5 Personal Pieces

I'm not sure that there is much that I can write for this last element to the portfolio because it is very dependent on the individual applicant. For your personal artwork include what you enjoy doing, paintings, sculpture (photos of these), drawings, sketchbooks, anything is fair game. Try not to include anything more than a year old.

The personal artwork cannot exceed 16" x 20". If any pieces that you want to include are too large to fit into your portfolio case, take a picture or scan them to scale them down. Try to include the originals, but if they are to large/precious to fold in the back I think just the scanned versions are ok. The pieces that I included were a combination of work that I had done in other art classes in high school and work that I had done on my own.

In two cases the pieces that I submitted had two parts to them. This is not a problem, just label the works as Part A and Part B and they will be counted as one. Basically, just include five pieces of your best artwork that you think shows off your skill and represents you as an artist.

These are the five pieces that I submitted:

Part A

Part B

Part A (Sketchbook)

Part B (Finished Painting)

You made it! Good luck and happy drawing!

Room Drawings

The next part of the layout section also requires two drawings. One of a room, with a character drawn to scale (this just means that the character should look like it fits into the surroundings, not too big or small). Then a second drawing from the character's point of view.  Again, no rulers.

Before you begin on these drawings, brush up on your perspective. There are a ton of books and tutorials that you can use on the internet. Do some studies of a couple of rooms that you are considering drawing. Remember: it doesn't have to be complicated. Whatever you think that you pull off the best should be the one that you include in your portfolio.

I would suggest using two point perspective because it has more interest. I had no choice but to do one point perspective for my second drawing because my character was looking at a flat wall. To make sure that my character looked as if she was to scale I had my mom sit on the bed and I blocked in the pose so I knew that the dimensions would be right, then I added the features.

Do not shade in any of the layout drawings, the emphasis should be on the perspective, linework and structure. The same goes for the linework in these drawings. Close/in shadow = thicker and farther away/lighter = thinner

Good luck and happy drawing!

Object Drawings

The next section is layout. For the first part of this section, you have to do two drawings of objects found around your house that are similar to a sphere, cone, cube and cylinder. Then, do one drawing of the objects normally, and another with the same objects after some external force has acted upon them. What that means is there has to be apparent changes to the objects from the first drawing. They could become exposed to rain, snow, fire etc.

The materials that I used for these drawings were again, a blue col-erase pencil and 2B pencil for the linework. I also used a lightbox again to make sure that all of the objects looked the same.

For my drawings I chose to do a sort of sewing theme with my objects. I suppose you could say that the force that acted upon my objects was a person that was really bad at sewing. This part of the portfolio is a really great way to show off your creativity. Try to come up with a creative story to go along with the objects. What happened to make them the way they are in the second drawing? 

Another thing to keep in mind is the composition of the piece. Don't choose a bunch of tiny objects to make up your drawings, make sure you have variation in size. Assemble the objects in different ways and do thumbnail sketches of the different groupings, then pick the one that you feel is the most appealing. 

When it comes to the linework, variation is key. This adds overall interest to the drawings. The thicker/darker lines should be the ones that are closer to you or areas that are in shadow. Lines that are farther away should be lighter/thinner. Also, a little side note, do not use a ruler! You can use one to check if your lines are straight but in the layout section they are not allowed. Finally, I cannot stress enough: STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE! This is what the professors want to see, that you can understand how to break down objects into their most basic components. 

   

Keep it up and happy drawing!

Storyboard

This section of the portfolio changes every year so there is not much advice that I can give. Once you apply to the program, Sheridan will send you the characters that you have to make a four panel story from. Sheridan will also send you the template that they want you to draw on.

The panels on the template are very small. So what I did was I drew my story on separate sheets of paper and put them into Photoshop to fit them into the template. If you do this, make sure that you label the panels and put them in the back of your portfolio as originals.

Underneath the panels there is space to put what is happening in the drawing. Keep in mind, however, that the drawings that you do should really tell the story themselves, without the words. 

You're halfway there! Happy drawing!

Character Design

For this section of the portfolio you are required to come up with an original character and then do a character rotation, two action poses and an expression sheet with that character.

These are some resources that I used when doing my character design:
Check out Amanda Zima's Blog, it goes into a ton of detail about all aspects of character design.

Some other resources that I used when doing my character design were:
Living Lines Library- a website that has a huge wealth of production drawings and model sheets from different movies.
Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair- I used this book a lot when making my portfolio. It was written by a Disney animator and has a lot of drawings designed to teach the reader about the animation style of drawing (structure etc.).

The materials that I used for all of the character drawings were just regular printer paper, col-erase pencil and 2B pencil for cleanup. Another tool that I used, especially for the character turnaround was a lightbox. If you are unfamiliar with this, a lightbox is basically a plastic box with fluorescent tubes inside that allows you to see through the paper below it. This makes sure that all of the forms and features are consistent on your character. I bought mine online at Dick Blick Art Supplies.

Once you have an idea of what/who you want your character to be, gather a bunch of reference, even just pictures from the internet. If your character is inspired by an animal, study photos and videos of that animal. Make sure that you create more than one version of your character to make sure you get the best design that you can. Redraw the character multiple times, change it up! Things to consider are the appeal of the character, the silhouette and the shape of the character, squash and stretch and the structure of the character. The professors also prefer if the character is on two legs. The most important thing is to keep it simple.

There has been a lot of debate whether Japanese Anime-style drawings are acceptable for the character submission. As a general rule I would stay away from this style because normally there is just too much detail and not enough form in the classical Anime designs.

This was the most daunting and challenging parts of the portfolio, but when it all comes together, it is so rewarding. Don't give up and happy drawing!