Animation Classes Washington, D.C.

Unleash your creativity and bring your imagination to life with animation classes in Washington, D.C.. Learn the art of storytelling through motion and gain the skills to create stunning visual effects, characters, and scenes that captivate your audience.

1 class in-person in Washington, D.C. has spots left, and 14 classes live online are available.

Motion Graphics Certificate

Noble Desktop - Virtually Online

Become a Motion Graphics Designer. As demand for video continues to grow, the need for Animators and Video Editors has increased. Learn the apps professionals use (Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, & Cinema 4D Lite) and build your demo reel (portfolio). Learn motion graphics and visual effects with Adobe After Effects, render 3D animations using Cinema 4D Lite, and start editing videos with Adobe Premiere Pro. Develop a workflow for going...

Monday Nov 6th, 10am–5pm Eastern Time

 (17 sessions)

$3,495

17 sessions

Animation with After Effects (High School)

NextGen Bootcamp - Virtually Online

Learn animation fundamentals in this After Effects summer program in NYC. Do you have a passion for animation and motion graphics? Use After Effects to make your own animations and motion graphics. In this fun hands-on summer course in NYC, you'll learn how to navigate the After Effects workspace, then dive right into basic animation concepts and processes. From there, the program will move on to more complex techniques like title and text animation,...

Monday Aug 12th, 10am–4pm Eastern Time

 (4 sessions)

$1,499

4 sessions

Animation with After Effects (High School)

NextGen Bootcamp @ Live Virtual

Make eye-catching animations and dazzling visual effects with Adobe After Effects. Are you fascinated by animation? Learn how to make your own in this hands-on summer program that covers After Effects, Adobe's popular animation and motion graphics application. You'll start by learning about how to navigate the After Effects workspace, then dive into basic animation concepts and processes. From there, the program will move to more advanced techniques...

Monday Aug 12th, 10am–4pm Eastern Time

 (4 sessions)

$1,299

4 sessions

Video Editing & Animation Certificate (High School)

NextGen Bootcamp @ Live Virtual

Make Your Own Video Projects Learn how to edit video like a pro with Adobe Premiere Pro, the industry-standard editing software used by professionals. In this course, you'll learn the skills to create polished video projects, including how to import footage, organize your media in a timeline, speed up and slow down footage, color-correct video, and other foundational editing techniques. Whether you're thinking of starting a YouTube channel or considering...

Monday Aug 5th, 10am–4pm Eastern Time

 (8 sessions)

$2,495

8 sessions

Video Editing & Animation Certificate (High School)

NextGen Bootcamp - Virtually Online

Edit Videos with Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere Pro is the industry-standard editing software used by professionals. In the first unit of this certificate program, you'll learn skills to create polished video projects in Premiere Pro, including how to import footage, organize your media in a timeline, speed up and slow down footage, color-correct video, and other foundational editing techniques. Whether you're thinking of starting a YouTube channel...

Monday Aug 5th, 10am–4pm Eastern Time

 (8 sessions)

$2,495

8 sessions

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Unreal Engine (Animation)

Studio Arts @ Virtual Learning

Unreal Engine is the perfect medium for creating convincing and fluid animation for your characters. From cartoony to life-like, animation breathes life into your project! For film, TV, animation, games, themed attraction fly-throughs and other projects, knowing how to use the animation tools in Unreal Engine gives you the ability to create high-end previs, animatics, cinematics and other real time animation sequences for your Unreal project. You...

Saturday Oct 28th, 8:30am–12:15pm Pacific Time

 (4 sessions)

$750

4 sessions

Autodesk 3ds Max Fundamentals

Future Media Concepts

In this Autodesk 3ds Max course, you'll receive a thorough introduction to Autodesk 3ds Max that will help new users make the most of this sophisticated application and will broaden the horizons of existing, self-taught users. The practices in this course are geared toward real-world tasks you will encounter. You will learn to use Autodesk 3ds Max to create photo-realistic renderings and animations. You'll examine the interface and workflow and...

Wednesday Nov 8th, 10am–5:30pm Eastern Time

 (3 sessions)

$1,595

3 sessions

Motion Graphics & Video Editing Portfolio Development

Noble Desktop - Virtually Online

So You Want a Job in Motion Graphics or Video Editing, But Aren't Sure Where to Start? Everyone wants to have a cool video for their presentation, website, or social media channel. YouTube is the most popular social media platform with 81% of adults in the United States as users. While TikTok (a platform devoted entirely to video) may only count 21% of U.S. adults as users, that's still almost 60 million people. Video, whether live or animated,...

Monday Oct 9th, 6–9pm Eastern Time

 (10 sessions)

$1,495

10 sessions

Adobe After Effects Level I (Online)

Manhattan Edit Workshop @ Virtual Class room

An Introduction to Adobe After Effects This three-day introductory class is designed to teach you the essentials of Adobe After Effects for motion graphics and visual effects. Throughout the course, you'll learn about traditional After Effects workflow, basic animation using effects and presets, introductory text animation, basic keying, and 3D. You'll also learn about rendering and output, which are crucial for producing high-quality projects....

Monday Oct 23rd, 10am–6pm Eastern Time

 (3 sessions)

$1,295

3 sessions

After Effects Advanced

NYC Career Centers - Virtually Online

Learn Advanced After Effects Techniques In this intermediate/advanced After Effects course, we’ll take your After Effects skills to the next level.  We'll master text animations and create transitions between multiple layouts. Through several hands-on real-world projects integrating graphic elements with audio, video and photo elements, we'll master motion graphics workflow to create advanced projects, taking them from the initial design...

Monday Nov 13th, 6–9pm Eastern Time

 (6 sessions)

$975

6 sessions

Introduction to Adobe After Effects CC

Future Media Concepts

After Effects CC software lets you deliver cinematic visual effects and motion graphics faster than ever before with new Global Performance Cache. Extend your creativity with built-in text and shape extrusion, new mask feathering options. Get into motion graphics - come learn what After Effects CC can do! Who Should Attend: Video, animation and graphics professionals who need a working knowledge of Adobe After Effects CC. Prerequisites: ...

Monday Oct 16th, 10am–5:30pm Eastern Time

 (3 sessions)

$1,195

3 sessions

Adobe After Effects Level II (Online)

Manhattan Edit Workshop @ Virtual Class room

This two-day intermediate class will take you beyond the basics by focusing on industry standard best-practices for creating motion graphics. Building on concepts learned in the level one class, you will learn how to incorporate text, graphics, and effects to your movies. Upon completion of this course, you will have an excellent understanding of the menu and tools in After Effects and be able to perform work with a high level of efficiency. ...

Thursday Oct 26th, 10am–6pm Eastern Time

 (2 sessions)

$1,095

2 sessions

Adobe After Effects Level III (Online)

Manhattan Edit Workshop @ Virtual Class room

This two-day advanced class will help you achieve better results from this comprehensive application. Building on concepts from After Effects Level 1 and Level 2 classes, this course covers all about alphas (straight vs. pre-multiplied alphas, working with Photoshop and Illustrator and vector paint) and advanced formatting and rendering (video, interlaced footage and fields, 3:2 pulldown, pre-rendering and proxies, as well as advanced rendering...

Saturday Nov 18th, 10am–6pm Eastern Time

 (2 sessions)

$1,095

2 sessions

Adobe After Effects for Beginners (Level 1)

Digital Workshop Center

Learn the basics of vector animation in Adobe After Effects for Beginners Today’s businesses need dynamic visual effects and motion graphics to help build engaging visual content. In the Adobe After Effects for Beginners class (Level 1) at Digital Workshop Center, you will learn to create content for commercial video and motion picture production, designs for the web, and graphics for use in presentations. Learn how to become a visual effects...

Monday Oct 9th, 9am–12:30pm Mountain Time

 (4 sessions)

$1,325

4 sessions

Adobe After Effects CC (Advanced)

Future Media Concepts

In this 2-day advanced course designed for videographers, graphic artists, and animators with experience using Adobe After Effects, the standard for motion graphics and compositions in the TV and film industries, you will learn to incorporate text, graphics, and effects into your movies. Upon completion of this course, you will have an excellent understanding of the menu and tools in After Effects, and you'll be able to use the program with a high...

Thursday Oct 26th, 10am–5:30pm Eastern Time

 (2 sessions)

$795

2 sessions

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Discover the Best Animation Classes in Washington, D.C.

“I know this defies the law of gravity,” Bugs Bunny says as he and a high diving board remain suspended in mid-air at the end of the Looney Tunes cartoon High-Diving Hare, “but, you see, I never studied law.”

The law of gravity failed to apply very frequently in the wacky Looney Tunes universe during Warner Brothers Animation’s 1940s heyday. Therein lies the wonder of animation: it enables characters to perform feats that are unhindered by not only the law of gravity but those of physics and nature in general. (The Road Runner’s nemesis, Wile E. Coyote, regularly defies the laws of medicine, for example.) This ability to make the impossible visible is one of the reasons why the world of moving—and seemingly living and breathing—drawings has been so compelling since the invention of the spinning phénakisticope In 1833. Rabbits aren’t bipeds, and they don’t talk, let alone with Brooklyn accents, yet there is something that makes us believe that this nonsense is possible because Bugs Bunny does it right before our very eyes. In one sense, we know he’s “only” a cartoon; in another, he’s one of the most real movie stars Hollywood ever produced. (He even has his own star on Hollywood Boulevard.)

Warner Brothers’ animation was an edgy, manic, and irreverent answer to what was happening deeper in the San Fernando Valley, in Burbank, at the Walt Disney Studio. Indeed, the name Looney Tunes was a riposte to Disney’s series of Silly Symphonies animated shorts. Warner’s animation may not always have been great art in the Disney sense, but the patently insane Daffy Duck is as much an American icon as his fellow Anas platyrhyncos, Donald. The technology behind both ducks is the same: drawings viewed at the rate of 12 per second go by too quickly for the human eye to track individually, and appear to be animate, whence the term animation.

Both Daffy and Donald Duck are still in production today, and although they don’t look a day older than they did in the 1940s (more magic of animation), they are created by an entirely different process than the pencils, paper, pens, ink, paint, cels and 35mm motion picture film that brought them to life in their salad days. The 1990s saw the advent of computer animation, which has grown into the world of the computer-generated imagery (CGI) that is now used, not just for anthropomorphic ducks and rabbits, but also for most of the special effects in “live-action” films today. Whereas whole sets had to be built and then flooded with actual water for 20th Century Fox’s 1939 epic, The Rains Came, precipitation and even flash flooding can today be added to an image with a few clicks of a mouse.

Software such as Autodesk Maya, Pixologic ZBrush, and Houdini are currently in favor at Disney Studios, and are complex programs that can create astonishing things. There are, however, simpler-to-use programs that can create motion graphics, most notably Adobe’s After Effects. While you can’t reverse engineer Frozen (and probably not even High-Diving Hare) with the Adobe Creative Cloud and a MacBook Pro in the space of an afternoon, you can create impressive animation without needing a four-year degree in the field. Such is the need for animation across all platforms today that you can make a good, solid career at an independent studio creating motion graphics for commercial purposes.

Best Animation Classes & Schools in

One of the very few tech schools running in-person animation classes in the District of Columbia is Ledet Training. They offer courses in Adobe’s Animate and After Effects that cover both vector animation and motion graphics. Animate 101 is a two-day introduction to that program, and teaches students to create animations, manage the timeline and even add sound to their creations. That class can be followed by Animate 201, which covers, across the span of two additional days, such advanced topics as inverse kinematics, springiness, and creating interactive movies. The two classes may be combined into a four-day bootcamp. For those interested in After Effects, Ledet has classes that fit the same pattern, with the slight change that After Effects 101 runs for three days, not two. Thus, there is also an After Effects 201, and the two classes may be combined into a five-day bootcamp. Ledet’s Washington classrooms are located on I Street N.W., a block from Lafayette Park. If you don’t live in the White House, the nearest Metro stop is either Farragut West or Farragut North. (If you do live in the White House, the instructions are: go out the front door, cross Lafayette Park, grab a tea at Teaism, proceed along 17th Street for a block, then hang a left on I street and Bob’s your uncle.)

Washingtonians whose address isn’t 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., particularly those who are really Marylanders or Virginians, might prefer not to have to confront downtown D.C. on business days. They might want to consider instead an online class that can be taken from anywhere, from the District of Columbia to Washington state to Washington Island in French Polynesia. Live online courses offer something of the best of both worlds, as you get the unbeatable convenience of being able to study anywhere you want, but you also get to have live interaction with the instructor, ask questions, and even have the instructor take a look at whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into on your screen.

Future Media Concepts is an example of a tech school that brings its New York-based classes to the internet. The school offers an Introduction to Adobe After Effects CC (the CC simply stands for Creative Cloud, the portmanteau term for all of Adobe’s software), an Adobe After Effects CC (Intermediate), and an Adobe After Effects CC (Advanced) class. Running for three, two, and two days respectively, the curriculum takes students from where their knowledge of Photoshop left them off through to advanced functions and effects such as the 3D Camera Tracker, Particle Playground, Warp Stabilizing, and the difference between foam and bubbles.

Another New York-based school with ample experience in teaching over the Internet is Noble Desktop, which offers a program that combines After Effects with Adobe’s video editing software, PremierePro. Put them both together, and you get a 17-day Motion Graphics Certificate program. In addition to the software training, you will also be able to build your portfolio (demo reel) and take advantage of 1-to-1 sessions with established mentors in the field to help you find your way in the animation world.

A much briefer way to approach After Effects can be found hosted by NYC Career Centers: After Effects in a Day. The class instructs students in the making of Animated GIFs, logos, and transitions, and, by the end of seven hours, will have them conversant with the software and able to use it to create simple motion graphics, incorporating such features as easing in and out, fade-ins and layer animation.

Another extensive online motion graphics certificate program is the Video Design Certificate from Digital Workshop Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. The certificate program combines instruction in both Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, including Adobe After Effects for Beginners (Level 1) and Adobe After Effects Advanced (Level 2), which may also be taken à la carte. The After Effects classes meet in the mornings, Mountain Time, which means they start at 11:00 a.m. in Washington. That should give you time for a proper breakfast before reporting to your computer to start your school day.

Industries That Use Animation

Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution refers to a “district” that would become the capital of the United States. It says nothing, however, about the production of animated motion pictures, and, indeed, the District of Columbia was never an important player in the country’s film industry, which is probably a good thing.

That said, there are animation studios operating in and around the District. Although they’re unlikely to offer much chance of employment to the likes of Bugs Bunny, they do offer work to those interested in creating animation for commercial and, naturally, political purposes. Today’s world has created a need for all manner of catchy visuals to promote products, causes (both public and private), and candidates, to which end several animation studios have set up shop in our nation’s capital. These studios often work with advertising agencies and political campaign staff to come up with images that can be used across a variety of platforms, from broadcast to social media. There are far less exciting places to be a commercial animator than

Animation Jobs & Salaries in

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) groups animators and special effects artists under a common rubric, reflecting the enormous role CGI plays in the special effects that used to have to be created manually. More specific job titles are to be found on O*net Online, a job-seeker-oriented database maintained by the U.S. government. It breaks the BLS category down into such job titles as 2D animators, 3D animators, graphic artists, digital artists, and animators.

The BLS’ 2022 figures for the greater Washington area (officially known as Washington/Arlington/Alexandria, although it includes parts of West Virginia and Maryland as well) show that 310 individuals were employed as animators and special effects artists. While that’s perhaps more than one might have guessed right off the bat, the location quotient for the area reflects the fact that the area isn’t exactly the omphalos of computer animation: the figure is a meager 0.42. That means that you’re less than half as likely as the national average to find a job as an animator in the Washington area. If you do find an animator job, you will be rewarded with an annual mean wage of nearly $96,000, which ranks tenth for all metropolitan areas, although it is still less than the median wage for animators in the country, which is approximately $99,000. It is, on the other hand, significantly higher than the mean wage in of $78,500

You’ll have to weigh that against the very high cost of living in the District of Columbia: it’s 52% higher than the national average, mainly because the cost of housing is 152% higher than the national average. Food comes in at a relatively modest 9% higher than the national average. On the other hand, a hot dog at Nationals Park is going to set you back some: it’s one of the most expensive in Major League Baseball at $7.49, and specialty dogs, including a characteristically Washingtonian version with onion, mustard and chili, cost even more.