Applying to an Animation Degree, looking for feedback please.

[Marc_H]

Hey, first post!

Because I have a million bits of paper with drawings on them, and half-full sketchbooks, I've decided to scan all my work, arrange it onto A2 sheets, and have them printed. I'm using this portfolio to apply to Edinburgh College of Art's Animation Degree.

I'd love to hear some feedback regarding what I should have more or less of in the folio. Please, be blunt if you think something's not working, don't worry about offending me or anything.

Also, some of the drawings have been photographed rather than scanned, so the image quality suffers.

Here we go!

Some of these are 2 minute figures, some are 1 minute






These were more like 40 minutes. The one on the left is from photo, and the one on the right is from life




Left was from a photo ref, right was from life


I was visiting my Mum, and she has this huge collection of national geographic magazines. She taught me how to do these. It was fun to draw people that aren't the european and american people I see all the time.


from life, apart from the hawk which was dead and stuffed


I hadn't used paint since school until a month or so ago. All they ever teach us at college is software.


These were fun experiments. In the top one I was seeing what would happen if I just pulled a colour scheme out my ass and ran with it. And the fawn at the bottom was my first try with gouache. I didn't really know how to use it, so it ended up really muddy and atonal. There is a good drawing under all that paint though, I promise!


I did these yesterday. I'm starting to get a better grip on painting


I really like Andreas Deja's drawings of big cats, and it made me want to draw them for myself.


Here I'm starting to look at seals to develop into an animatable character for my short


Charicaturing them wasn't too difficult since they already have these big cute eyes


Final designs, and in context below.


I won't put up my storyboard drawings because they're terrible. If I had a second person working on my short rather than just me, I'd have done better drawings, but for now they just need to remind me of what's already in my head. I might make some fake storyboards just for the portfolio's sake though.



I'll get a clip of the short up once I find a way for premiere to export a video that's small enough to upload, and watchable quality.
In the meantime here's an irrelevant pencil test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5VnUL0XZhw

In the next couple of weeks I want to do some studies of hands and feet, because I have a lot of trouble with them, as well as tackle painting a self-portrait.
before submission time I want to do a lot more drawings of people in public, not posing.

I have a 2 hour life drawing class each week, and I do occasionally find some even classes and that sort of thing.

Thanks for looking

[Grey_Rift]

if u want to draw figures then try to constuct the figures more i can see just by your drawings that u didn't use any build up you just draw the contours of the figures and thats the reason why your drawings are now flat and have no volume as for the animations try to thumbnail more i don't see any thumbnail about how you started on your animation i u want to make something good than make a lott of studies about it

[bgreenart]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with Grey_Rift. You're drawings have a long way to go. On a few of the animal gestures you show the underlying forms and those are your best sketches. I actually really like a couple of the little chicken sketches you have. But you ignore that base structure on your larger drawings.
Your figures are VERY flat and need a lot of work on the anatomy. You're drawing what you think you know and not what you see in front of you. The animals in your portfolio are clearly drawn from photos, they show no understanding of what makes up that animal. You're just copying the shapes on the photo without thinking of what's making that shape happen.
GO DRAW FROM LIFE!!! Sit in the mall food court or Walmart and draw people standing in line. Draw your friends. OBSERVE what's really there and think about anatomy, structure, gravity, etc.....understand what you're looking at.

[Marc_H]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it. I think I'll edit my post soon and take some stuff out.
I know what you're talking about, drawing with form rather than flat shapes, and it drives me nuts because I can identify it when I see it, but I don't know how to translate it into pencil strokes when I'm drawing things for myself. Can you recommend any defined techniques that might help me? I've got about a month before I need to upload my mini-folio(which includes 2 weeks out college) and about 3 months before a full portfolio review, so I've got enough time to at least get a little better.

Those chickens were the only animals at the wildlife park I visited that would sit still when I went near them to draw. I find it pretty amazing that artists can get good drawings of animals when they're moving around all the time.

[Marc_H]

are these a bit more of a better approach?
They were stuffed animals in the museum. Maybe I should start a sketchbook thread.

[bgreenart]

These are much better! You still need to "construct" the forms as Grey_Rift stated before. You're still just drawing contour lines and it still fails to show knowledge of the anatomy of the animal you're drawing. Look at "The Weatherly Guide To Drawing Animals" by Joe Weatherly and "The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature" by Ken Hultgren. These books are Awesome for learning how to "Build" animals. Plus that same concept can easily be applied to human forms and even inanimate objects too.

[msafs]

I'd recommend buying a nice anatomy book or finding a free one like Loomis'. Start drawing from life a lot, but also start to study the muscles underlying the skin instead of just looking for outlines. Try to draw contour lines around the form to show perspective and structure. What you did with the black and red deer drawing is a good start. If you're at a museum, try drawing the animals at different angles and see how they change with your viewpoint.