Is there a technical school, junior college or online course that teaches a recent version of A:M in the North Texas area?

If there is no usergroup or other organized instruction in A:M here in North Texas, is there anyone familar with the current version of A:M who would be willing to tutor my 8th grader in the basics. Hopefully three or four one hour lessons will "prime the pump" enough such that he will be equipped and motivated to learn much more on his own. BTW, he's bright; taking AP courses for half his schedule. Even so I get the impression A:M (3D animnation generally) is a challenge even for most motivated ...

Thank you in advance for you help!

Mark

I don't know of a Dallas user group. The spread out nature of Dallas-Fort Worth probably works against that notion.

I live in Dallas, but does the tutoring need to be in person? I've been supervising shots for the TinWoodsman movie via this forum with some success.

here's an example

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=212969

Hi Robert

Great idea. I downloaded one of your hypercam feedback movies (2_07_12_take4_commentsH.mov). Wow, now I see the what can be done remotely.

It will probably be a while before we get back (school nurse called a few moments ago; my son's got the flu) but this looks very promising. Too, just ordered the A:M 2007 upgrade today (from 2000 version which was too complicated for my son at the time).

Mark Alanzo

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There is so much help availiable here it's simple amazing depending on what stage your son is at this is what this online community has to offer.

1) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=108

2) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=116

3) http://wiki.hash.com/index.php?title=Main_Page_Two


By the way I am the lucky guy getting this Instruction by Robert for that scene of the TWO (Tin Woodman of OZ) movie Project. In my opinion this is the best and lowest cost to find out if this is really for your son as a Profession. There is alot of hard work ahead of him but this will give him a taste of what a CG Character Animator does and also show him the other sides as well like modeler, rigging, texturing, lighting. I originally bought AM for my daughter and ok I wanted to play with this as well. She has not followed through with it she leans more to writing stories than animating them but I consider this to be a great way to test the waters instead of spending $$ in college courses just to find out this is not really for them after all.

Mark (just what we need, another 'Mark' in this thread)

Possibly the best path for your 8th grader is to work through the The Art of Animation: Master (TaoA:M) exercises. They start really simple and get more complex as the animator's skills grow. Basically you work through the manual which eventually hits all the major functions in A:M. That in turn addresses a wide variety of animation topics, too. Rodney and the others in the TaoA:M are very good about giving constructive feedback in a nurturing way.

Mark

Do we have many DFW area A:M users?

I'm not in a position where I could host any sort of gathering, but I'd probably show up for one.

Check my post in OFF TOPIC

Larry Watts