Animating Characters for Feature Films by Alissar Kobeissi

Want to make your animated characters truly unforgettable? This workshop dives into the nitty-gritty of creating performances packed with personality and genuine emotion, the kind you see in top-tier feature films. You’ll learn how to move beyond generic animation and infuse your characters with unique traits that resonate with audiences.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Crafting unique and entertaining character performances.
• Using authentic reference to inform your animation.
• Posing characters with appeal and clarity.
• Exaggerating blocking for better contrast and focus.
• Achieving natural body, eye, and lip-sync animation.
• Applying a professional 8-step polish process.

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Intermediate to advanced understanding of character animation principles.
• Tools: Maya, animBot (recommended).
• Hardware: A computer capable of running Maya smoothly.

📝 Description

This 4-hour workshop, led by Senior Animator Alissar Kobeissi from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is all about making animated characters feel truly alive and distinct. Alissar breaks down how to inject personality and originality into every move, ensuring your work stands out. You’ll go step-by-step through animating a two-character scene in Maya, starting with capturing genuine reference footage.

The course covers crucial techniques like posing characters with appeal using 2D drawing principles and pushing the blocking to create clear visual storytelling. You’ll then refine the animation by splining the body, eyes, and lip sync, focusing on natural spacing, clean arcs, and expressive eyes. Alissar also shares their personal 8-step polish process, a method honed over years at studios like Illumination and Sony Imageworks, to achieve that coveted feature-film quality. This workshop is designed to elevate your performance skills and help you understand what makes a shot truly memorable.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Animators looking to break into the feature film industry.
• Intermediate to advanced animators aiming to enhance their character performance skills.
• Artists who want to add more personality and specificity to their animations.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Alissar Kobeissi is a seasoned Senior Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios with over a decade of experience crafting expressive, performance-driven characters for major animated films. Since starting her career in 2014, she’s contributed to acclaimed projects at studios like Nwave, Sony Pictures Imageworks (Smallfoot, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), and Illumination Mac Guff (Sing 2). Her work is recognized for its storytelling through character performance and dedication to excellence in feature animation.

🏁 Final Result

• A portfolio-ready animated shot demonstrating professional-level character performance and polish, suitable for feature film standards.