Stuart Sumida
Anatomy consultant and professor of biology
Dr. Stuart Sumida is a paleontologist with the California State University San Bernardino who has published three books and over 70 journal articles, specializing in the biological transformations that took place as back-boned animals adapted to life on land.
He is a frequent anatomical consultant to the entertainment industry, working on more than 60 feature-length motion pictures, including Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Lilo and Stitch, the first and last Harry Potter films the How to Train Your Dragon series for DreamWorks, Life of Pi, Ratatouille for Pixar, and many more.
He also served as a consultant to animators to video games such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Disney's academy-award winning Zootopia, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, and DreamWorks’ Abominable. He has worked on a variety of television projects, including helping develop the animal characters in the HBO/BBC series His Dark Materials.
He has also served as an anatomical and biomechanical consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering, including the yeti in Animal Kingdom's Expedition Everest attraction, and updates to animation in the Matterhorn attraction at Disneyland California.
Events featuring Stuart Sumida
The Anatomy of Joints: the Skeletal Design of Characters for Modeling, Rigging, and Animation
In living animals, the scaffolding onto which all of an animal’s biology hangs is the skeleton.
In animation and visual effects, the scaffolding onto with character movement hangs is the rig that is provided to the animator. And the best analogy and model for that rig is the skeleton itself and the movements at its joints.
So, an understanding of animal skeletons and joints is a powerful tool in the design and movement of animated characters.
Biologist and palaeontologist Stuart Sumida will present an overview of animal and human skeletons, and the skeletal inspiration for rigs in a variety of animated examples.
He will include examples from among the over 100 animated films on which he has consulted.
Room OL1 Europa building
From 10:00 until 11:45 (1h45mins)
Make sure this Workshop does not clash with another Workshop or Portfolio review before booking!
Booking link coming soon... Animex Pro workshops
Twenty-five years after Spirit - Stallion of the Cimmaron - Its Influence and Legacy from How to Train Your Dragon to Wild Robot
In the near quarter century since the release of Spirit - Stallion of the Cimmaron, methods in computer animation have experienced phenomenal new heights. Notably, Sprit was a critical bridge between traditional hand-drawn animation and computer animation.
The cooperation between traditional animators, computer modelers, and riggers bridged a gap that was at the time a remarkable new challenge. Perhaps just as remarkable, is that the benefits of the resulting models of animal design and locomotion still have powerful influence. Today, even in DreamWorks Studios’ most recent release.
Stuart Sumida will trace that legacy from Spirit to the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, to Croods, and to Wild Robot.