Motivation: What I've learned.

Motivation is tough. Especially when I found myself a year or two before I had even decided going to Sheridan let alone realizing my dream of animation and conceptual design. For me, personally, my (current) inspiration comes from comic books and artists such as Milo Manara, Jean Moebius Girard, among others. My motivation is steadfast, meaning I'm loyal to my dream and that means hardwork, doing art, must come from my desire to learn and become better. 

When I hear words like motivation and discipline I think of 'art pushups'. I call it 'art pushups' because pushups, for me, are very challenging in working out. But you need to keep at and maintain a certain exposure to it. In exercise, the more signals you send to your muscle the more change you will see. Similarly, in art I feel the more you practice, read about, be more aware of your learning you will see the change as well.

The point I'm trying to make is that it takes time, patience, and discipline. 

For individuals who are not in Sheridan and plan on getting in, the first thing I would suggest to them is simply work on the basics and that mean foundational art studies such as lifedrawing. Lifedrawing is important for so many reasons such as line quality, line variety, speed, skill, good instincts for drawing, and generally speaking it helps with drawing people. You need to put a lot into lifedrawing. At least once a week if you're a beginner and above that you must get professional help with this. Practice, practice, practice. Find an unhealthy balance of doing lifedrawing and thats a start. What do I mean by unhealthy? Sheridan students put a lot into lifedrawing and consider the fact that some students lifedraw 2-3 hours a day, sometimes 4-5 hours a week. So don't complain when you have to practice lifedrawing because you have to start learning and practicing immediately if you want to get in.

Back to "motivation". I remember I had it very rough when I didn't get in my first time into Sheridan. I felt down on my luck and people we're explaining to me just how tough Sheridan Animation was. Realize first the level you have to be at when entering Sheridan College--you already have to be quite good and very disciplined. That means, you must have a strong understanding of very basic levels of art, colour, design, and general knowledge of all these parts. This means constantly learning and soaking up all the knowledge that life gives you. Make it a positive learning experience.

However, it's a process. Remember the word--process. Process, means a series of operations, a series of actions, and by that it means learning in continual development.