Capilano Commercial Animation Portfolio

For anyone interested in applying to Capilano's Commercial Animation Program,  This is my portfolio that got me admitted into the program.

Figure Drawing - 3 to 5 minute drawings.  These were done with a china marker on newsprint.  I was focusing on expressive use of line.

 Figure Drawing - 3 hour studies - The first two were done in colored pencil on sketch paper.  The Other two were done in black and white conte crayon on craft paper. I was focusing on as realistic a representation I could.

 Hand Drawings - 20 minutes - These were done in colored pencil on sketch paper, again focusing on as realistic a representation as I could.

Gesture of the Moving Model - These were done either in china marker on newsprint or ball point pen on sketch paper.  I wasn't focused on anything except capturing as much as I could as fast as I could since the model was in constant motion.

 Sketchbook Drawings - These were either done in ball point pen or ebony graphite pencil on sketch paper.  I found various public venues where I could sit and draw people going about their lives.  Sometimes they would hold still for long enough, but more often I would draw what I could and then finish the rest from imagination after they moved on.   The last drawing is an entire scene I drew in pencil and finished the line work in marker. Throughout the process of preparing my portfolio, this is the exercise I feel did the most for my artistic growth.  I highly recommend all artists devote some time to this type of study.

 Perspective Drawings - These were drawn on location with mechanical pencil using point to point technique.  Then, I went home and traced a new drawing over the original sketches using a ruler to place a horizon line and vanishing points to make the perspective theoretically correct.  Finally the line work was finished with marker.

Arm Anatomy - These were drawn in colored pencil on sketch paper.  For this study I drew my own arm in the mirror then used Jeno Barcsay's Anatomy for the Artist as a reference to identify the bones and muscles.  Using my own arm as a reference allowed me to show my knowledge of anatomy without copying directly from a textbook.  It was a humbling exercise because I discovered I did not know the anatomy of the arm as well as I had thought.  I have since developed this method of study further and will write about it soon.

Dog Drawings - As with the sketchbook drawings, I worked in ball point pen and ebony graphite pencil on sketch paper.  I spend hours drawing in the dog park.  Since dogs will not pose for you, I had to learn to capture the basic action of the dog's pose then fill in the rest from imagination.  To do this I needed to really know what dogs look like down to the structure and anatomy.  Joe Weatherly's The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals was a great help in this.  Still, it took me weeks before I could get anything that looked decent.

 Dog and Horse Anatomy - These were done in pencil on sketch paper.  I studied the Anatomy of the animals in Joe Weatherly's Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals then applied what I know while observing the animals themselves.

Cartoon Characters - If you look in the blog archive you will see I have been drawing in this style for years.  The color drawings were cleaned up using Illustrator and Photoshop.  The eight drawing turnaround were done to show that I understand the characters in three dimensions.