iframe>Now that we finally have the room, Max the Mutt will offer a stop motion animation summer camp in July! We are holding the cost down to $800 for two full weeks, 6 hours a day, with the option of adding third and.or a fourth week ! Please contact Carla Drmay, cdrmay@maxthemutt.com if interested. This camp is open to anyone who is  entering  high school or older. The camp will be taught by Ezra Waddell, a professional  stop motion animator wit years of  full time experience in all aspects of stop motion film and television production. Ezra animated for Cuppa Coffee, the largest stop motion studio in North America. His  passion for this art form, his warmth, and his excellent communication skills, make him the ideal person to lead Max the Mutt’s first Stop Motion Summer Camp!

Clive Smith: ONE OF THREE CO-FOUNDERS of NELVANA LIMITED  visited the school. hired one of our graduates, and sent us the following endorsement!

“Max The Mutt is a small, unique private art school specializing in fine art, illustration, graphic novels and animation. The quality of the faculty is exceptional, comprised of many artists and designers with industry experience. The environment reflects a congenial and creative atmosphere that encourages and supports the students and clearly brings out the very best in them. The students‘ work is really amazing, inventive and technically brilliant,  demonstrating a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and talent. Their work is clearly on a par with the best of the industry and the graduates are all likely to have an tremendous impact on their generation of illustrators and animators.

Clive Smith

Maxine, I would be happy to allow you to publish this letter if it is of any benefit to the school.”

Here’s the link to Olga’s Studio, showing the work of the great landscape and seascape artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner

(1775 – 1851)

Turner: http://www.abcgallery.com/T/turner/turner.html…and here are a few examples!

Sorry, the examples had to be deleted! Go to Olga’s Studio to see them!

Concept Artist

This person will create and design characters and worlds used within the game.
To begin with, everything is created on paper as a rough concept. When this is approved, it goes through a cleaning up period which may involve scanning the designs on to computer and using an art package such as Photoshop to perfect fine line work and add details. Colour is then introduced into the Image so that the texture artist can create the correct textures for the world or character. Once the concept artwork has been completed it is passed on to the 3D Model Builder (or Animator if it is an animated character).

A concept artist will be required to:

Ensure the design fits with the general look and feel of the game

Achieve maximum effect with minimum complexity – complex designs eventually lead to more complex 3D models (something that can be easily created with as few polygons as possible is desirable)

Consider colours and colour schemes used to maintain a balance of colour throughout the design.

How do I become a Concept Artist in the games industry?

(This is the only part we disagree with: Max the Mutt has developed a 4 year program that will give you the skills required to become a concept artist!)

Hmmm, this is a tricky one. Concept art cannot really be taught. Being a good concept artist is about drawing as much as you possibly can, whenever you can. The great Chuck Jones once said that every artist has a million naff drawings inside them, it’s just a matter of working through them so you get to the point where you only produce your best.
I myself have been drawing from the very first moment I picked up a pencil, but to get really good takes time and persistence. It’s good that you admire Disney and Anime but don’t try to copy and imitate them too much, use the style and line construction as a guide and try to develop your own line style and characters. If you spend most of your time copying other people’s work you will never learn how to come up with outstanding creations of your own.
A good way of getting good is to focus on an aspect of drawing that you really enjoy. I chose traditional animation and background art, it teaches you a lot about a character’s attitude, emotion, and motivation, aspects which are all to important when creating believable characters and environments.

Drawing characters and animals
One of the most important parts of becoming a good character and animal illustrator is life drawing and good observation skills. Try to learn as much as you can about anatomy, proportion and skeletal structures, this will ensure that you put the right muscle in the right place, there’s nothing worse that a character with made up anatomy. Life drawing may be a little daunting at times but if you get good at it the rules of construction and pose that you learn will come across in your own creative work.

Creating environments
Again, as with characters, observation and drawing from real buildings and landscapes will teach you how to produce realistic environments that seem real and believable. Focus the layout and try to find the hidden composition that makes for a captivating and impressive environment, this will all go towards helping you to come up with your own creations and how to make the unreal seem real.

What you need to do now
If you’re sure (as I was) that illustration and design is the direction you want to go I would suggest you find a course which tries to encompass all aspects of Art and Design. After School I went into a Graphic Design course at Stafford Art College which taught me many different aspects of Design. The course itself involved life drawing, graphic design, photography, animation, illustration, calligraphy and technical drawing. All of these media types helped me find an overall understanding of art and design.
After my 2 years at college I went to University to study Traditional Animation. This again involved a lot of drawing from life and a lot of observational drawing, as well as learning how to animate characters and produce background artwork.

The route here isn’t necessarily the best route and everyone’s different but the best advice is to try to find a good art course at a respectable art college and see where it takes you. You may find out that you have other skills that you never thought you had.

A few main points to remember:

Keep drawing and don’t copy other people’s work, use it as a guide and learn from what they have done.

Don’t be afraid of blank paper – just get in there and draw, nothing ever comes out right first time anyway.

Be critical of your art, and look hard at it to see what doesn’t look right and then change weak aspects and improve on parts that already work within the illustration.

(Please note:Max the Mutt’s program is a mix of traditional fine art, illustration, product design, animation and concept specific courses! Our curriculum was not available anywhere until this program was introduced! )

While continuing his third year of studies at Max the Mutt, Aaron Long has independently produced two highly creative, early 20th century styled cartoon shorts viewed by thousands on YouTube. Both of his cartoons chronicle the curious but hilarious dilemmas of a half-dressed fish named Fester. “Fester’s Nephew” and “Fester Goes Fishing” are descriptive enough titles to hint at the humour found in these cartoons. We caught up with Aaron despite his busy schedule to talk about his work.

The initial spark came from Maury [White]‘s History of Animation class at school. I’d seen a lot of ’30s cartoons already, but watching 3 hours of them at once must’ve broken something in my brain. I started visualizing this deliberately repulsive, grotesque character in that style. Then I just drew him a lot and came up with some story ideas. “Fester’s Nephew” was probably a weird story to introduce the character with, but it was the one I was most excited about doing. I gradually toned Fester’s creepiness down to make him easier to draw. Eventually some people even said he was cute, which was the opposite of what I was going for. But as long as they like the cartoons, I don’t mind.

My favourite directors are Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones. I also like a lot of Ub Iwerks and Fleischer cartoons. The actual animators who had the biggest impact on me were Rod Scribner and Jim Tyer. Their insane distortions and energy demonstrate that there can be a distinction between “funny animation” and just “animation of funny action.” Their work always feels like the characters are about to explode with pure energy. I’ve tried to incorporate the same kind of thing into my own cartoons.

I entered “Fester’s Nephew” in the Spike and Mike festival, and they accepted it, but I don’t know if they’ve actually played it yet. “Fester Goes Fishing” was shown at the TAIS 2011 Showcase, and was voted “Audience Favourite.” Both shorts were posted on Cartoon Brew, which was great and led to more exposure on other sites… But what excited me the most was when some of my favourite animators like Joe Murray and Nick Cross told me they liked my work.

Yeah, I’m doing the storyboard for the third cartoon at the moment, but our giant workload at school has slowed me down. I’m hoping to start animating it by the winter break. People have brought up the idea of pitching Fester Fish to a network, but I think I need to develop more of a supporting cast before it’s ready. It also probably doesn’t have enough of a “hook” to sell right now either. Everything has to be high-concept these days.

The process hasn’t changed, except I made the second one in widescreen. Basically I start by scribbling out ideas and rough thumbnails on paper. Then I draw a storyboard in Flash, which I time out so it becomes an animatic. From there I just animate whichever scenes I feel like, cutting them into the animatic, until the whole cartoon is done. I animate traditionally, but I draw directly into Flash using a tablet. Flash’s drawing tools aren’t the greatest, but I love the immediacy of being able to test the animation at any time without scanning, shooting or rendering. And it’s so easy to make changes to the timing. I try to compose most of the music before I do the final animation, so I can animate to the beat if the scene calls for it.

Unfortunately, each cartoon seems to take longer and longer. I don’t know if my standards are getting higher, or I’m just busier these days. The last one, Fester Goes Fishing, took eight months, from thumbnail storyboards to finished product.

The story in this one wasn’t really as well-structured as the first one was, but people have responded a lot more to this one. I think the animation was a little better in this one. In a weird way, that actually kind of concerns me. I’m afraid that as I get better at animating, I’ll stiffen up and get too concerned about what looks “proper.” I want to keep the animation really loose and free, with lots of crazy, nonsensical movement. I’m not exactly aiming for realism with these shorts.

I live a lot closer to the school than most of my classmates. Less time in transit equals more time for cartoons. Maybe more importantly, when I’m working on the cartoons, particularly as I get close to finishing, I get so obsessed with them that I barely do anything else in my free time. No video games, no parties, very little TV or movies… so whenever I finish a cartoon I go through a kind of weird post-partum depression where I think “now what am I supposed to DO with my free time? What do people do when they’re not making cartoons?!”

Concept artists are the people who design the look of a film or game. They design environments, characters and props and may be called upon to do other things such as cover design, poster design,and storyboards.

Concept art is a booming field and there are jobs for people who have the skills. The problem is that most people don’t have the skills. An unusually large number of  successful Canadian concept artists were trained in Eastern Europe and brought advanced representational fine art skills with them when they came to Canada. Max the Mutt is fortunate to have many of those people on our faculty.

If you want to be a concept artist you’ll need skills in a variety of areas, and this program provides training in all of them: illustration, a high level of proficiency in traditional, representational  drawing and painting, product design, animation related skills such as storyboarding and film language, and concept specific courses that include  research and idea development, character design, environment design,  prop design, creature design, advanced knowledge of photo shop,and familiarity with 3D computer software.

Our program took a full year to design and we received input from major concept artists in Canada and the USA.

This 4 year course of study requires dedication and lots of hard work. If you attend, you’ll be studying with some of Canada’s top concept artists, many of whom received their art training in Eastern European and are able to share a skill base that is hard to find in North America.

Our curriculum has been carefully planned to give you the skills you need for each new challenge.

For example, Intro to Environment  Design, which is a pencil and paper course, and Digital Background Painting, which teaches painting with photoshop, are first semester year 2 courses that  give you the background you’ll need for the second semester Advanced Environment Design and Painting in Photoshop course. You have the basic skills you need to focus on the content of Advanced Environment design.

It’s the developmental nature of the program that has enabled students to grow as artists and produce a level of work that has really astounded and pleased me.

Below: environment design by Michele Assarasokorn, 2011 graduate. Check out her blog: candycrayon.blogspot.com/

Recent Concept Art by 2011 graduate John Newton is seen in the two images above, and two images below! Check out his blog: http://johncharlesnewton.weebly.com/

Above:  work by John Newton

Recent concept art work by Natalie Lau  (Natalie is now an Assistant Art Director at Corus Entertainment). Check out her blog: http://feralsketch.weebly.com/

Below: work by Jake Griffith, year 4 CA student. Check out his blog: http://jakeg98.blogspot.com/

It’s been awhile since I’ve written.  This is the busiest semester I’ve ever had.  I’ve been posting for our FACEBOOK PAGE: MAX THE MUTT ANIMATION SCHOOL  which has become an important site for our students.  I’ve also been doing more teaching than usual, and dealing with administration issues (that doesn’t come naturally to me).

I am so anxious to share with those of you who haven’t yet visited the school the incredible work that our students have been producing! Two concept art students have now been offered jobs they couldn’t refuse before they completed the course of study. That says something good about the program, but also worries me because that choice, so understandable for a young person, could limit their options later on.

Thanks to Facebook, I’ve been in recent contact with graduates in Sweeden and Mexico and Spain.

I’m dealing with the frustration of WAITING for the new website so that I can share with you all the terrifc things that are going on at Max the Mutt…Current  students, the new 4 year animation program, the new space on College Street that houses that program, has to take priority and we were so unhappy with the way our website was being mangled that we took over doing it ourselves…oops!…we underestimated the time required, so please bear with us.

The animation students love this space! Some concept art courses are held here as well.

The classical animation studio.... 3rd year student Alina Shmanova at work.

I’m also dealing with frustration with myself ! I want to upload two really fine independent animation short films by Aaron Long, a third year animation student…and I can’t seem to do it…so please go to our facebook page and check them out (just scroll to the bootom and click on the facebook symbol).

Recently we printed an advertisement that ran in Now Magazine with the art work of Andy Belanger and the character N.C.D.J. a character in the comic HardWear, the copyright of which belongs to Andrew Uys.

I, Andrew Uys, and Scott Johnson are the co-creators of the character of N.C.D.J. who features in the comic HardWear, which is printed by UysFaber Inc. I, Andrew Uys, hold the sole copyright to the character. And of course, this sketch is done by the very talented Andy Belanger.

http://www.uysfaber.com/content/ncdj-andy-belanger-sketch

This is a school based on visual arts based diplomas: animation, illustration for comic and graphic novels, concept art. What could be more important than showing the work our students produce?

The saga of our difficulties with this website and blog- and I promise, this time the new website will REALLY be up very soon- is too awful to go into in detail!  We have so much EXCELLENT work by students just waiting to get up on the galleries, recent animation, concept art and Illustration to knock you socks off! You can imagine the agony ….

We have changes and additions to faculty that need to be posted and it’s a faculty to be proud of…HELP!

If you’ve visited the school year end shows, you know I tell the truth! Not to imply that the work we have up now isn’t good…but it isn’t the latest and I don’t want people to think we haven’t posted m0re recent work because our students didn’t produce it. I truly think the work is getting better and better.

I’ve been promised that the new website will go live SOON! In the meantime, I’ve been using Facebook to post recent animation, photos of student life, links to instructor work and some work by students. You can get to the Max the Mutt page by scrolling down and clicking on the logo, but you’ll have to go to Entertainment Arts Workshops on your own. Do check it out and let me know what you think, and also if there are workshops you’d like us to teach.

Please leave comments, suggestions, words of encouragement…and when the new site is FINALLY up, enjoy the galleries!

“The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” by Brian Selznick, tells the story of an orphan living in a 1930s Paris train station who tries to unlock a mystery left behind by his late father.

This amazing book tells it’s tale through a combination of written chapters and drawings. One can’t call them illustrations because they advance the plot, they don’t “illustrate” something the author has written.  The book is now being made into film directed by Martin Scorcese and has been shown, to rave reviews, unfinished, at the NY Film Festival.

The quote below is from the Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2011.

“Although the visual effects, music and sound are unfinished, the initial reaction to “Hugo” has been largely positive, with particular praise for the film’s artistic use of 3-D, a technique often derided as gimmicky. The film is also being called a love letter to the history of cinema.

Matt Singer, of IFC, says that while Scorsese’s film won’t single-handedly save 3-D filmmaking, it does demonstrate the medium’s artistic potential. Scorsese, Singer writes, “essentially upends the classical model of 3D cinematography, in which objects in the frame constantly move towards the lens. Scorsese does the opposite; he constantly moves the lens towards the objects in the frame, playing as much with our perception of movement as our perception of depth.”

The book was a real experience for me  and I hope that it’s magic has been preserved in the translation to film.

The suthor, Brian Selznick, has writen a book, “The Hugo Movie Companion: A Behind the Scenes Look at How a Beloved Book became A Major Motion Picture.” I think I’ll read it!

I”m late to discover that Selznick has a new ground-breaking book out, “Wonderstruck!”  I guess that’s two books I’ll have to buy. I’m happy to see work that has real quality succeed. I’ve copied and pasted something from the promotional material for “Wonderstruck.”

“Playing with the form he created in his trailblazing debut novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick once again sails into uncharted territory and takes readers on an awe-inspiring journey.

A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known. A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room, and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing.

Ben’s story, set in 1977, is told entirely with words, while Rose’s story, set fifty years earlier, is told entirely with pictures. The two stories weave back and forth before ultimately coming together. Rich, complex, affecting, and beautiful—with over 460 pages of original artwork—Wonderstruck is a stunning achievement from a uniquely gifted artist and visionary.

“This book was a joy, a challenge, and a puzzle to put together. I hope you enjoy meeting Ben and Rose, and joining them on their thrilling, dangerous and unexpected adventures in New York City.”

-Brian Selznick