Enrollment closed for 2025
What if you could learn everything required to create body mechanics animation, to a professional standard, alongside a certain amount of performance, within just twelve weeks?
This course goes beyond the basics of walk and run cycles (information you can find freely on YouTube).
Instead it shows you how to take a character and move them around in a truly believable and entertaining way.
Once you’ve mastered the foundations of character animation, the next step on your journey is body mechanics.
If a character's movement lacks believability, you lose your audience.
Once you understand how to create truly believable body mechanics animation, you'll be able to layer on personality, and performance, giving you the power to captivate, and entertain, your audience.
With a solid understanding of mechanics, you’ll be able to convincingly move characters in any way you can imagine.
Hi, I'm John Knowles!
Before building Into Animation I worked as an animator and animation director in children's television for over 15 years.
I love animation and my goal is to give you the best start possible in this exciting and rewarding craft.
Over 20 years ago, when I was first learning animation, I chose to go to university, thinking this would be the best way to master the craft.
Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
My instructors were not experienced animators and my sole body mechanics lesson was a handout photocopied from a new animation book which had just been published.
I ended up teaching myself body mechanics with the assistance of books and many hours of practice.
Even when I was first hired as an animator I still struggled with body mechanics. Many of the things that I now know, were learnt over the years from other animators, or were discovered through endless trial and error.
Whilst many things have changed since I first learnt animation, as an animation director, I consistently found that junior animators struggled with body mechanics and, regardless of where they studied, they had never learnt many of the important techniques required by professional animators.
That’s why I’m really excited to be able to teach my own body mechanics course based on the many things I’ve learnt and practiced over the years.
The curriculum will be delivered over the course of twelve weeks, through a mix of lectures and practical demonstrations.
The first lessons will become available, when enrollment closes, on Mon 29th Sept 2025, and are pre-recorded allowing you to view the videos at a time which suits you.
Each week there will also be exercises to complete, to practice what you’ve learnt.
By releasing the videos weekly, there should be sufficient time for you to watch the lessons and complete the exercises before moving on.
If you need more time, don’t worry, the course will be yours for life, so you can take it at your own pace and return to lessons at any point in the future.
Enrollment closed for 2025
In week one you’ll become familiar with the penguin character you’ll be working with for the duration of the course, whilst exploring the essential art of posing characters.
In the second week you’ll start to get your character moving with a simple exercise designed to explore weight and balance.
The third week will take things up a notch as you learn to create a full body jump animation.
In week four you’ll start to explore locomotion by constructing a basic walk cycle.
Building upon the previous week, week five explores how you can use a walk to express a character's personality and emotion.
In week six, you’ll pick up the pace as you learn to construct run cycles.
This week, you’ll explore how to move characters on complex paths whilst avoiding the common issue of sliding feet.
In week eight, you’ll learn how to start, stop, and transition between cycles, to create variety in your animation.
In week nine, you’ll explore weight and prop interaction as you learn how to lift and carry objects.
Week ten features more prop interaction as you explore pushing and pulling actions.
The final weeks are all about putting everything you’ve learnt into a final, complex, piece of animation. In week eleven, you’ll plan and block your final animation.
Week twelve is about wrapping everything up, as you finish your final project and create a piece of body mechanics animation you can be proud of.
Getting high quality feedback can make all the difference when you're trying to improve your animation.
Each week, you can share your animation assignments for basic written feedback.
Additionally, if you really want to accelerate your learning, you can purchase the advanced programme, for more detailed feedback.
With the advanced programme, you’ll receive twelve individual reviews in a recorded video format. After submitting your assignments, I’ll record a video in which I can draw over your animation and provide more comprehensive suggestions for improvements than with written feedback.
Whichever programme you select, you'll receive valuable insights into how to improve your work.
I've designed and built this little Rockhopper Penguin character specifically for this course, using a rig setup similar to that which I've used in professional studios.
Not only is this character fun to animate but, since it's not available anywhere else, your work will stand out from the crowd.
Once you've completed the course, you're free to use the character for your own animation practice.
By the end of this twelve week programme, you'll have learnt the same techniques that I've used, every day, throughout my many years of professional animation.
By completing the exercises, and applying the feedback, you'll also come away with animation you can truly be proud of.
Mastering body mechanics gives you the power to convincingly bring any character to life.
Enrollment closed for 2025
Honestly, you can probably learn many of the more basic things that I teach in the course, if you spend long enough sifting through YouTube videos.
What you'll really struggle to find are the professional techniques that I share, which will help to accelerate, and elevate, your work.
What you'll definitely not find on YouTube is a highly structured curriculum, my production quality character rig, the chance to watch every step of my animation process, and my feedback on your work.
I know that sometimes life gets in the way of the things that we really want to achieve.
Whilst it would be great if you could follow along, and complete the course in twelve weeks, I know that's not going to be realistic for everyone.
That's why all lessons are pre-recorded, with lifetime access, giving you the flexibility to progress at a pace which suits you.
Assignments can also be submitted for feedback whenever you're ready.
I’ll be fully breaking down the creation of this animation within the course but, my intention is to give you the skills and knowledge to create your own, unique, final project, similar to my animation of the penguin chasing the egg.
This course does cover a small amount of performance, since this is what provides the entertainment value in our animation, but it’s primarily focused on teaching animation body mechanics. Therefore, it doesn’t cover lip-sync and it only touches on expressions briefly.
These are subjects best reserved for a dedicated performance course.
This is something which I’d love to do, but it’s entirely dependant upon how many people choose to take this body mechanics course.
Performance is something which really does depend upon a detailed understanding of body mechanics. I wanted to release this course first, to ensure that students, in any future performance course, have a sufficient depth of body mechanics knowledge.
Once enrollment closes on Mon 29th September 2025, it will not open again this year.
This is to ensure that I can dedicate as much time as possible to helping those who are working through the course.
Whilst it's likely that I'll reopen enrollment in 2026, no date has yet been set.
If you'd like to make real progress with improving your animation this year, now is the time to jump in!
This course is designed for anyone who wants to learn how to create professional quality body mechanics animation within Blender.
Whilst no body mechanics experience is necessary, an understanding of the animation foundations is essential. Fortunately, my free Into Motion course has you covered!
The latest version of Blender can be downloaded for free from: blender.org