TOSMI, the animations ... and the new deadline

Its been long since the first TOSMI session ended and we were so busy that we missed the final article. Now with the deadline for the second TOSMI session getting near we decided to show what happened at the end of the first session.

Here is a heads up on how everything turned out.

The last days were really hectic with the teams gathering all the materials and finishing last minute things to get into the final animation. And yet again the trainees managed to push things one level further than expected, adding cool things like an animated flower pot breaking into pieces using empties and a line of hanged laundry “moving” in the wind with a wave modifier applied, among other stuff.

Both of the teams managed to alter our initial training film script and come up with very original ideas for camera travelling and animation effects. We were really happy to see their final results, since they had nothing to do with our initial vision.

But, going a bit more into the conclusions we draw from the training.

Overall the experience showed us that we must setup a more collaborative environment from the start, so that it will not be difficult for the participants to exchange files and modify their pipeline during the training. Next training will have a bigger focus on folder structures and SVN.

The most important aspect the participants mentioned about the training, was the "hands on" experience through the practice sessions. Some of them really wanted more practice, but that came from the ones who had already some experience with blender or 3d in general. Yet they really enjoyed that all trainers were present during practice and that no question was left unanswered, no matter how difficult or long the answer was.

Also it was observed that most of the participants were asking questions in an intuitive project or task oriented way, and not in comparison of software that they already knew, which means that they cared about approaching 3d modelling and animation in terms of general principles and not with a specific interface or pipeline in mind.

We will write a more in depth report on what we think is the best approach for this kind of training soon after the end of the next training, so stay tuned...

But this isn't over yet, you still have a few hours to submit your application for the second TOSMI session, just head up to TOSMI website and join us in Sofia.

Anyway, life is nothing without some cool pictures and videos, so here are the final micro animations from the Red and Green Teams.

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