“Team Tactics: Using Industry Workflow Standards in 3D Curriculum” by Watkins

Aspiring animators – especially student animators – are often solitary creatures. Coincidentally, animation curricula are highly focused on the ‘solo-flight’ model of instruction where one student conceives, designs, and completely produces an animation project.

Solo-flight projects are needed as part of the 3D learning process and students should do several such animations at the beginning of their academic careers. They help students understand narrative, the interlocking nature of all the steps of the animation process, and that using the technology is secondary to the resulting design, aesthetic, and narrative output. When a student produces every aspect of a project he learns all of the steps of the 3D process and more importantly, sees how they all fit together.

While powerful in some ways, the solo-flight model also allows students to get into the habit of sloppy object naming, poor file organization, inappropriate rigging shortcuts, and a host of other “…but I knew what it meant,” practices that are fatal in a team production environment.