Animation Society plays an important part in the lives of all animation students at Bournemouth University. It acts as a link between social events for networking as well as learning the ways of the industry, while keeping the students updated on the latest technologies and practices.

While walking on the same ideals, Animation Society organised its first-ever Student Masterclass on 28th Feb 2020. Student Masterclass is an amazing initiative to bring students from all different levels together to learn from each other.

Callum Harwood giving Look Development Masterclass

To explain the concept, in brief, the Masterclass is given by a student from NCCA who is exceptionally skilled at one or more departments/techniques of animation and is willing to share the knowledge among fellow students in a short amount of time. The Masterclass aims to help students get to know the basics of a subject and provide them with a platform to build upon, should they become more curious. This also encourages them to establish a direct one to one interaction with fellow students to whom they can go to for advice later during their course or in life. NCCA has always taken collaboration and peer learning very seriously and believes that it is the best way to learn and keep improving.

The idea for this Masterclass was a build-up to the PAL (Peer Assisted Learning) programme, that is already a key part of the learning experience at Bournemouth University. Similarly, how in PAL, second-year students help the first-year students through coursework and shared knowledge, student masterclass aims to help tackle the subjects that are not always easy to cover with all the course obligations and other life activities happening at the same time.

Benjamin Le Febre giving CGI Cloth Fundamentals Masterclass

In the first Masterclass, two major subjects were covered, Texturing/Surfacing Fundamentals and CGI Cloth Fundamentals by Callum Harwood and Benjamin Le Febre respectively. The masterclass took place in the new Poole Gateway Building which hosts a state of the art media technologies. The session was about two hours long and was attended by over thirty students from all different batches of NCCA as well as some other enthusiasts.

It was an interactive session with a live demonstration. Callum kicked off the class by explaining the theory behind look development and shading and then demonstrated some tools that can help with the same. In the second half, Benjamin dived deep into how costumes play a major role in animation and how they define character. Later he finished off with a quick demo of Marvelous Designer. Overall, the class was a huge success and the second class was organised for next week focusing on Texture Development.

Future classes are being planned and more students are getting the opportunity to help share their knowledge. To know more about the events of the Animation Society, follow them on Facebook and Instagram.