Learn Basic Character Animator course available from Simpliv LLC has won in our online poll about the best online course in Character Animation. By the end of this course you’ll gain complete proficiency in Basic Character Animator even if you’re currently a beginner.
It has gained more votes than other online courses in Character Animation:
The strength of animation holds up when brought to the test of corporate training. It helps break down complex concepts into digestible content pieces and keeps learners engaged while making sure that the information is absorbed fully. Compared to videos with a “talking head,” which looks like a sci-fi villain, or plain slides with black text on a white background, animation can do wonders. And last but not least, don’t think animation is unfitting for a professional environment because it will certainly boost your audience’s learning and productivity.
Before going into more detail on animation’s benefits, we should clarify the conditions of a successful training session. The end goal is for employees to learn to train themselves and get actively involved in something new and more challenging. That leads to two key elements that a corporate training session needs: knowledge and motivation.
One big strength of animation is that it makes way for storytelling, a powerful tool for triggering emotions. Storytelling can make the content much more relatable and interesting to learn than a PowerPoint slideshow with dull bullet points. It’s simply a “dressing” to make the information more digestible, but you have to be careful. Understand your audience first and utilize what makes them tick. Success in this aspect will make employees much more willing to learn just because they’re interested in your training session.
Employees are busy and stressed enough without training sessions, so they probably don’t have much mental strength to spare for them. Animations succeed in doing them a favor by saving their time by making the content compact and easy to memorize. Shorter learning time conveniently fits our shorter attention span, meaning more engagement, and employees don’t have to constantly ask themselves, “How long is this going to take?”
Not only employees benefit from animation-based training, but the company does as well. Less time spent on training means less money spent, and companies can use this money on more practical matters.
Animations are super diverse, but don’t worry, making choices won’t be too difficult. In essence, animation comes down to 3 types that are most commonly used: whiteboard animation, 2D/motion graphics, and 3D animation.
Whiteboard animation is the combination of hand-drawn elements on a white background and a timely voiceover. Some videos feature a hand quickly drawing on the whiteboard to add a sense of live action.
This style of animation is particularly popular, and you can easily find examples of it after a few minutes of browsing YouTube. Audiences love to watch whiteboard videos because they are clean and academic looking, making it suitable for multiple purposes. It’s also the most digestible of all as it contains no distractions. Here is a typical example of a whiteboard MOA (Mechanism of Action) animation.
An MOA animation is one that typically explains the working of a drug or processes in your body that take place on a microscopic level. It perfectly wraps up the information into a bite-sized lesson, while also being budget-friendly and visually pleasing.
This is essentially a glow-up version of whiteboard animation. For this style, animators add in 2D characters or motion graphics to spice things up. It’s more colorful than whiteboard animation and usually presented as a story. Here is a typical demonstration of a 2D animation.
The animation is from a Permaculture Design online course that specializes in knowledge and practical solutions to develop sustainable ecosystems. If you watch it, you will notice a lot of motions and movements bringing the images to life, and this is a strong suit for 2D animation, something whiteboard animation cannot do.
This is a very popular choice in the medical field, but not favored by corporations because they are costly and unnecessary. 3D animation is usually used to depict extremely difficult concepts that are invisible to our naked eyes, thus the common use in medicine. 3D animation is extremely good for depicting real processes and phenomena, as well as storytelling. This will bring new life to corporate training, provided that you have resources to spare. That said, here’s a perfect example of 3D animation.
And that is all about animation-based corporate training. Considering the benefits it brings, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t deploy this magnificent piece of technology. And if you’re interested, start by choosing the right animation for your company. There is no particular rule identifying what types of animation you should use in corporate training. We hope our introduction to animation types can give you an overall look at the advantages each type brings and how to apply these benefits. Moreover, you can definitely combine several styles at the same time to make the most out of them.
Update: BOA added 6 free video tutorials offered by FZDSCHOOL
Media Arts taught by Alberta College of Art & Design has won in our online poll about the best offline course in Art and Design in Canada.
Media Arts students learn how to use sensors, circuits, mechanical devices as well as video, film, sound, performance art, and multimedia to express themselves.
The other entries in the poll were:
The crisis brought about by the COVID-19 has forced education – just like many other aspects of social and economic life – to shift online. This makes educators wonder if a practical subject like art can be taught online at all. Though particular challenges posed by the shift vary widely across disciplines and institutions, the question provides much food for reflection on the fundamentals of how art is taught.
Unlike, text-based subjects, teaching practical art courses online has always been a challenge for both teacher and student. In her recent article Teaching Art Online Under COVID-19 artist and educator Kaitlin Pomerantz has even compared teaching art online to teaching people in a land-locked town to swim without a swimming pool. She points it out that during the period of art school closings caused by the pandemic, educators faced the challenge of trying to “figure out how they could switch their materials, tools, and techniques-dependent, in-person, community-reliant, hands-on teaching of studio-based art to virtual platforms.”
The problems outlined by Pomerantz are echoed by many educators across art institutions. One of the challenges that first come to mind in relation with teaching art by distance learning is unavailability of physical resources—studios, kilns, editing software, darkrooms, woodshops, and peers— which in the online realm are replaced with on-screen communication. While certain screen-based mediums only need the technology to work perfectly, which is not always the case in remote rural areas, there is a fundamental problem concerning spatial mediums like sculpture that need comprehensive video instructions as well as a well-equipped studio, also not so often found in every home. For these mediums, a question arises of what remains of art-making when the institutional resources are not accessible. Is that possible to keep the studio practice standards high?
The same can be said about teaching materials and instructions. The ones previously used in the classroom appear not to be so simple to adapt for online teaching. Delivering practical activities online requires a radical rethinking of lesson content.
Another obvious disadvantage to working online is the lack of face-to-face contact between tutors and students, and further, the loss of the interaction between peers that forms a vital part of any classroom-based experience. Design critiques that generally provide art education with a structured means for intensifying the learning process may have certain detriments too, when performed online. According to Brad Hokanson, professor in Graphic Design at the University of Minnesota and author of papers on design critiques, online crits provide less opportunity for the informal, spur-of-the moment critique. The difficulty with text-mediated online critique, he explains, is that while written comments are recorded for later use, they take significantly more time to review and process by the critic, while online time and involvement is all defined, conscious, metered, and, hence, limited.
However, there are still media, such as synchronous video conference software or shared desktops that quite closely replicate the direct connection of the in-person design crit. As explained by Hokanson, the key thing in this case is to replicate the fluidity of conversation inherent to face-to-face art education, as it adds much to a critique, even if done through sharing screens and talking synchronously. Speaking of hands-on media, he gives an example of online music lessons connecting a violin player in Japan with an instructor in Finland. Asynchronous critique may be less effective as it cannot ensure the same interaction as an in-class conversation, but it can still provide direction and formative assessment through mark-up and annotation.
Authenticity issue is yet another common criticism of any form of distance learning. On top of that, there are numerous pain points connected with validity of online assessments and cheat prevention in art education.
All these issues that remain to be resolved make many higher education professionals believe that art and design education with its visually or interactionally intensive pedagogical models such as the studio model is impossible to do effectively online. However, there are some successful examples that demonstrate how art education can effectively exist in the online realm.
Many potential disadvantages are outweighed by the advantages. Accessibility is certainly one of these. From the very beginning, distance learning’s target student groups include those in rural communities, those with irregular patterns of employment, single and working parents, and adult returnees to education and careers. Often, these students are frustrated by the lack of viable alternatives to attendance-based courses and feel isolated and excluded by their circumstances.
In his article Can You Teach Art Online? Kyle Dancewicz, Director of Exhibitions and Programs at SculptureCenter, New York, describes the strategy used by Constantina Zavitsanos, who teaches art at the New School. Her approach underscores the common paradigm of equating physically showing up in the classroom with learning. According to Dancewicz, Zavitsanos has always allowed students to attend class using Zoom, an option often necessary for those who cannot attend in person because they are disabled or sick, or because the work they create is best presented outside of traditional classroom critique. In addition, Zavitsanos sometimes offers instruction via Zoom or accepts students’ prerecorded performances for group critique. This access-driven approach elevates distance learning from its perceived status of a disruption to the norm, while also opening deeper questions about the presumed defaults of art-making as a whole: When a student has a reason not to use the physical classroom to display their work, it reveals the physical and conceptual limits the classroom imposes.
Modern students often seek the same degree of flexibility they are accustomed to in other spheres of life. “Like it or not, we live in an age where consumers want what they want, when they want it; that’s why we have the 24-hour supermarket and the all-night garage,” says Michael Stewart, founder director at Interactive Design Institute, UK.
With their Studio Art School that is the only institution in the UK approved to offer the Level 3 Diploma in Art and Design by distance learning, everything is online. Each student is given access to their personal online studio where they can download learning materials and communicate with their tutors at any time, by simply logging on. Lessons are presented as a series of step-by-step demonstrations that do not require specialized software or bandwidth.
Stewart recalls that the criticism he and his colleagues faced when they first suggested delivering practical art and design courses online came from two distinct fronts: the “technically, it can’t be done” crowd, and the “aesthetically, it shouldn’t be done” crowd. “Each side seemed determined to believe I was claiming e-learning to be superior to classroom learning; I never have and never will,” he explains.
Recognizing the limitations of teaching art online, Stewart provides a number of arguments for the model. While lacking the amount of peer-to-peer communication that class-based education has to offer, the online studio can give students as much time as is necessary letting them proceed at a pace which is best suited to each of them. The advantages also include the fact that online art students do not have to compete against their peers for tutor attention, or endure the distractions that can sometimes be part of the group experience.
All conversations with tutors, including advice, guidance, and comments on works-in-progress, are recorded and stored for future reference within the student’s personal studio area, providing both student and tutor with a complete history of their interaction. Similarly, with the use of the stored images, specific points in the creation of the student work can be referred to at each stage. Unlike traditional forms of learning in the visual arts, where once completed, the piece of work only exists in its final manifestation, within the online studio, the piece exists as an ongoing process, recorded at every stage of its development. At the same time, this method provides little opportunity for cheating. Not only dozens of images for each piece are stored in the system documenting all stages of the process, but also sketchbook notes and other supportive materials can be requested at any time.
As Studio Art School team is aware that many students may not have access to dedicated studio facilities, specialized equipment or unlimited budget for materials, all demonstrations are conducted and photographed on a standard kitchen table.
Some institutions attempt at re-creating the studio-based model in online design education courses. One of them is Minneapolis College of Art and Design, USA, with its Distance Learning Initiative, intended to appeal to a diverse audience – degree seeking students, high school students interested in attending art school, arts professionals, arts educators, and other life-long learners. The program maintains the role of the instructor in the studio model using well-formed, guided, direct questions and instructions and features online sketchbooks and portfolios providing a complete documentation of students’ work throughout a course, as well as visual examples of past student work that are used to set standards for work level expectations. The online format also allows bringing in guest artists from remote locations to some of its online courses whom students otherwise could not access. The team admits that the program is still small and evolving – e.g. online design critique still remains a “special challenge”.
The existing examples prove that in certain circumstances e-learning could be as effective as classroom-based teaching. It would be irrational to deny that there is quite a number of challenges related to delivering practical art and design courses online – rewriting syllabi, redesigning courses and teaching materials, reinventing assessment and critique approaches, and learning new technologies, just to name a few. Still, the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that shift in this direction from traditional classroom-based education should not be perceived as a departure from normal, but quite on the contrary, as a way to expand the kinds of places where art school happens and where art is made.
Update: BOA added 5 new online courses in Architecture, 3D Design, Interior Design and Software Design offered by Simpliv LLC, EduCBA and EdNext
