators.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the series so far. Good luck!
hi
i saw the basic rig can be downloaded from blend swap,will it become available the clive rig too or just the basic one ?
For the time being it is just the basic rigs but we may release Clive as well.
-Jonathan
that will be awsome and super helpfull it’s nice to have the possibility to follow along with the same tools
I love this tutorial ^_^ I think for the next event, Blender cookie should make a short animation competition like http://www.11secondclub.com/
I preordered it and watched more thanm 50% and I’m very satisfied, coming from traditional animation I used to key every frame and was terrified to use the graph editor, watching your techniques and workflow was so useful.
So thanks so much for your efforts and the pre order discount!
I have some question though, but I better post them in BA after I watch the whole series. One of that is the difference in the clive rig for quaternion and euler rotation.
Cheers!
oh, other question, will be a volume 2, more advanced, or that depends on how this series do?
Great to here that you’re liking the series so far. It’s especially good to hear that from a traditional animator.
I debated about whether to go into the whole quaternion vs euler topic. In the end I left it out. In general, quaternions are useful for ball joints, and eulers for hinge joints. In terms of how best to approach them in the animation workflow, I’m still thinking of the best way to describe it.
Regarding volume 2, there are plans afoot, but as you guessed it is partly based on how this one is received. So far it’s been quite positive, so without making promises just yet, it’s looking pretty good for a volume 2!
Whoops! excuse the spelling mistake..
“Great to hear that you’re liking the series so far.”
I researched a bit and found that quaternion rotation is more efficient in calculating the math behind, so it’s best for games/real time, also you don’t have gimbal lock (I think you didn’t mention that, didn’t occur often so far to me though). So far I feel only comfortable using euler, and try to avoid the W axis(vector?), but if you can find a practical example in the future that will be great. In the series so far I’ve seen you only touched the x,y,z in some of the bones that have quaternions, like the hips.
Oh, and thanks a lot for taking the time to answer every question we make, I think it’s very valuable and definately something that adds a lot of good reputation and customer satisfaction
cheers
Beorn, Thanks for all the work you did on Vol. 1. I’m finally feeling like I can animate. Bring on Vol. 2.
I just went to the shop to buy this; the current price listed is $48.00. I selected both the the download and DVD, and the total that appeared was $54.00. Fair enough, obviously there’s a shipping cost, so I went to the checkout. It indicated it was adding a $6.00 shipping fee to the current total of $54, and gave me a final total of $64.32.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE???
I cancelled my order. If it’s a $Aus conversion to $US issue, at the moment the Australian dollar is $1.05 US. There is obviously confusion here, but I would just like to know where the extra $10.32 is going.
Hi John,
The total of $48 is actually for the additional $6 USD for the DVD version. This helps to cover the printing and handling costs for us. The international shipping is actually $17 so I am guessing you hadn’t set your shipping address just yet.
I hope that clears it up for you
-Jonathan
hi there from switzerland !
thank you so much for this first volume on animation. it’s great.
so yes please, do release a volume 2 !
all the best !
Beorn, I like this training series very much. I hope that volume 2 is coming very soon. A huge thanks to Blender Cookie
I was excited to see a package from CG Cookie in the mail. The DVD case (cover) and even the “Eat Sheep” flyer inside look great! Another job well done gentlemen. Thank you.
Great to hear you got it!
Great job! I’ve watched lots of animation tutorials and this is definately one of the best.
I vote for volume 2!
Just finished the last exercise of the series,
I mean With clive’s rig you can do pretty much anything, but I can’t use Clive for all my animations 
It has been great fun and learned a awesome amount.
one question though, It’s clear that this series isn’t about rigging
and I know how to rig a basic character, but the Clive character has a
very advanced rig that works great but I’ll never be able to create a rig like that myself. will later Volumes include how to create a advanced rig with custom tools like the Clive Character? I hope so for it would make the “amature animation projects” of mine a lot easier
So will future volumes include how to rig a character like Clive?
Glad you liked it!
Regarding the rig, good news.. You can indeed make a rig like Clive’s!
To rig him I used the “rigify” add-on that comes with Blender, written by the legend himself Nathan Vegdahl. Clive’s rig is based on the standard biped rig that is generated by rigify. So if you want to use this sort of rig for your own characters, look in your user preferences under Addons>Rigging, enable rigify and check out the docs for how to use it.
That is great news indeed, many thanks!
for the tip and the training series itself off-course 
I know it’s beyond the scope of this series, but where can i go to learn to make an “anim tools” panel like the one seen on the Clive rig? It sounds like you can make a new panel and paste what you want into it somehow?
Really digging this course, btw =)
A few people have asked about this, so I wrote a little addon “Freen’s Animation Tools”, which gives you the animation panel minus the Clive specific group selector.
You can find it here:
http://www.pasteall.org/28987
Save the code as “animation_freens_tools.py”, and in user preferences/addons, click “install addon” and locate your saved file.
Glad you’re liking the course!
Thanks, Beorn!
Much appreciated =)
Hi Beorn I know you must e sick of the praise for your tut but I’d just like to add mine to the list.
Like many who pick up blender I’m a relative newbie in animation and modelling etc. I’ve managed with thanks to the excellent cgcookie crew pick up some reasonable blender modelling skills but have struggled to find an effective approach to animation. Sure I’ve read other tuts elsewhere but they never seemed to sit right….
…Till this one.
It covered all the principles in enough detail and you used time lapse where it made sense. It was clear and really well put together. Even early on there were little blender gems exposed but more importantly for me, it showed a completely sensible and practical workflow that made me wonder how I’d missed it till now.
Seriously, I may never be a world class animator but I now feel like I have the tools to put the things I have in my head into blender, with some practice.
so thanks.
Ok enough praise, get volume 2 made