AFTRS Sydney Launches New Digital Arts Short Courses

Published on Wednesday, 18 July 2012

AFTRS Open is now running a long list of short courses for digital artists at their Sydney Aftrs-mari-intro
facilities, including workshops, intensives and masterclasses, from compositing skills to
TVC directing

 

Introduction to After Effects for Broadcast Graphics shows Photoshoop and After Effects users how to use the application’s animation and compositing environment for broadcast design and graphics for television. The skills gained over the two-day course will be useful to designers, animators, art directors and to editors who use Avid or Final Cut Pro for titling. Interactive media producers and graphic designers can also learn to control broadcast graphics.

The tutors of all courses are working professionals with experience working in fields related to the subjects they are teaching. Instructor Anna Tow has worked as a broadcast graphics artist for ten years and will familiarise students in a lab environment with using AE in a TV graphics pipeline, and show how to create a project and import digital video, Photoshop and Illustrator files. She teaches how to create and use text and other animated elements within layered composites. Dates are 18 - 19 August.
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Colour Grading with DaVinci Resolve is another two-day lab-based workshop course, useful to editors and DPs. It covers not only the use of DaVinci Resolve software, but also the basics of colour correcting and grading. The tutor Warren Eagles, with 25 years of colour correcting experience, gives demonstrations and practical exercises starting with colour theory, basic grading, grading with colour wheels, graded clips and sequence management, conforming and raw workflows for various cameras. He also introduces colour FX tools, trackers for secondary correction and workflows for conforming from Avid and FCP into Resolve via EDL, XML and AAF, and back again for finishing. Dates are 1 - 2 September.
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Nuke Foundation introduces compositing with the software now in the pipeline for major film productions including ‘The Hobbit’, ‘Iron Man’ films, ‘Transformers’ series, ‘Tron: Legacy’ and ‘The Avengers’. The course is suitable both for artists who are new to compositing, and for those who want to migrate from other applications such as Shake, Combustion or After Effects.

VFX artist Dave King will teach core compositing skills while explaining how Nuke works and its underlying theory, design and techniques to help students learn the more complex functions on their own. In this course you can expect to learn the basics of the UI, composite layout, compositing live action and CG elements into shots, rotoscoping and wire removal techniques and green screen keying. This longer course runs 7 August - 5 September.
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Dave King also teaches Introduction to Mari, a texturing software designed at Weta and used in ‘King Kong’ and ‘Avatar’. Dave has professional experience as a creature and character artist, creating textures for TVCs, films and video games. Like the Nuke foundation, this is a hand-on type of course developed for both beginners and texture artists familiar with Deep Paint or BodyPaint who need enough skills to transition quickly.
This introduction covers the interface, Mari’s projection workflow, and painting models seamlessly with a large variety of textures. Students learn to warp and modify photographs to fit 3D models, use dynamic real-time masking, and create and move data between diffuse, dirt, specular, ambient occlusion and bump maps. Using shaders to ‘vision mix’ and output texture sets is explained, and fast weathering techniques such as dirt, dust, sweat and blood. The course runs 10 - 19 September.
Intro to Directing TVCs explains the other end of the production cycle with an emphasis on communications and skills needed to take the script to storyboarding to the shoot. According to the tutor, TVC Director Julie Money, the work requires understanding how to negotiate collaboratively in a commercial environment, as well as creative vision and technical knowledge.
This is another two-day course, 18 - 19 August, covering job seeking and creating a Director’s treatment and effective Director’s reel. Students also learn their position between agencies and clients. Moving to actuial projects, the course shows how to read and break down a TVC script and produce storyboards, and think visually and economically in 30 or 60sec time frames. The topics include new content formats and the wider range of deliverables now required. Relationships covered include producers, talent and work-in-progress meetings.