Sheridan Animation Portfolio - Help!

[Pall_09]

Hey,

I'm applying for the Animation Program in Sheridan and require some help with the portfolio.. I'm kinda stuck with Layout Drawings and would like to get some tips for it..
Also I wanna know if my life drawings are good enough..
Does anyone have any tips for the portfolio??..

Life Drawings Link -
http://picasaweb.google.com/raopalla...eat=directlink

(Lemme know if the link isn't working!!)

[robtheR0B0t]

Hey looking at your stuff and you should definitely go get better scans. Bad scans make bad pictures.

Also remember that sometimes less is more. I'm not saying put the bare minimum in, doing the bare minimum is almost always a bad idea. But the more you put in the more mistakes they will find. And 6 or 7 pieces of good art is allot better than 10 pieces of mediocre art.

Construction is so important. you definitely want to show construction.

Make sure you go by the portfolio requirements. Don't add anything they don't want. Don't miss anything they want. Following instructions is easy but so important.

Learn from the people who came before you. Buy books like the illusion of life, animators survival guide, Preston Blair has some really good books, Tom Bancraft has one, pretty much every animated thing now has an art of book (google animation books). Also and study different styles. Allot of artists have self published books now so those are a great place to study styles. Blogs are a great and free resource. Don't completely rip off other peoples drawings. Plagiarism in your portfolio is very bad. But show that you are putting the work in, have an interest in animation and are going to really put yourself into your work.

If you really don't think that your skills are up to par, I think that Sheridan has a pre-animation program but I'm not sure. I know that Algonquin in Ottawa has one. It is a one year course that works on your fundamentals and helps you make your portfolio.

Hope this helps.

[Pall_09]

Hey thanks.. ..

I'll make sure I get better scans and also work more on life drawing. I am using Preston blair books to learn character animation better. Yeah Sheridan does have a pre animation program if I'm not mistaken. Art Fundanmentals. If I don'e get through for Animation, I'll be taking Art Fundamentals.

Thanks for your tips. Were really helpful

[Gerard Sternik]

Hi.

I have a few suggestions after looking at the portfolio examples that you posted online.

Your life drawings are lacking fundamentally in a few areas:

-gesture and its development into shape/structure, contour and proportion.

For life drawings that go into animation portfolios, gesture is the key ingredient that needs to be present in your drawings to provide the "life" of the drawing and to breathe "life" into all the other elements of observational figure drawing.

The reason that a number of your drawings appear "wooden" and stiff is because you haven't fully expressed the gesture of the figures convincingly.

Now, there isn't very much structure in your figure drawings, so that you are very heavy on the "outline" and sparse on any drawing to suggest the masses, shapes and plane changes inside the contours.

When you're gesture drawing is not strong, this in turn affects your proportion because you're not conceiving of the figure as a whole unit from the start and then extending everything else you do from that initial conception of the whole.
Trying to piece together a series of parts to make a "convincing" looking figure drawing is actually much more difficult than seeing and feeling the whole pose as a single unit from the start and drawing that.
When you piece parts of the body together, you'll generally get very stiff looking figures that aren't convincingly put together and are out of proportion.

Take a look at these drawings from the students on our website:

animation portfolio

animation portfolio

animation portfolio

In these figure drawings, you can feel the good grasp of gesture that the students have, and you can see that they show structure and anatomy without losing the feel of the gesture.

This is important!!

You cannot use tone in the Sheridan animation portfolio to depict 3-D shape, so linear constructive drawing is about all you've got...if you don't take advantage of that then your figures tend to look fairly flat.


As to the object drawing that you posted..forget the tone, they don't want to see that...they want you to show all the internal constructive drawing you've done to create the objects and show how you handle the perspective.


That's a start......

Go through the portfolios on our site carefully and study what the students are doing there.
That should give you at least an accurate idea of what direction to head in.

Are you a high school student?


Gerard Sternik / Director

Animation Portfolio Workshop

..oh yes and with respect to Art Fundamentals and animation school prep, there is a very informative thread on this site:

Art Fundamentals

which talks about that very topic.

Cheers!

[Pall_09]

Hi Gerard!

I'm Pallavi Rao and was supposed to come for the workshop. Thanks for your insights. I started working on the life drawings asap and also looked up some videos on youtube on quick pose drawings. I guess I got your point when you meant my drawings look stiff. Can you tell me which of these life drawings come closest to having all the fundamentals?

Can you give me some tips for layout drawings? Do we have to use just basic Persepective or anything else as well?

Thanks again for your insights
Really Helpful!

Cheers!

[Gerard Sternik]

Pallavi..... what do you mean by basic perspective?
Are you asking if the drawing should be one or two point?

In terms of your life drawings...eliminate the stiffest ones.

If I was you I'd try doing as many more life drawings as possible before you choose any for the final portfolio.



Gerard Sternik / Director

Animation Portfolio Workshop

[Pall_09]

Hi Gerard..

I wanted to know what they would be looking for in the layout drawings.. And yeah about the 1 point and 2 point perspective.. We can use 1 point perspective right? ( I read on some blog to avoid using one point perspective.. )

And yeah I'm still working on my life drawings

Thanks

[Gerard Sternik]

Hi Pallavi.

We have students who run the large lines of the room their drawing back to one point.....but and it's a big but, they also are able to then handle multiple points in a variety of other positions in their drawing to place various objects, etc in the right position and aspect with respect to the overall controlling perspective lines of the rooms.
This gives the room drawing a more natural feel then trying to get every single item to conform to the single point.

I think it's wise to use the 2 point system for the Sheridan animation portfolio, if you are unable to understand or handle a single point system enhanced by a variety of "floating" or other mutiple points.

Take a look at the room drawings from these portfolios of our students to see what I mean about the multiple point and two point systems:


animation portfolio

animation portfolio

animation portfolio



How's the life drawing coming?



Gerard Sternik / Director

Animation Portfolio Workshop

[Pall_09]

Hi Gerard

I have been working on the layout drawings using 2 point perspective. It turned out to be very tedious but I got a hang of it! I have been working on that and a bit of everything.
I have also been practicing Life Drawing for a while now.. Gestures while travelling and life drawing sessions as well.. I see an improvement in the drawings and I have given the link below for them. I have also been doing animal drawings in the zoo and they proved to be very difficult. But I'm gonna keep practicing and hopefully will improve!

Life Drawing Link - http://picasaweb.google.com/raopalla...eat=directlink

Thanks
Pallavi