Every year students and members of the drawing faculty attend the Royal Winter Fair to sketch. Tina Seemann does a tutorial prior to this event for those who haven’t yet taken Animal Drawing. Here are some pictures of students and faculty at that event taken by Sara Guira.
Get ready – the moment is upon us! The first ever Max the Mutt 24 Hour Comic Extravaganza is coming up later this month!
Your daunting task – first conceived by the fertile brain of comics guru Scott McCloud – will be to create 24 complete, full sized, penciled, inked, and lettered comic book pages in a 24 hour period!
So successful has this concept been that comic book creators and fans across the world now tackle this challenge on a set date in early October. For obvious reasons – like a mountain of assignments – we are going to push our inaugural challenge to work week – specifically to Thursday, October 27th. We’ll begin at noon that day and work through the wee hours till noon the next day – Friday the 28th. Of course, to fuel the creative fires we’ll need not only the feverish presence of fellow artists but also food (preferably greasy) so we’ll charge a $5 fee per person for the best local pizza money can buy. Choice of beverage will be yours – whatever gets you through the night.
Now, let’s set some parameters. As noted before your task will be to complete, in the 24 hours allotted, 24 full size (10”x15” image area) pencilled, inked, and lettered pages. There must be no written preparation beforehand. You can plan out what you want to do in your head, but no scripting or thumbnailing is allowed before you begin. Many artists come in “cold” – they start drawing and simply follow their pencil where it takes them – try it! You are allowed one splash page (full page image), and one double page spread – all other pages must have at least two panels. No “snowman” pages are allowed – all white pages with only captions and word balloons. No “cave” pages are allowed – all black pages with only captions and word balloons and, needless to say, no “carnage” pages are allowed – all red pages with only word balloons and captions. You can have silent pages – no captions or balloons – up to a maximum of twelve. We are planning to have prizes – details to be announced – but to be eligible you must have completed all 24 pages! This challenge is open to all streams – Sequential, Animation and Concept – and to Instructors as well, although instructors will not be eligible for prizes.
We will posting more particulars throughout the month leading up the big day – till then, start revving your motors, sharpening your pencils, and building up your sleep deprivation endurance!
Kent Burles (Illustration For Sequential Arts. Coordinator)
Hayley Tackberry receiving the Sean Michael Stewart full scholarship award from Mrs. Stewart.
Chris Barbarik receiving the Bradley Mark Johnston Scholarship from Stewart Johnston
Students and faculty at the annual BBQ!
It’s been a very long time since I’ve written for this blog. My apologies! We’ve all been working very hard to get the school ready for the expansion. The new space at 1139 College Street West is all set up and waiting for classes to begin! Roksolana is taking charge of the new gallery: the first show will feature work by our faculty and will be on exhibit for the first two weeks in September.
Expansion also means making sure that all our administrative operations have been upgraded. We need to be more efficient. We need to develop our original mandate to provide both professional development and general interest workshops . We will now have the space to play more of a role in both these areas.
We also have plans to finally get our website into the shape we need it in to share the wonderful events and work that is being produced by our community. I guess you can all understand why we’re tired!
Suggestions for workshops, lectures and/or other services you would like us to perform will be greatly appreciated.
Max the Mutt, once again, is undergoing a transformation.
Do visit the school to see the 2011 student work. I can hardly wait until our website is functional and we can pout up the massive amount of work we want to share wtih you!
Max the Mutt has a Facebook page and we post clips we’ve enjoyed, links to articles about animation, comics and graphic novels, and the work of top concept artists. “Like” us ! To get to our page, scroll down and click on the “f.”
We’ve been having many issues with our website, so we are also using face book and You Tube to post recent animation. Please let us know your reactions to our posts, and if there’s anything else you’d like to see, let us know about that too!
We have plans for both our website and our blog, but we’re a small school and are also dealing with our recent expansion, planning the next academic year, and getting ready for our incoming students! It will take us a little while (people do need some vacation time), but wait and see! We have plans…and feel free to share your ideas with us.
At 5PM the doors opened. The first room holds the work of our first Concept Art graduates. In addition to two display boards, color brochures, a portfolio showing original sketches, and maquettes created from original character designs, each graduate has a monitor showing digital work (environment and prop designs, creature designs) . The room also has one wall showing fine art paintings of the costumed model. As soon as we can upload them, photos will follow.
The animation graduate room is next. Here students have 2 display boards, large portfolios of their work, demo reels to hand out, throw away portfolios, and in the theater, the graduate demo reel including the 3D group film, “To The Well.”
The Illustration graduate room is similar. Each graduate has two display boards and a large portfolio. In addition a booklet showing work from all graduates is produced each year.
The hallways, lounge and study hall have the work of year 2 and 3 students on exhibit.
Natalie Lau, year 3 Concept Art
We expected 70 industry reps, but at least 30 people turned up who hadn’t RSVPd! I think this is the best show we’ve ever had and the feed back from art directors, editors, recruiters was amazing and positive. These evening are always social as well a professional, a chance for people in the industry to network and connect with old friends.
Do come and see for yourselves! Our Open House begins this Saturday at 11AM. The show will be on display until the third week in June.
I’m still reverberating from the excitement and want to congratulate all the faculty, students and support staff who make it possible for our students to develop so far For any art form, 3 to 4 years is a short time. To have the people we admire most in these industries commend all of us gives us the energy to keep our standards high.
I hope you all visit and enjoy the show. Below are more photos I snapped the other day…
This article was originally published during indieWIRE’s coverage of 2010 Berlinale. Sylvian Chomet’s “The Illusionist” hits theaters tomorrow, December 25.
Riding on a train from Paris to Cannes, Sylvain Chomet read Jacques Tati’s “The Illusionist.” The Oscar nominated animator and filmmaker immediately wanted to adapt Tati’s story into a film. Talking about the new movie earlier this week at the Berlinale, he noted, “It wasn’t what you’d call a script, it was more like a little novel.”
Set in the 1950s, Tati’s story looks at an aging man—Tati himself—and a young girl (he is said to have written “The Illusionist” for an estranged daughter). The older man, a traveling magician named Tatischeff, introduces the girl to the world at a time when a lot is changing.
Tati’s daughter, Sophie Tatischeff—a fan of Sylvain Chomet’s “The Triplets of Belleville”—tapped Chomet to adapt the unproduced story into an animated film, but she died just four months later.
Talking about the film earlier this week at the Berlinale, Macha Makeïeff, who co-runs Les Films de Mon Oncle, preserving and promoting Tati’s work, noted that the new film completes a circle of work that rounds out a portrait of the late Tati.
The story, set mainly in Edinburgh, Scotland, takes place at the dawn of television and rock & roll, featuring a circus of live performers who are on their way out as audiences embrace new types of entertainment. With the film, Chomet has created more of an homage to Tati, rather than trying to replicate the French filmmaker’s work and create a movie that seems like Tati directed it. It’s a story infused with a mix of sadness, charm and humor as it looks back at a time of considerable change, offering a window into the ‘50s. With very little dialogue—the French magician and the Scottish girl can’t communicate—the story unfolds in traditional pencil sketch animation.
The Gaelic girl whom discovers a wave of consumerism in “The Illusionist,” but she seems to believe that the older man can make her fabulous new world appear out of thin air. At the start of the story, she is cleaning the floors in a remote pub where Tatischeff performs. Through the illusionist, though, her eyes are magically opened to a new way of life and she follows him to the big city, even if she doesn’t realize the consequences of her cravings for new clothing and material goods. He secretly takes side jobs to maintain her illusion.
“In ‘The Illusionist’ we truly experience and see where Jacques Tati comes from and we see the fragile nature of that world,” Makeïeff explained. Chomet added this week that Tati would have been fascinated by animation because it allows so much control. “He was working like an animation director,” Chomet said.
“I think it’s really important that it’s released now because time has changed so much, fifty years after it was set,” Sylvain Chomet explained, “It might have seemed rather nostalgic then.” Continuing Chomet during the Berlinale press conference he added, “Things change but they don’t disappear completely,” he said, “This is not about the end of a world, it’s also about what old people can do and contribute.”
“For me, when I read the script, the first thing I saw is a very beautiful story between an aging man and a young girl who is becoming a women,” Chomet said, “They are on these two roads.”
EDITORS NOTE: While Tati’s daughter, Sophie Tatischeff gave Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist” and then died shortly thereafter, there is a claim by Tati’s estranged daughter about the film. As noted by an indieWIRE reader, the situation is detailed in a recent Guardian article.
Tina and I drove to Daemen College, Amherst New York (Buffalo) last Thursday and delivered the student artwork for the Max the Mutt gallery show. We really are perfect schools to partner with each other! Daemen students seem professional (IE well mannered, focused, attentive). Their classes are small, and they are encouraged to take the work seriously while remaining humble. The faculty, The Academic Dean, Ed Clausen, and the college president were all present at the opening, and excited about our partnership.
Our partnership with Daemen will include, among other things, work opportunities for Max the Mutt faculty and graduates. Max the Mutt will also offer workshops for Daemen students, and will be involved in some international plans. Synergy is a wonderful thing. When the right forces join together exciting things can happen.
In the meantime, if you’re in or around the Amherst/Buffalo area, do visit the gallery and take a look at the
show!
The mandate of a career college is to prepare students for careers. I value general, liberal arts education but feel that to teach the skill base necessary for careers in animation, sequential arts and concept art, as well as liberal arts subjects, we would need a longer program. We would also be weakened by the inability to have the best instructors available teaching: in a degree program in Canada, the instructor must have a higher degree than the one the students are trying to acquire. We would therefore lose some of our best and most qualified instructors, most of whom are outstanding working professionals. They know what the industries are looking for and how the industries are growing and changing. we constantly benefit from our ability to respond quickly to their input and make adjustments to the curriculum without having to go through lengthy procedures.
As a career college, we also have the freedom to create a serious, focused community environment that prepares individuals for the realities of the workplace. Skills are only part of this. Professionalism and the ability to be a team player are equally important. Our students are expected to take direction, meet deadlines, get to class on time, be inclusive, and treat everyone with respect. Any behavior that would not be acceptable at work, is not acceptable at Max the Mutt. These are not just words for us. We have a commitment to protect every student’s right to an optimum learning environment, and every instructor’s right to teach respectful, serious students. The intensity of the course of study in all our diploma programs, means that we aren’t the right school for everyone. Quite honestly, not every student is interested in having to work as long and hard as these programs demand. We need students who are excited by learning, are self motivated,and appreciate high standards. For these individuals, there’s palpable excitement as skills grow.
Our graduates tell us they had no difficulty making the transition to the work world, and employers tell us that they consistently find our graduates great to work with.
We are in the midst of redesigning our website, and have also been incredibly busy with Industry Night and graduation, so please excuse our being behind in updating information on the website!
Both evenings were positive events and graduates have many job opportunities. Megan Leonard was tested the next day for a job animating for 9 Story…and starts work Tuesday! Congratulations, Megan.
Former Max the Mutt students and graduates Tess Tolmatchev, Matt DiLallo, Matt Mozgiel and Kelley Conley attended as representatives of their companies! It was great to see them again.
Maxine Schacker and Tina Seemann with former graduates Tess Tolmatchev, Matt DiLallo, Matt Mozgiel and Kelley Conley
We’ll let you know as other graduates start working. Of our 14 animation graduates, 4 are international students returning to their own countries and 5 are returning to Max the Mutt in September to do the Advanced Diploma in 3D Computer Animation and Production. Of the 4 remaining graduates, one is a competitive rider and is considering taking a year to be with her horses. That leaves 3, and we think the chances are very good that they’ll be employed very soon. Animation jobs in Toronto, after a hiatus, have opened up.
The Illustration graduates are entering a different kind of field. They will be freelancing, speaking with editors and art directors, going to comic book conventions to show their work. Art editors from several Toronto publishing houses were very impressed with the work they saw and plan to contact graduates. One graduate is already working with Ty Templeton. We’ll try to keep on top of their employment success and report it.
Thanks to Justin Gabrie from Marvel who took the time to fly up from New York City, address students in the afternoon, and attend Industry Night. We really appreciate your joining us, Justin, to celebrate the first graduating class in Illustration for Sequential Arts.
Dave Ross and Justin Gabrie (MARVEL)@ Industry Night
Justin Gabrie (MARVEL) and Dave Ross having fun posing with Te'Shawn Dwyer, a Max the Mutt student
Have a nice weekend everyone! Photos will come soon….
