Report: Blender Summer School in London

Tom SF Haines reports on the result of their Blender school this summer.

Tom writes:

In August we ran a summer school for 16-18 year olds in central London. We had 11 students for 7 days, during which time they produced a 2.5 minute short, with a theme of ‘The Olympics’. They were responsible for everything - the story, storyboarding, modelling, sets, animation and finally putting it all together. You may find their final video below:

Blender was the tool of choice - some of the students had used it before, whilst others were basically new to it (We required them to complete some tutorials and submit some work in advance, as a sanity check.). We were very pleased with the result. Even better, the enthusiasm was epidemic - we were turning up and finding them outside the venue waiting for us, and then having to kick them out late in the evening. The title reflects their desire to continue working on it.

In between the chaos of working on the video we got them working as a smoothly oiled team, helping each other out (We needed more Blenderheads!) and having a whale of a time. We also got an industry expert from Escape Studios to talk them through getting into the industry, and a visit to Double Negative. The visit was a real adventure, but we also had to sign NDAs, so that is enough about that :-)

You may find a more detailed account, with pictures, over at our website, 3dami.org

The event was a success, and we intend to run it again next year, with more kids in multiple locations. If we are going to pull this off we are going to need more volunteers, so if anyone reading this is interested then feel free to contact us: [email protected] or @3damistudios