Hi! I’m Mike and as a recent graduate of the Animation BA at HSLU, I was lucky enough to be able to join this year’s (2026 for future reference) LuMAA course.

A few things about me: Even though I’m an ANIMATION alumni, I rarely touched animation during my three years of studies, mainly focusing on modeling, texturing and environment design in an attempt to find a job in the gaming industry. Still, I somehow managed to scrounge together a good enough showreel to land a spot at LuMAA.

Secondly, throughout my four weeks of participa- “Wait, isn’t LuMAA a six-week course?” I hear you say.

…

Yes, it is. But I could only participate for four out of those six weeks. So why am I writing this blog? Because they asked me to. And because they asked me before the course started.

So here’s what I have to say about the first four weeks of LuMAA 2026:

Week 1: Human Walk Cycle – because learning to walk in real life isn’t hard enough

As a father, I’m well aware of the eight stages of learning how to walk: You start with tummy time, go on to rolling around like an idiot, then you sit up showing everyone how strong specifically your neck has gotten, then you start crawling, pulling yourself up on stuff, eventually cruising around (which sounds cooler than it is, but is much cuter when you see it), taking your first steps and finally walking independently. 

Animators go through relatively similar stages while learning to animate a walk cycle. Meaning I’ve been stuck in the “rolling around like an idiot” phase for the past five years. However, I am proud to announce that through the help of LuMAA, I’ve now entered the crawling stage. Some would call that embarrassing, I would call it progress (and afterwards call my mom, because you’ve now hurt my feelings).

Our first teacher, Yves Ruprecht, was lucky enough to get to kick off LuMAA and the long-standing tradition of HAMMERING IN THE IMPORTANCE OF REFERENCE. “Though shalt not animateth without proper reference,” or something is I think the words he used. To which I said “watch me” and, uhm… yeah, failed miserably.

So to all future LuMAA attendees: create your references, study your references and Use. Your. References. You’ll thank me later.

Orrrr, if you want to be a bad boy like me, only use references for your first pass and then iterate and add upon it using REFERENCES. Tricked you. Don’t be lazy. Use references.

Week 2: Lip Sync! – because I guess it’s important

Lip sync is not for me. I finally understand why they made Link mute in the Legend of Zelda series and why so many NPCs in video games don’t move their lips when they talk. Lips are weird. Tongues are weird. And to pull off a good lip synch, you’ll need to start using the rig in… ughh, unthinkable ways.

On one account, Svetla Radivoeva, our teacher for the week, did a live demo where she… REMOVED THE CHARACTER’S TONGUE AND LOWER TEETH AND THEN PULLED THE UPPER ROW OF TEETH DOWN TO MAKE HER F-SOUND LOOK MORE, UHMMM NATURALL???

But I was no different that week. I too abused my rig to get better results. For one pose, I pulled my character’s lips far beyond their limits, for another, I had to dislocate his jaw to make the movement appear more… fluid. So if you’re a 3D character and you’re reading this somehow, on behalf of all 3D animators: We’re sorry. We don’t always like what we have to do, but it does make the shots look better.

Week 3: Quadropeds! When two legs just isn’t enough.

I have a theory that this week was specifically designed to cater to my personal needs. I don’t know who did me this favour (looking at you Caro), but I’m forever grateful for their efforts.

The teacher? Lukas Niklaus: a former Wētā animator who recently found a new calling in VIDEO GAMES. After years of working on unfulfilling, low-budget indie films (definitely not sarcasm) such as “War of the Planet of the Apes” and “Avengers: Infinity War”, he co-founded Floating Rock Studio, where they are now developing KYŌRYŪ: a game in which you play as a baby dinosaur.

Lukas first introduced us to the mechanics of a quadrupedal walk cycle, which is only four legs removed from the infamous octopodal walk cycle for people that truly hate themselves or, I guess, really love spiders. We were then allowed to select our own rigs, which allowed me to pick a more cartoony “monkey-cat” character that better fit my more stylistic approach.

Lukas was also kind enough to show me some preproduction Miro boards of his work, which to someone like me is the equivalent of Quentin Tarantino getting access to the filing cabinet at a podiatrist (for those of you who don’t know, a podiatrist is a foot-doctor). He also suggested that I’d go to Gamescom 2026. So technically it’s HIS fault that I missed the last two weeks of LuMAA.

Week 4: Quadropeds, again! Because one week just isn’t enough.

This time we could choose to animate whatever we wanted, as long as it involved a creature with four legs and we found proper references for it. I chose a video of a dog chasing a ball, because… because dog.

Elena Heller was absolutely amazing, taking the time to sit down with every student and giving us highly detailed draw overs on Sync Sketch. So detailed that for the second pass on my animation, I basically just copied whatever she’d drawn on each particular frame.

And I honestly don’t have much more to say to that. Great week, great teacher, amazing results from all the other students and a pretty mediocre result from this guy (me).

And this is where my journey ends. But it did not end for them. The remaining ten brave warriors (I double checked, it was actually more like 15) ventured on, growing stronger and better at Maya and stuff. Legends will be written about their exploits[1]  and what happened in the last two weeks of LuMAA…

Week 5-6: Acting, I think.

I am going to write about the last two weeks (which again, I didn’t attend) as if I was there, so take all of it with a large scoop of salt. Week five of LuMAA started with our teacher, Youri Dekker (Pixar), doing a backflip into the classroom while riding a unicycle. It was really sick. He then asked us to record reference videos of him shadow-boxing Remy from Ratatoille. Again, this was really cool.

Like any week, we started with references: I took a video of myself sucker-punching a crocodile while chugging a Monster Energy Drink, but was told that dressing up other students in a crocodile costume and punching them “wasn’t cool”. So instead, I recited the entirety of Moby Dick while eating a hot dog to use as reference for my kung-fu fight scene between Dumbo and the tea pot from Beauty and the Beast. Safe to say, I got a standing ovation during that week’s show-and-tell.

Our next teacher, Aron Hatfield (Pixar again), didn’t do a backflip to the disappointment of the whole class. But he did get involved in an hour-long competition to see which Swiss chocolate brand was best (this part did actually happen), but you’ll have to read all the way to the very end of this blog to find out the winner.

But in all honesty, from what I heard from the other students, both teachers gave amazing feedback and gave great insight into the animation process and industry. And for any future students: please ask Youri Dekker (or any of the teachers) to do a backflip. I don’t know if he can do it, but you might get something memorable out of it.

Weekly Grill: Thank God it’s Friday.

Since I think my brain’s run out of funny-juice, I want to take the opportunity to highlight some of the extracurricular activities you can expect from LuMAA, starting with the weekly grills on Fridays and ending with the weekly grills on Fridays, cause I didn’t go to any of the other events (but others did!). Everyone had a wonderful time hanging out, listening to music and eating a good assortment of vegan and meaty foods, while I was baking away in the sun cooking said food for the lazy bast-

After eating, students would gather to play Voley-Pong (HSLU’s very own rendition of ping pong), get a full-body workout with JustDance, or watch the sun-set while having a deep conversation with a fellow LuMnist, while I was in the kitchen cleaning their dishes.

As proof, I have gathered a selection of pictures showcasing these fun activities. As you will soon discover, I’m not featured in any of them:

What I want you to take away from this is: be vigilant, learn to say NO from time to time, like if someone asks if you can take care of the grill, or clean the kitchen for example, be less nice and selfless so you don’t miss out on all the fun, and don’t take what I’m saying too seriously because I’m just being dramatic.

Thank you for reading my blog. I think Tom, HSLU’s very own beauty pageant, has made a showreel for you to check out after this, which will hopefully add some visual context to my blabbering.

And a big thank you to Caroline Laville for organising so much of LuMAA and to Jürgen Haas, Elena Rast and HSLU for making LuMAA possible in the first place! It’s genuinely amazing that it even exists.

Cheers,

Mike

PS: I’m not gonna tell you which chocolate won. Don’t be a coward, figure it out yourself.