Tyla Bolte – Page 3 – MTM College

How to Prepare a Portfolio for Art School Applications, A General Guide.

Whether you’d like to start formal studies in art and design, animation, concept art or a sequential arts program, it helps to learn more about how to prepare the portfolio required for your review. For an outstanding portfolio, we suggest that in addition to the required pieces asked for by the college, you should consider asking if you can include extras that you feel good about. These pieces can reflect some of your personality; your ideas, technical skill and interests. This helps set your portfolio apart from others when college admissions officers review it.

Tips for Preparing a Portfolio for Art College

The following tips and guidelines will help you prepare a better portfolio.

Double Check the Requirements – One of the most basic, and biggest mistakes you can make is to miss something that is clearly stated in the college’s application requirements. If it isn’t stated, a rule of thumb is to include 10 to 20 pieces in the portfolio. And submit your portfolio on time!
Pay Attention to the presentation:
- if you need to photograph some pieces, do it well! The best concept art ever can look terrible if it is photographed in poor lighting.
- Clean up your drawings. If you are showing your sketchbook, for example, use a kneaded rubber eraser to clean up smudged or messy pages.
- Organize the pieces so that is easy for the reviewer to check off required pieces.
- Double check that you have everything required for your application! What else did you need to include besides the portfolio? The care you take is an indication that you will be a serious, focused student who can follow directions.
- If the college does an in-person interview, get there a few minutes early. Think of this as a job interview. Be sure you are well groomed. Smile. Make eye contact… Introduce yourself.

If you liked this post, check out our article on how to begin a career in animation and many others on fine art, graphic design, and much more.

4 Pioneering Digital Animation Innovations from Pixar

You don’t get very far in any conversation about digital animation, or film animation, before the name Pixar pops up. That’s true even if the chat isn’t about technical innovations.

Many people who are interested in digital animation, from fans of the genre to those who want to make a career , got their first taste of it from the original ‘Toy Story’ movie. Released in 1995, ‘Toy Story’ was the first computer-animated feature film and set the standard of the day for digital animation.

In the over two decades since Toy Story hit film screens, Pixar has released almost one computer-animated film per year, including 2018’s ‘Incredibles 2’. Along the way, Pixar also created many digital animation innovations to keep up with demand for more movies and more realism and flexibility in 3D film animation.

3D Animation Innovations from Pixar

It would be difficult to list all of the innovative digital animation tools and techniques developed by Pixar. But here are three that stretched the envelope of what’s possible in digital animation.

Global Illumination – Lighting may be more important for animated films than it is for their real-life counterparts. Better lighting effects improve realism. Global Illumination uses a group of algorithms to determine not just how light strikes a surface, but how it bounces from surface to surface.
Universal Scene Description (USD) – Imagine many steps in the 3D animation process being able to be worked on simultaneously. Instead of waiting for characters to be animated before they are lit, it could all happen at the same time. That’s the level of animation complexity that USD allows.
RenderMan – Ahh, time to render your 3D animation for a film. Come back later. Unless you happen to be using Renderman, which eliminates the delay between when an artist makes an edit and when the rendered image appears.

3D animation is part of the curriculum for the Classical & Computer Animation & Production Diploma from Max the Mutt. We have graduates who work at many leading animation companies, including Pixar. Contact us to learn more.

Our Trip to the Royal Winter Fair – Thoughts from Tina Seemann

Every year in November Max the Mutt students and faculty attend the Royal Winter Fair. A great opportunity to spend a day drawing animals and people on location.- Tina Seemann, MTM Co-director and Animation Program coordinator, had these thoughts to share about their day:

“With November comes our annual trip to the Royal Winter Fair, when the country comes to the city. A grand day out, it offers the students a combined drawing opportunity to capture people and farm animals together on the same page.

Royal Winter Fair 2018 sketches - by year 3 Concept Art Ben Kruck — sketches – by year 3 Concept Art Ben Kruck

The horse jumping competitions are difficult enough to catch on paper, never mind the manic ‘Superdogs’ show which has hundreds of school kids screaming! Our students drew everything; from the sheep shearing, to the poultry exhibition, from the heifer auction to the petting zoo.

Royal Winter Fair 2018 sketches - by year 3 Illustration student Theo Murgan & year 3 Concept Art student Soho Park — sketches – by year 3 Illustration student Theo Murgan & year 3 Concept Art student Soho Park

Royal Winter Fair 2018 - by year 3 Concept Art Soho Park — sketches – by year 3 Concept Art Soho Park

I had bought a few tiny plastic horse models and the Animal Drawing texts so that the students might see animal skeletal landmarks.

(Funny that this image is the only one to feature students and ‘animals’, makes us look like giants!)

Ed, Allen and Steve were also shepherding the group and added their life drawing expertise.

Bison burger anyone? How about a ‘beaver tail’ or taffy apple?”

We love the Royal Winter Fair!

BONE MOTHER Screening: a Halloween Treat for MTM Students

On Tuesday, Oct 30, Montreal-based animator and director, Dale Hayward, a graduate of Max the Mutt’s animation program, visited us just in time for Halloween! Dale give our students a talk about his work as a stop-motion animator, and gave a special screening of his new award winning, stop-motion animated film, BONE MOTHER !!

BONE MOTHER Halloween — Bone Mother poster

Film synopsis: “A vain and arrogant youth dares to enter Baba Yaga‘s living house of bones. What emerges will forever fill our nights with terror.”.

Dale was in Toronto for the opening of Bone Mother, as well as for the opening of a gallery show of the props created for the film!

Dale and his wife and artistic partner Sylvie, met while working at Cuppa Coffee Studios in Toronto, and moved to Montreal where in 2011 they co-founded their company, See Creature.

Since then they have amassed years of experience both in commercial and independent animation and have done several projects for the NFB. They’ve produced stop-motion ads for Nike and other major brands, animated TV series, and also worked on features like Le Petit Prince. Dale showed See Creature’s demo reel, spoke about the creative potential of stop-motion, and spoke about the making of Bone Mother from script to screen. This included using 3D printing technology to create the props! Then we all watched Bone Mother, their award winning new film.

At the end of the showing, Dale answered questions, toured the college, and spoke with some eager students.

From See Creature, the film Bone Mother was born !

Co-directed by Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvé, and produced by the NFB Animation Studio.

Bone Mother is a must see !!

From all of us at Max the Mutt, we want to thank you Dale for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit us!

We would also like to congratulate both Dale and Sylvie for their continued success and we can’t wait to see what they create next !!

For more on the behind the scenes, the story and the making-of Hayward’s and Trouvé’s film, visit NFB’s blog about the film and for an interview with the co-directors.

For more making-of photos check out the Bone Mother instagram account.

Artwork from Bone Mother will be exhibited at Toronto’s Liberty Arts Gallery, opening November 1 and on display a month, and Dale and Sylvie are giving a masterclass on the making of Bone Mother on Nov 4 at the 2018 edition of the TAAFI Conference in Toronto.

Once more, Max the Mutt’s Animal Drawing students visit the Royal Ontario Museum !

Tina Seemann, Co-director of Max the Mutt and Animation program Coordinator, took our Year 3 Concept Art and Illustration students to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for their Animal Drawing course and had this to say about their visit:

” Even though we added 2 new bird skeletons ( a falcon and a pheasant, beautifully articulated by Sachi Schott ) to our anatomical collection, I still value a ROM visit where we get to draw more skeletons, birds and various animals as well.

For our Illustration and Concept Art students, the ROM is an amazing resource! Mark Peck, the head of Ornithology is always kind enough to take students on a ‘behind-the-scenes’ tour of the museum’s collections. He shows us the collections of ‘bird skins’, taxidermy, eggs and all kinds of wonderful things!

The students were really happy to learn that they are welcome to return and draw from the collections should they require bird reference for a future project.

The ROM is a resource that any young artist can use when the internet isn’t enough. 3D models are always best! “

What is Traditional Representational Art & Why is it Crucial for Concept Artists?

Representational art quite simply ‘represents’ its subject in a way that most viewers can easily recognize. Traditional representational art uses perspective (including colour and atmospheric perspective) to present the illusion of three-dimensional reality on the paper or canvas. The knowledge and skills required to create realistic illusion grew slowly through the centuries.

Throughout history, most art, including paintings and sculptures, were representational. The earliest known examples of representational art are indeed the earliest known forms of art; cave paintings that date back up to 40,000 years ago.

The first known picture to make use of linear perspective was created by the Florentine architect Fillipo Brunelleshi (1377-1446). Painted in 1415, it depicted the Baptistery in Florence from the front gate of the unfinished cathedral. ( see A History of Perspective in Art – Op-Art.co.uk).

Although other basic types of art, including abstract and non-objective art, emerged in the 20th century, traditional, it is realistic representational art skills that are necessary for AAA video game and live action concept artists. Why? If your goal is to create realistic environments and the characters who inhabit them, you obviously need to understand how this illusion is achieved. Photoshop depends on your drawing and painting skills: you must first understand how to draw human beings, animals and creatures, locations and props that convince the viewer that he/she is looking at a real place before you can take those abilities into computer programs.

Representational art skills are core subjects in the Concept Art Diploma program at Max the Mutt.

A Quick Look at 5 Different Types of Animation

If you’re thinking about a career in animation, you’ve probably done some animating. Maybe you’ve always doodled on a flipbook. Or you might have grown up with a computer animation program. In any case, you have a pretty good idea of what is animation, or you wouldn’t be thinking about making it your career!

But, no matter what animating you’ve done, you’ve probably only used one of the 5 basic types of animation. For example, your flipbook animations are an example of 2D animation, or traditional animation. The work you’ve done on a computer is probably and example of 3D or computer animation.

5 Basic Types of Animation

Here’s a quick look at 5 types of animation to help you have a better idea of the possibilities for a career in animation.

Traditional 2D Animation – One of the older forms of animation, every frame of a traditional animation sequence is created by hand, similar to what you did with with flipbooks. Back in the day, animators used a process called onion skinning. Working on a light table, animators could see previous drawings through the paper so they could draw the next frame in the sequence. Today, even traditional animation is created using a computer. Disney’s classic animated films and the old Bugs Bunny cartoons are examples of traditional animation.
2D Vector-Based Animation – In addition to aiding in the process of traditional animation, computer technology makes it possible to create 2D vector-based animations. In addition to frame-by-frame animation, 2D vector-based animation technology gives animators the option to create ‘rigs’ for a character. This allows the animator to move individual body parts, instead of redrawing the entire character for each frame.
Computer Animation – While 2D vector-based animations are created with computer, computer animation refers to 3D animations. Today, 3D animation is the most common form of animation. Computer animation requires the same understanding of the principles of movement and composition as traditional animation. But 3D animation doesn’t necessarily require drawing skills. In a way, it is more like working with puppets. Once a character has been designed, 3D animation programs give animators the tools to animate every element of a character, step by step, in three dimensions.
Motion Graphics – Also computer-based, motion graphics are not as character-driven as the forms of animation we’ve mentioned so far. In a way, the ‘characters’ are graphic elements or text that are animated in creative ways, often for advertising, promotions and titling sequences in films and TV shows. While motion graphics may not require the same understanding of human body motion dynamics as other forms of animation, frame composition and perspective are key.
Stop Motion – For the last type of animation we’ll talk about today, we’ll go back to a traditional form, stop-motion animation. Using live-action video or film cameras, stop-motion animation is done by capturing a frame of a still object, then slightly moving it and/or changing its shape or other characteristic, then capturing another frame. The process is repeated so that when the captured frames are played in sequence, the object appears to be animated.

If you’re interested in a career in animation, the Classical & Computer Animation & Production Diploma program at Max the Mutt is designed to give you all the tools for success.

What Does a Character Designer Do?

Even if we do say so ourselves, that’s a great question! If you’re interested in character design, you may have designed lots of your own characters. But you’ve probably not come close to doing what a character designer does.

What is Character Design?

It’ll help to talk about character design itself before we get into what a character designer does. Generally, character design is the development of new, original characters for a computer or traditional illustration or animation. Character designers may also be used to design characters for toy manufacturers.

Character designers work from a character definition that might be part of a story outline or script for a film, TV series, video game, graphic novel, or book illustration. Character styles can range from very graphic, like ‘Stewie’ on Family Guy, to photorealistic, like ‘The Incredible Hulk’.

What a Character Designer Does

Character design is firmly based in 2D drawing. Whether by hand with pencil and paper, or with digital drawing tools, a solid ability to draw, particularly human and animal anatomy, is key to being a character designer.

Among other details, the following are some of the steps a character designer takes to design a character from scratch.

Immerse themselves in the story or script to understand the character’s role in it.
Research anatomy, costuming, physical settings, time-related references (past, present, future), specific to the script and character.
Review concept art to understand the look and style of the project
Draw. And draw some more. From initial impressions of the general look of different versions of a character, to showing each character version ‘in action’, there’s lots of drawing to be done.
Give the character personality and believability. While not a separate step in character design, each layout must be more than a visual design of a character. Even if it’s done in stages, a believable personality must be conveyed in the design layouts.
Once characters are approved, the designer may be tasked with creating a model sheet of the character that shows the character from different angles
Some projects may need other layouts showing the character in particular poses, or expressing different moods and emotions.

This is a just a brief explanation of what a character designer does. To learn more, get in touch with MTM College today.

How to Begin a Career in Animation

Maybe you started animating stick figures on a notepad as a kid. Maybe you love playing video games and would like to experiment with animation software. Or the idea of seeing your characters come to life really excites you. If so, a career in animation might be for you!

In any case, you’re in luck. There are lots of opportunities for people like you to make a good living doing what they love. Except the reality is that talent, skill and passion are usually not enough for you to start a career in animation. So what does it take to get a toehold in the animation industry?

The Benefits of Animation Career Training

In addition to artistic skills and dedication, animation studios look for people who understand what it takes to survive and prosper in the business of animation. Among other elements of what is needed to work in animation, animation career training will help you develop the following:

Develop Your Foundation Skills

Young people are often surprised to discover that in this era of 3D films that old-fashioned drawing is still required. Software can manipulate objects but imagination is what drives everything! Begin your artistic education with a strong foundation of perspective, composition, still-life/object drawing as well as plenty of life drawing. From learning more of the basics of drawing and cartooning, to exploring character design and studying both classical, 2D software-based as well as advanced 3D animation, an in-depth education will help throughout your animation career, wherever it takes you. And a broader range of skills opens up more possibilities for finding a position as well as keeping it.

Learn to Be a Professional Animator

The perceived wisdom in the industry is that it takes about 10 years to become a really good animator. When you finish college, you cannot expect to be an expert but you can be ready to have a professional attitude. Being professional in the workplace means being punctual for work and for meetings, being prepared to take criticism and be ready to redo your work and following directions. Having good professional skills and being a good communicator makes for a better team player. Animation is a team endeavour not unlike an effective and winning sports team.

Build a Solid Demo Reel and website

Studios looking to hire will be interested in seeing what you can do; your website and a demo reel will showcase your skills. Firstly, the studio reps will want to see that you can draw and your demo reel will show off your animation skills. If you get called in for an interview, then you can be assured you have the job as far as your skill level is concerned.

A personal interview so that they can assess your professionalism comes next!

Getting ready for the interview

If you have a solid foundation of animation training you may apply for a variety of different jobs that an animation studio may be offering. Before you even apply for a specific posting, do your homework! Research to become familiar with the production work the studio creates and consider whether you will be a good fit for the company. That way, when they ask you why they should consider hiring you, you’ll be ready with a good answer.

The Animation Diploma Program at Max the Mutt not only teaches you all the artistic and professional skills you’ll need for a career in animation, it prepares you for the realities of that career and will help you develop the necessary skills you need to help launch your dream!

To learn more, contact Max the Mutt today.