When you walk into the classroom, the instructor is the Director. He or she can’t teach you if you resist direction, and you can’t find out how much value there is in what you are being asked to do without first fully engaging with the process and following directions to the best of your ability.

This requires trust. It also requires putting ego aside and assuming that the people who are instructing have something to share with you. It can be difficult to come out of high school, where many of you were the “school artist,” and suddenly be surrounded by people who had the same reputation. Because so few schools teach “visual language” and because so few students today seem really familiar with the great artists and illustrators of the past, there is also the shock of discovering that you really know very little about the craft of drawing and painting.

This doesn’t reflect at all on your potential. We are not born knowing these things anymore than a ballet dancer is born with turnout. We learn them. We practice. We redo things. We learn from the great artists of the past, from our classes, from practice and observation and the passion to develop ourselves. We have faith that over time we will improve, and we work hard to retain humility and the desire to keep learning all the days of our lives.

As a student I was inspired by an anecdote about Renoir’s last day. It is said that he painted in the morning, ate lunch, and said as he went to take a nap, “Today I learned something!” Renoir was in his eighties, and he didn’t awaken from that nap.

Next week I’ll write more about important “habits of mind” that make people successful, both as students and professionals.

Comic Book Boot Camp – Part 1 with Ty Templeton starts October 2, 2008 (Thursday evenings) CLASS IS FULL.

(more…)

Carla Drmay tries to keep in touch with graduates. With this news from Yue Jing we can now confirm that ALL ’07 grads are working in the animation industry, with the exception of Bingu Ratnapala, who returned to The Arab Emirates to take an advanced course in MAYA !

“I am working in Montreal right now, is a small studio call Blindferret
Entertainment. been here 5 months already, is a fun place, I mostly doing
clean-up, sometime also color and inbetween, i think is a great place to
start and to learn. and i like that we are doing full animation with toon
boom in a pretty traditional way. i think there is an article about our
studio in the latest issue of toonboom newsletter. if you want to know more
about you can find it in the toonboom website.
thank you for supporting us. is great to hear form school and the industry
news. and i will check this email account more often.
yue jing

Daniel Tynan was at Max the Mutt for four years and completed both the three year Diploma in Classical and Computer Animation. And the Advanced Diploma in 3D Computer Animation and Production. Dan has great team spirit and found work as a 2d computer animator with 9 Story Entertainment almost immediately after graduation. By coincidence, I recently spoke with Tia Menich, production Manager and head of recruitment for 9 Story, who spoke about how much they miss Daniel! However, Dan wanted 3D experience and the offer from China was too good to turn down. The following is an email we recently received.

Hi Maxine,

Yes I’m still in China. I’ve been here since November. However because of the Olympics the VISA restrictions are increasing and it is looking like I may have to return to Canada when my current VISA expires in July.

I was in a position here where I had to really learn MAYA in detail and fast because they wanted me to train their staff. Currently I am still doing staff training as the company here increases in size in preparation for a TV series they will be doing based on a famous Chinese novel. “Journey To the West”.

Things are always changing and uncertain in china so I don’t know how long I will stay with this company. Seems their production is still a long way off and I am anxious to work in production again. This weekend I am taking a 12 hour overnight train to a city called Suzhou near Shanghai…. there is a company in Suzhou that is interested in interviewing me as they are looking for an English speaking animation director for their Flash TV series. It is a project for a European client. I’m not sure if I really want to go back to working in Flash animation because I really enjoy the learning curve and challenge of working in 3D. However I will go there and check out the city and company. China has a lot of very very good artists. So they are strong in concept art and character modeling and designs, but I still find the animation here is a weak point. Perhaps because people are working on rushed schedules.

Thanks for your concern. and I will be sure to visit the school again next time I am in Toronto.

Take care, Daniel

One of the difficulties all animation, illustration and concept art programs are having is the diminishing skill base of applicants. Art programs in universities and high schools frequently don’t emphasize skills like life drawing and perspective. Conceptual art and installation art (which I hear less about these days) don’t require students who know how to paint a convincing apple, much less a realistic portrait. As a result, students are emerging with fewer and fewer traditional representational art skills, the very skills that are required in sequential arts.

If you think you want animation, illustration or concept art as a career, please start early! Look for courses that teach perspective, basic eye training, principles of composition, and the language of traditional drawing and painting. Many schools, like Max the Mutt, offer summer courses like “Learn To Draw,” our four week intensive that runs in July. By the summer after your second year in high school you should be looking for courses like this one! Get started! Like learning to play an instrument, or becoming a professional athlete, you can’ t do it overnight. You need to understand the basic principles and then you need lots of time to practice.

You also need to look at great drawings and paintings. Reach out to the greats of the past. Artists like Rembrandt, Daumier, Velasquez, Goya, Vermeer…the list goes on and on. Be adventurous! Go to a good book store and look through the art section. Look for representational artists.Check out the great Japanese wood block artists Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige. Start you book collection. Sometimes you can buy secondhand . Discover and enjoy the great illustrators, men and women like Daumier, Rackham, Beatrix Potter, and Wyeth.

Start doing copies from the masters. We use “Drawing lessons From The Great Masters,” by Robert Beverly Hale, as part of first year studies. This book will give you great instruction and great drawings! We also use “Hawthorne on Painting,” by Charles Hawthorne, “Bridgman’s Complete Guide To drawing from Life,” by George Bridgman, and “The Natural Way To Draw,” by Kimon Nicolaides.. These books will give you an idea of how to approach learning to draw and paint. If you have questions for me, feel free to leave comments and I’ll answer.

Max the Mutt Open House
May 26th – June 1st, 2008 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Featuring 2nd and 3rd year student art work

A great opportunity to take a tour of the school, view graduating student demo reels

Why has Max the Mutt resisted becoming a degree-granting school? Max the Mutt is a registered Career College offering government approved diploma programs. What this means is that we are able to include students who have the talent and ability to develop the skills they’ll need in the industries we serve, but may not be well suited to an academic environment. In fact, many would agree that the tendency to make everything a degree course (including modern dance) makes no sense. Unless our program were two years longer, we would have to water down critical parts of our curriculum to make room for courses in psychology and other liberal arts subjects. While we value general education, we strongly feel that you cannot do everything at the same time and do it well.

If Max the Mutt were forced to be degree granting,  some of our graduates now working as animation directors, 3D and 2D animators, character designers and storyboard artists, would have been blocked from entering these careers because they don’t have the academic credentials to be accepted into a degree program. This would have been a loss to them and to the industry.

That is not to say that we don’t have many university graduates among our student body, as well as people who could meet the academic requirements for a BA but choose to be in a community where they can direct all their energy towards developing their skills. Part of what makes Max the Mutt such an interesting and vital community is the diversity of the student body.

Equally important to us is our ability to hire the individuals we feel are best suited to teach particular courses – people with current industry experience. Most of these people (Ty Templeton, Dave Ross, Tina Seemann for example) do not have degrees. They are simply among the best in their disciplines and have a knack for teaching.

Degree granting schools need to hire people who hold a degree one level higher than those they are teaching. In our minds this doesn’t make sense in areas that are essentially not academic. We are training people for careers. They will be hired based on their skills and professionalism, not on the basis of a piece of paper. You do not need to be licensed to animate, or write a graphic novel, or do concept art. What matters is what you know, what you can do, and your ability to work well with other people and be professional. These are the qualities that companies are looking for, not academic degrees.