No strings holding down Goodwin’s animation students


To make their animation projects look like miniature movies that come alive, students in Professor John Goodwin’s Computer Animation course (CG213)  flip through their sketch books as the process is filmed. They then choose a page to animate in After Effects, which is then returned back into the book.  The challenge is often not the technology, but choosing from seemingly endless possibilities that the software allows.  Helped by a lot of laughter and guidance, such dilemmas are usually happy ones.

“The class is super fun,” says Luca Mak a Hunter College student currently taking Goodwin’s. “Despite all the different options and layers, After Effects is surprisingly easy to manipulate. Animations that could have taken hours by hand can be done in less than a minute.”

“I love the class. I am truly having a blast,” says Mary Capozzi, who is also currently enrolled in  CG213. “I want to animate everything!”

The hard part is “executing their ideas” says Goodwin. “They can have great ideas,  but they need to pick something the software does well.”

Capozzi, an FIT faculty member, animated puppets that dance to the tune “I’ve Got No Strings,” sung by the Supremes. The lyrics seem to match Capozzi’s enthusiasm: “I’ve got no strings/To hold me down/To make me fret/Or make me frown.”

“There is so much to learn and it’s so exciting I wish there was a second course to take,” says Capozzi.  “John Goodwin is a great  professor, he is encouraging and engaging.”

Goodwin says Mak and Capozzi “use the software beautifully. They’ve clicked into how to use the software. The wonderful thing about Adobe Suite is everything is layered; it’s built in Photoshop and can be animated separately. If you know Photoshop you are halfway to knowing After Effects.”  

“Using the skills I learned in this class, I want to make animations for TV shows and movies, and further my personal animation projects,” says Mak.

“I simply took the class for fun and would love to take it again. I can walk away from class with a little confidence but I know I still have way more to learn” says Capozzi. 


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