Move TO Tumblr

Hey Everyone!

I'm thinking of moving all this to Tumblr. Maybe moving over all of my posts and then some.

I feel it might better motivate me to create content and better for everyone in terms of access.

More thoughts to come with this.


Sincerely,

Allen

Sheridan Animation Portfolio 2015 - HINTS AND TIPS

Sheridan Animation Portfolio 2015 

Here are some basic guidelines and tips for Sheridan Animation Portfolio. I'm going to try and reexamine some of the strengths and weaknesses of some portfolios while simply give prospective students some examples and ideas for stronger portfolio building. I'm going to try and avoid the general concepts of the Sheridan Animation portfolio because there is much already outlined in the Sheridan Animation. 

I'm also going to be updating this post as I go or adding different parts. As I'm busy with schoolwork and other jobs this is the best I can do under the time frame. 

Life Drawing

Life drawing is focused primarily on structure and form. How well are you showing this in your work? Are you an experienced 'life-drawer'? 

Often I find the challenge in most artists applying into Sheridan Animation (SHAN) is their weakness in lifedrawing. Some applicants often use very illustrative and abstract ways to illustrate the human form. For example, lots of scribbling lines or or simply too much line. You must try to be clear in illustrating the human body (anatomy) and the pose (expression, pose of the model). Moreover, I find students lack the understanding of the quality of work that their life drawing must be at. The core principles of the program (according to some students) relies heavily on lifedrawing for the first two years. Some students apply with very weak drawings skills into a program where its all about drawing skills. So it's important to get education on this as early as possible.

The only way to get better at lifedrawing is to practice practice practice. Find out more resources on how SHAN students illustrate anatomy and research how other artists (that work in animation) apply life drawing to their art. 

Character Design

Design and building characters for the character rotation focuses on similar principles as life drawing: form, structure, creativity, believablity, and also general line quality. There is heavy competition in this category next to all other applicants. What to draw? What character's are good to draw?

Generally, its just about finding a creature or character that works and is believable. Find something that honestly works for you and really own that character. I've seen enough upright anamorphic and upright human male/female characters to see that [unless they're done perfectly] they lose marks in creativity. What am I trying to say? It's a character design assignment so give the character some character. Make it unique and powerful so that when anyone sees its they will be amazed.

Furthermore, traditional characters adhere to some principles of structural anatomy while some are purely designed well enough that the structure makes clear sense. Most often the case for Sheridan Animation we are looking at the most basic structural principles that give three-dimensionality to a character and in addition make a character anatomically correct. Simply put, you want to design a character that has the underlying designs of structure and form. These concepts like anatomy, structure, and believabilty are found in all creatures--real and make believe. 

My only advice is to keep on drawing the character and practice drawing structurally with it and for all characters for that matter.

MORE TO COME

Get in Touch WITH ME

I encourage everyone to get in touch with me over Facebook if you want me to write about some different aspects of art or the Sheridan Animation program!

 I'm working on some new posts about cafe sketching, sketching in general, ideas from major layout artists working in animation, and anything about everything. Would that interest you?

While there are some things I may not talk about I'm definitely open to hearing some criticism, new ideas, or simply any questions or comments. 


https://www.facebook.com/MotivationAnimation



Stay positive! Stay hungry! Take care.

Sheridan Animation is tough!// What do I blog about?

I've been getting a lot of comments recently about my activity on this page. Oddly enough my views have skyrocketed in the past year to two years but my heart wasn't in it simply because I had so much work to do within the degree of Sheridan Animation. Albeit, work is work and life is challenging but I'll see if I can start off small and maybe put up information that's small and light for everybody to read. So I'll keep it short and sweet. I'll try and put up more stuff. That's a promise that I hope to keep. I'll provide anything and everything I have. The truth is I have too much information as I research more than most students and network more than most students. Let me get right into it! To start things off here's a photo of my messy workspace. What am I doing? I'm sketching!

Here are some artists I've been enjoying all summer. Everyone I'm posting has something to do with animation. I wanted to focus are artists in animation more or less. Shane Glines, very reminiscent of of Stephen Silver for me, artist for WB ANIMATION http://instagram.com/shaneglines

Louie Del Carmen, one of my favourite artists for sketches, pixar storyboard artist http://instagram.com/louiedelcarmen

Jasmin Lai, bg artist for stephen universe, love love love her work http://ducksofrubber.tumblr.com/

Rick and Morty!

RICK AND MORTY!

Rick and Morty is a new cartoon series on Adult Swim. It's already been out for more than a few weeks now. I'm a huge fan of the series so far. It is really silly and has a very crude sense of humour. I generally love watching new cartoon series and I thoroughly enjoy a lot of mainstream cartoons. I personally have a very weird sense of humour so I really enjoy things like this. You can still look up the original cartoon made by the creators which is called 'Doc and Mharti' on Youtube. Check it out if you enjoy Rick and Morty.

Watch the first episode on Youtube:

An Art School Rant// About Animation Schools

Hello,

I wanted to post this link about art schools from a notable artist who went to CAL Arts. I found the article very interesting and I go back to it every now and then to get a realistic view of how this industry works as a whole.

I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

http://tombancroft.deviantart.com/journal/My-Art-School-Rant-302491758

Random Art Post// FABIEN MENSE!!!

http://fabien-m.blogspot.ca/

If you're not familiar with Fabien Mense then go check out his website/blog. This guy's art is amazing, fresh, and fun. Really ridiculously good looking characters! 

Skills and Practice// Challenging Exercises to do at home

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.

My second year at Sheridan Animation has been filled with a lot of challenges. Every year is very different to say the least. New things to learn and new things that inspire you as an artist. So I've been thinking about simple practice sketches and simple ways to approaching skill building your technical knowledge in drawing. Moreover, to build up your knowledge and skills in drawing you must make time for small sketches and general research. I call looking up images and new artists "research". Looking up new artists and taking the time to gather images is important. For me, as a growing artist I am always gathering new materials and such as well as casually sketching. I know a lot of people don't look at or use reference materials but personally I do it. You need to stay current and stay fresh, I feel.

I feel you need to spend time focusing and really investigating photos, images, and anything else you can find. Other times you need to just vibe with what you're drawing and lose yourself in it. Just enjoy what you're doing and drawing. The point is you need to find what you enjoy and just learn to have fun. Find the things that interest you and also things that you haven't drawn before and draw them. Challenge yourself. Learn from your mistakes as well.

So what I'm getting to is that I'd like to post some links that I've been using and explain why I think they are useful. As I said above, I'm thinking about skill building exercises and small sketching exercises. All of the things which I am listing here are generally things that my friends and colleagues and I have discovered through our studies at Sheridan Animation. Of course, a lot of artists and students might already do similar exercises like this but I'm focusing on simple exercises that you can do at home. Think of this as homework. These types of exercises don't replace actual assignments and huge long projects but they are the skills and the casual exercises that artists are consistently doing and challenging themselves with. Lastly, all of these exercises you can do at home in front of your computer. Get used to drawing a lot!

1. http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

Draw from life! But if you can't do that try drawing from websites like the one above. Drawing characters is paramount and I guarantee you that all students at Sheridan Animation are simply drawing people, generating ideas, gaining knowledge, and understanding the human figure. 

Here are some tips:

- Try drawing realistic

- Try drawing cartoony

- Draw an entire page of faces

- Draw an entire page of full bodies

- Keep it gestural, loose, experiment with styles

You might think work or sketches like this is a waste of time when you have the portfolio admission for Sheridan due the next day but exercises like these help you stay loose and generate characters for later use.

2. http://artreferenceblog.tumblr.com/

http://www.pinterest.com/characterdesigh/

Copy drawings from both of these sites! Both are amazing and have great reference material. I guarantee you that everyone is always working on anatomy and as I say a lot on this blog, anatomy is important. Pinterest is amazing for so many reasons. Get on top of that. Look for images and copy them for personal use. 

Furthermore, for some Sheridan Animation students they aren't so much interested in anatomy but at least get to a competent level for their career in animation or illustration. To get into Sheridan Animation though, you need to have fairly good life drawing skills and brushing up on general knowledge above actually attending life drawing classes is a good way to keep your mind sharp.

Here are some tips:

- Do something everyday that scares you/ Draw something everyday that challenges you

- Choose some anatomy illustrations to copy from:

Such as this one below from 'artreferenceblog':

http://artreferenceblog.tumblr.com/post/66194865492/sinisteray-cant-remember-where-i-found-this

- Print out the images as best you can and then copy them until you can draw it without any reference.

- DRAW DRAW DRAW

3. http://www.parkablogs.com/content/blogs-of-pixar-artists-and-animators/

Research. Who is your competition? What are they drawing? What are they doing with their time? Pixar artists are only a small taste of the people working in the animation industry but you need to gain knowledge and insight into how these artists are generating ideas and art. 

How They Got a Job at Pixar Animation Studio by CGMeetup

Justin Chan// Guys with Pencils Podcast

http://guyswithpencils.tumblr.com/

Justin Chan on Guys With Pencils Podcast!

Listen to it. You won't regret it.

FORCE DRAWING

Hello everyone,

So I managed to find something very useful for knowledge and reference. There's a book some students use in Sheridan Animation. The book is called Force Drawing by Michael Mattesi. These books can help you with general drawing skills such as line quality, force, movement, and understanding some concepts behind dynamic drawing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07fusT-dwVE

In short, Mattesi finds a unique array of skills which are both technical and conceptual. By conceptual I mean that he has acquired a lot of skills understands how to draw force and draw lines that have emphasis. From a technical standpoint, these books are great  for a new artist trying to explore drawing skills that animators use or simply know how to create characters with better line quality. These books are amazing and all my friends who are some of the best artists in the program use these books. I wouldn't exactly recommend these books for a extreme beginners because first of all one must know anatomy, however, these books are really good for reference.