Max the Mutt will be hosting a First Year Student Art Show, an exhibition of first year student art work from all programs, on Saturday, April 27th and Sunday, April 28th from 11 am to 3 pm !
Our semester is ending, and soon we’ll be setting up this year’s show! Below are photos from last year’s preparation ……
All are invited! So save the dates and come help us celebrate our students’ extraordinary achievements that came from their dedication, hard work, inspiration, and the great instruction they received from MTM faculty!
Where you will enjoy representational drawings, paintings, design, perspective drawing, and classical animation too!
We look forward to seeing you!
And for more information, email us atadmissions@maxthemutt.com or contact us if you have any questions. Make sure to check out our newest art workshops and upcoming dates.
Yowza! Animation dropped in to talk to our Animation and Concept Art students last Friday.
Sally Walker, Studio Coordinator of Yowza! Animation, gave us a call in January to suggest visiting MTM for early portfolio reviews with year 4 Animation and Concept Art students. We agreed on February 22 to give students a little more time to get ready for this very early and exciting chance to show their work (they won’t be graduating until May!).
Yowza, a major Toronto animation studio that does work for Disney, Warner Bros, and Dreamworks to name a few, is also well known for how well they treat their employees!
We were very happy that Animation Director Tom Joliffe, Art Director Jeffrey Timmins and Studio Coordinator Sally Walker took the time out of their busy schedules to visit us.
They were able to enjoy a quick tour of the college and saw three floors of halls with student work on exhibit. Then they gave their presentation to year 2, 3 and 4 students. During the presentation they spoke about Yowza’s philosophy and artistic aspirations, and the skills the studio is looking for — then they gave us a chance to see some of their beautiful recent work! We were truly excited about the quality and beauty of what they are creating. Sally tells us that Yowza is contributing to a high-end 2D feature film, several hand-drawn series, and a stop motion preschool show for CBC (Kiri & Lou).
The presentation was followed by the opportunity for each graduating Animation and Concept Art student to have a personal portfolio review with both Tom and Jeff.
Year 3 students were also encouraged to submit applications for paid summer internships! This was an exciting and inspiring visit for all of us!
Thanks so much to Tom, Jeff and Sally from YOWZA! Animation for your time! We look forward to your next visit!
PS Sally recently emailed us: “About the visit, …. the students were a beacon of intelligence in our future industry and we are thrilled to have a connection with the school. Working with MTM graduates for years has been a pleasure and we see them going very far.”
For more information about Max the Mutt Contact us to schedule a tour and learn about what our school offers and why studios, like Yowza, want to hire our students.
If you love manga comics, you’ve probably wanted to be a manga artist. It’s obviously a very distinct artistic style. Learning how to draw manga-style characters is a good way to start to learn how to capture manga’s unique techniques. And having manga art in your portfolio is a definite plus if you want to begin studies towards a sequential arts degree.
The Basics of Drawing Manga Characters
As in most comic book art, the devil’s in the details in mastering the manga art style. But if you don’t get the basics down, your finished character will never be right, regardless of how accurate and detailed your character becomes.
Before You Begin – It’s important to pay attention to the differences between manga characters, real-life human anatomy and other comic book character styles. Manga characters tend to be taller, eight heads tall versus the standard 7.5 heads. And their heads are somewhat smaller in proportion to the rest of the body. Despite the differences, it’s still worthwhile to use a posable art figure to help you get the proportion right.
Start With a Wire Frame – Using a simple, face-on standing pose, copy the posable figure. Use circles for the joints and ovals between the joints to represent the muscles. With a manga character’s slimmer build, muscles in the lower arm and lower leg don’t carry all the way down to the wrists or ankles.
Draw the Outline – Use gradually curving, sleek lines to create the body outline of your character. Use the elements of your wireframe to guide the placement and depth of curves.
Remove the Wireframe – Erase the wireframe guidelines from your character. Look at the overall character and adjust anything that seems out of proportion or not quite right.
With your basic figure complete, you’re ready to add details like the facial features, hair and clothing.
Concept Art students at Max the Mutt enjoyed a presentation by UbiSoft Toronto Art Director Patrick Ingoldsby.
Pat has supported Max the Mutt from the very beginning of the 4 year Concept Art Diploma Program, and attended the very first Industry Event that included the first Concept Art graduates, but this was the first time he held a meeting to speak with students about his career, about UbiSoft and what students should be including in their portfolios.
Hilary Phillips, Concept Art Program Coordinator, had this to say about Patrick Ingoldsby’s visit:
“Patrick spoke in depth about working for UbiSoft Toronto, a company and community he really enjoys. He’s been directing there for 9 years and feels it’s the best job he’s had. Pat gave the students real insights into what kind of skills Ubisoft is looking for, both hard skills like what to put in a portfolio, and soft skills like professionalism, team work, how to comport themselves in an interview. His break down of the departments in game creation gave the students an idea of the various career paths that the skills they are developing will open for them.
Finally he spoke of his personal journey as an artist and the jobs he had before becoming an Art Director at Ubisoft. Pat is a former production artist, now Art Director. He was a production 3D artist in games before becoming an Art Director, and before he got into games, an illustrator in both print and animation. The story of Pat’s professional journey really resonated with the students, who are thinking themselves about how their careers may unfold once they graduate.”
Ubisoft Art Director- Patrick Ingoldsby – with Hilary Phillips, MTM Concept Art Program Coordinator
Our sincere thanks to Patrick Ingoldsby for taking the time to visit Max the Mutt’s Concept Art students!
We are proud that many Max the Mutt graduates, including two 2018 graduates, are currently working as concept artists and animators at UbiSoft.
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.
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.
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.
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.
sketches – by year 3 Illustration student Theo Murgan & year 3 Concept Art student Soho Parksketches – 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?”
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 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 BoneMother 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.
Dale Hayward
At the end of the showing, Dale answered questions, toured the college, and spoke with some eager students.
Dale Hayward with Ariel Alvarado-Montano, MTM year 3 Animation student
Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé of SEE CREATURE Animation
From See Creature, the film Bone Mother was born !
Co-directed by Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvé, and produced by the NFB Animation Studio.
Dale Hayward & Sylvie Trouvé in their basement animation studio for BONE MOTHERBone Mother puppet3D printed face of Baba Yaga puppet – Bone Mother
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.
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.
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! “
