The Animated Cartoon Factory

The Good Stuff

On the next few pages you will find an assortment of good artwork... some of it very good.

Most of the people who have artwork in here have some form of college level art training, usually an Art Fundamentals course. Some of them have a couple of years of Illustration and one of them was a professional illustrator who wanted to get into animation (and eventually dropped out after the first year because of the high volume of work that needs to be produced to make an animated cartoon.)

In my experience, there are four reasons that people apply to an animation program:

1) The person has watched cartoons for all their life, loves cartoons, and wants to be involved in making cartoons professionally,

2) For one reason or another, they chose Art as a major in high school and did pretty well with it getting A's and B's,

3) They didn't do very well in the major academic courses such as Math and Science, so Mom's dream of having a Doctor or Rocket Scientist in the family kinda went out the window when you said you wanted to be an artist,

4) Your dream is to make cartoons and you can't find yourself doing anything else for the rest of your life.

These people who fall into some or all of these reasons fall into four distinct categories:

1) A gifted person, who can draw extremely well with or without any formal training,

2) A good artist, who loves to draw and needs some guidance to move to a higher level,

3) A mediocre artist, who likes drawing but doesn't take it seriously enough to grow in their abilities,
(there is a sub-category here which is the mediocre artist, who likes drawing and wants to become serious about learning how to grow in their abilities),

4) A poor artist, who draws but can't see their own mistakes and thinks they are much better than they really are.

The first two and the sub-category of three are people who, with determination and hard work could make it into a professional studio and make a decent living from it. The people who don't take it seriously or who think they are better than they really are don't usually make it and if they do, they don't last very long.

So, why am I saying all this? As you will see in the following images, these are all people who are from the first two categories. As with any job out there, it is a competition as to who can be the best. If you have a company and you are hiring only one person and four people show up for the interview, one from each category above, who would you hire? Why, the gifted person at the top of course. The same is true for a program which has a limited number of seats available. If there are 44 seats available in our program and 1500 people apply, we'll take the top 44 applicants because they are the most likely to succeed and do well in the future. Does this mean that the next 200 on the list couldn't do as well? Not at all. I have found in the past that there are some students who just barely got into the program went on to have a great carreer in animation surpassing the top students in the initial intake.

If you don't get accepted the first time, take a drawing course of some sort and develop your skills so that your next application is even better. If this is your burning desire, nothing is going to stop you from fulfilling your dream. Don't give up. Apply to more than one program, try again the next year.

And now on to the artwork. For each drawing I will make some comments about the work and point out any good or bad points. Remember, this is only my opinion here.

Life Drawing

These two pieces are what is generally understood as gestural drawings. Each one no longer than 5 minutes to complete to this stage. You'll most likely be saying to yourself, "What's so good about these? The hands and feet are missing and it looks like a bunch of scribbles." Well, you're absolutely right about those points, however, the intent is to convey a moment in time captured quickly and, for the most part accurately. Now, by themselves, these are not the very best things to put into your portfolio. But, with some other, more sustained and completed poses, would round out the portfolio nicely. The form of the model is clear and the proportions, for the most part are accurate.

See any major differences here?

This is also a gestural drawing, probably a minute or two at the most. This one has some structural errors in the stomach and pelvic regions but the neat thing here is the use of the curved lines to describe the attitude of the pose. (A bit wonky on the right forearm though)

This is a nice sustained pose about 15 minutes in length. Good proportions and volume, well structured. The model looks like they're on a perspective plane. The shading is simple and vey nicely done on the leg. Excellent line weight as well (good use of thick and thin lines to describe the form.)

This is another, very nicely done sustained pose. There is a minimal amount of shading done, with the focus on the line. A nice twist to the spine while sustaining the balance of the pose. An excellent feeling of weight here.

This person submitted a series of these types of gestures along with some mediocre sustained poses. The thing that sold us on their ability was they way they portrayed the movement. It is very fluid and captures the moment perfectly.

This is an example of cross contour drawing. It's a typical life drawing exercise to get you to think about the three dimensional form of the model. One of these is o.k. but don't put it on every drawing.

Back to Portfolio Requirements

Bad Stuff