(Newswire Today) —  Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 2008-06-04 - Award-winning 3D animator TJ Galda has continued his new series of instructional material regarding Character Rigging with the much anticipated release of an advanced DVD outlining how to create muscles and tendons for CG Characters.

Award-winning 3D animator TJ Galda has continued his new series of instructional material regarding Character Rigging with the much anticipated release of an advanced DVD outlining how to create muscles and tendons using computer graphics software such as Autodesk's Maya. The new DVD is designed to make the techniques as accessible as possible, so that even beginners can create and animate lifelike muscles for their animated characters. Advanced Character Rigging on DVD is available through tjgalda.com and major outlets such as Amazon.

TJ Galda has worked as character technical director and studio technical supervisor on films like Fantastic Four, Shark Tale, Over the Hedge, and more recent titles such as Passengers, Passchendaele and Kung Fu Panda. He has also served at Electronic Arts Canada, during which he oversaw all art production on over 25 games at a time. Recently, Mr. Galda received the worldwide Autodesk Maya Master Award. With great demand for the recently published book, the new DVD is now a great extension where Mr. Galda draws on his work in character animation, as well as his experience as an animation instructor, mentor, and lecturer to walk the viewer through the process step by step.

Rob O'Neill, Director of the Pratt Institute Digital Arts Research Laboratory, offers praise for the book that the DVD is based upon: "Advanced Character Rigging: Creating Advanced Tendon and Muscle Systems provides production proven techniques and practical insider information on one of the least documented aspects of character setup. TJ Galda is an expert in the field and has produced a welcome and valuable resource for the community. I wish he would stop giving our secrets away."

The DVD goes step by step through a review of major topics used in modern computer graphic characters. It then delves in to the meat of the topic, outlining how to create muscles and tendons in a simple fashion. These systems are typically quite complex in modern films, but Mr. Galda has found a new technique that reduces this complexity a great deal. Mr. Galda says: "After being asked countless times about techniques, and having conducted speaking engagements around the world, I saw the need for this series. Creating characters for today's computer animation films is complex, and these books and DVD's strive to make that process as simple as possible."

TJ Galda (tjgalda.com) lives with his wife in Vancouver, BC, where he works in the Canadian film industry and mentors animation students at Vancouver Film School.

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