Character Design Illustration - Forum Post Assingment

[Admin]

Link to Video on Villian Character Design by Jason Chan Video reviewed in class.

List of Character Artist Link
Each student will select an artist from the above link and post a review of the artist in your own words. Only on artist per student. Sign up in class which artist you would like to review.

Select one of the artists more interesting characters and complete a silhouette drawing of it. This can easily be completed by saving the image, opening it in Photoshop, creating a new layer, and painting with black over the image. Post your silhouette image with your review.

To post and image, click the "Host an Image" button above.

1) Write a Review on the Artist (2 paragraphs, correct grammar, etc.)
2) Create a FULL BODY silhouette of one of his characters
3) Post the image with the review

[Admin]

Andrea Spada - Nick W.
Cory Loftis - Dylan
Shyoon Kim - Jelani
Sanford Greene - Daniel
Kei Acedera - Brittany
Dan Schoening - Tyler
Nicolas Marlet - Devin
Mike Doughetry - Austin
Jason Dreamer - Justin T.
Pete Oswald - Justin H.
Chris Battle - Tyler M.
Zaruhi Galstian - Sara F.
Sergio Pablos - Sarah D.
Chen Yi Chang - Oshea
Cedric Hohnstadt - Ryanne
Dennis Jones - Mayson
Ken Wong - Kara

[horne2406]

Dan Schoening Review

Dan Schoening was interested in art from a very young age. He was always drawing and was inspired by arcade games and cartoons. When in college, he took a 2 year visual arts program at Camosun College in Victoria BC. This program opened him to a whole new realm of art. He took classes ranging from sculpting and painting, to art history and photography. After his course there, he went to Vancouver and studied Character Animation at VanArts. He learned character design, storyboarding, life drawing, and much more at the VanArts school. The main factor that kept him going was that he really wanted it. When designing a new character, Shoening uses the characters personality and traits to help come up with the design. He also focuses a lot on the dress and stance of the character, which gives the viewer insight into the drawing. Shoenings work day consists of going to the studio to work with his team on projects, but then when he goes home he works on the art he loves the most. He gets to work on personal projects and be with his daughter.

Dan Shoening has worked on DC Comics, TV shows, and much more. His favorite project however, was a Mario pipe project. He has also worked on some video games, including educational games for leapster and wii. Dan’s projects that are the easiest to work on are the ones he can’t wait to get going on and the ones that are tougher to work on are the ones where he has to follow guidelines for the client. The way he keeps creative and new ideas flowing is by spending time with his daughter. He also watches ‘80s cartoons that seem to keep his creative gears going. Shoening’s favorite subjects to draw are anything superhero related or anything to do with ‘80s cartoons. Dan was inspired to become an artist after playing a Dragon’s Lair arcade game when he was 6 years old. He also learns many new styles from hiss colleagues and other artists. He learns from the many styles that are out there, although his own style still is his main way of drawing. Shoening’s advice to all artists is to keep drawing. He says to never give up, even if you might fail.

[Miller3007]

Shiyoon has been drawing ever since he was three years old. His Parent were very supportive of his drawing skills. His parents read a newspaper article about a "animation High school in California" called Rowland, so they sent him to that high school with hopes that he'll become a great animator. Later his teacher said that he needed life drawing classes, so Shiyoon went to some classes at a local junior college and at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

When he design's a characters for a short film he tries to have a solid understanding of his whole story and the relationship his characters have to it. Shiyoon constantly thinks about how his characters should act and move. He tries to find the most economical way of drawing his characters without losing the “character” or appeal. He usually does experiment designs for his characters. Working on short films at CalArts taught him how strongly having good animation skills helps in being a good designer.

[Holinski249]

Drawing from a very early age, Pete Oswald has always had encouragement from his parents and peers. Drawing is something he has always loved to do. When he was a child, Oswald would sit in on his mother's art class and learn the technique that she would teach her students, which helped formulate the love of drawing and animation that he has today. He attended Loyola Marymount University and acheived a major in aninmation and a minor in graphic design. Among his experience is working with Dreamworks' studios and making designs for Disney, Sony, Nickelodeon, Fox, and Hasbro. He was also the artist who was hired to create the character designs for the popular childrens' show 'Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends' (Cartoon Network).
He was on the core animation team for the animated motion-picture 'Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs', and is currently working with Dreamworks on the film 'Madagascar 2'. His main inspiration came from his family who all practiced art as well, and who helped form his interest in what he does today. His favorite thing to draw is people, because no two people are alike, and he's able to use that to get creative and give them a lot of unique detail. He loves making the rough sketch of his new character, but the part of his job he's not too fond of is making sure his work meets the requirements of all the people he works with. When he's not drawing or animating, he likes traveling and listening to new types of music.


https://i.servimg.com/u/f28/15/68/45/71/justin10.jpg

[bailey314]

Cedric Hohnstadt considers himself as a freelancer. This is because he has never worked in an anitmation studio or ad agency. The thing that helped him become a great artist, he says was his “terrific art teacher in high school”. When he began drawing and painting he was often told that he should go into animation, but wasn’t interested in it at the time. He graduated from Moorhead State University in 1997, and later, in 2000, he attended a workshop at the Disnye Institute and suddenly became interested in animation. When he designs a character he looks for ideas by studying other artists, art books, and internet blogs. He takes a sketchbook everywhere he goes and draws constantly.

Cedric Hohnstadt has illustrated in three children’s book. He also worked with licensed characters like The Jetsons and Exxon/Mobil Tiger. He says the fun part of character design is coming up with something new, the hardest part is you always have to come up with something new. He is currently designing characters for a game, which will be animated in Flash. He enjoys working at home and would like to work at either Big Idea or Pixar.

[burke5252]

Cory Loftis grew up in small town called Corsicana, Texas. In school Cory would be volunteered tp draw stuff for yearbooks and to put on t-shirts. Cory also played sports raised livestock and lots of other things. He attended art school in Laguna Beach. When he comes up with a new character idea he starts by just throwing random shapes together and uses any color he wants. He says the way he worls is by tyring to come up with so many ideas, and that there is him and three others that work in his department.

For the past 5 years Cory has been working as the lead artist for Carbine Studios. When he would draw something the one thing that he had trouble with was drawing feet, he would try to hide them behind something. Cory is currently working on a multiplayer online game. He is a fan of Disney and Dreamworks Studios. Some of the designs that he likes are Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon. His favorite thing to draw is dinosaurs.

[Pierce219]

Kei Acedara Interview

He was born and raised in the Phillippines and came to Toronto,Canda when he was 12 years old. He started his career when he was about 16 years old, painting huge murals for private homes and casinos. The experience helped him with art and painting skills. Two years later he got his break in animation doing in-betweening and clean up. It was a great way to learn about the animation business.
He went to Sheridan College for animation, and met some terrific people that help him got to where he is today. Bobby Chiu was one of the most influential individuals he met. He saw potential in his art and invited him to come work for a company he’d just started called Imaginism Studios.
They didn’t know where the company was going to go, they just kept drawing and painting. Luckily, once they started to publish their ‘Sketches’ people began to notice them. They won a few awards, and the projects started to rush in. Since then, they’ve worked on designing characters for all sorts of things from TV shows, to videogames, magazines, advertising, and commercials.

[Meitz3200]

Chris Battle was born and raised in Santa Monica, California. He was brought up by his mother who was an artist and his father who was a photographer, so at a very young age he was always encouraged to work on his artistic abilities. Growing up in Los Angeles, Chris said that he was fortunate because unlike other places where cartoons were seen as silly, the filming industry gave him an actual shot at getting into the business. When he went to Santa Monica High School, he had a good art teacher who kept up his hopes telling him that his cartoons were good unlike other teachers that told him he would grow out of it.
Other than his high school art classes he did not take any high level or serious art classes. He really gets into drawing when he can “see” his artwork come to life or he can imagine the storyline with his character in action. Working with his cartoons he is inspired by the old work of like Looney Tunes, Classic Disney, and Marvel and DC Comics. Becoming an artist, Chris said to get into the industry you just need to draw a lot. Keep on drawing and soon enough your work will become good enough where you can get yourself into the industry.

[falline289]

Zaruhi Galstian was born in Armenia, and she moved to the US with her family when she was 6 years old. She got her creativity from her parents. Her dad was a tailor and her mom was a great cook who would decorate her delicious dishes. She also grew up with music. Her dad played the saxophone and her mom played the piano. When she moved to the US they were pretty poor so they couldn’t afford a lot of toys for her and her sister. They would make their own toys and make clothes for their dolls. Galstian acted in a few plays when she was in Junior High. In High school she started to take drawing seriously. She said that one day it just clicked to her that she knew she wanted to go to CalArts. When she designs she tries to come up with a story behind the design. She doesn’t have a job yet so she spends her time at home drawing her own designs. Last summer she got an internship at Pixar and she got to work in the art department on Toy Story 3. Her Mentor is Nate Wragg. The design she is most proud of is the series she did about her family and the poems that went with them. When she was in school her and her boyfriend were planning on making short films after school was done, and now that she is done with school they are actually starting to work on the short films. She thinks Tony Fucille is one of the top artists out there. She uses photoshop to paint her drawings. The fun and easy part of designing for her is the explorations. The difficult part is figuring out the drawing problems. Spending time with family, friends, and he boyfriend help keep her creative. Sketching also helps keep her creative. One of her all time favorite artists is Gustav Tenggren. She loves the work he did on Pinocchio. She also loves the designs for Coraline. She likes to draw humans the most, especially kids. He parents and many Disney films inspired her to be an artist.

[Algeyer3233]

Dennis Jones grew up in a small rural town in Missouri. Not having the access to many art influences he became drawn to Marvel Comics instantly. He would look at the characters in the comics and draw them himself. He became hooked on drawing and art. Being very comfortable with the way he draws, Dennis draws practically nonstop. Dennis draws when at church, watching TV, and any time he can get his hands on a utensil and a piece of paper. Dennis received an art degree from the Southwest Missouri State University.
When creating characters Dennis likes to start out drawing. He lets his hand flow throughout the page drawing whatever comes to mind. Then adding or subtracting whatever doesn’t appeal to him. Also Dennis is old school; he enjoys painting his ideas and artwork in addition to drawing them. From there he imports the images to whichever program(s) he has chosen to use. Dennis believes the hardest part of designing a character is getting the face right. He enjoys creating retro cartoons, especially football and hockey players because of his love for the sports. His advice for designers is to study the work of others; especially the people who are masters at designing characters. Learn their techniques and how they do things and design to learn and advance your own skills.

[Kim113]

Florian Satzinger is an Austrian artist with a multi-faceted background in fine arts, and German philology on schools in Austria and in the UK. His father was an architect who explained to him differend aspects such as perspectives and things like that when he was very young.

When drawing a character he begins with small sketches ans silhouettes of the character. Then he continues with more detailed sketches using the final scale. He finishes by using an ordinary mechanical pencil to finish the drawing and to outline the shapes.

He usually uses blue and red col-erase pencils, common mechanical pencils, Photoshop, and a wacon tablet. To him, rough sketching is the most fun. The clean-up is not hard, but less creative and therefore less fun.

[Tucker240]

He grew up in san francisco bay area where he spent all his time skateboarding, and getting in trouble for drawling in all his classes. Jason attended UC Davis as an art major, then California college of arts and crafts in San Francisco and Oakland. He graduated with an fine arts degree, even though illistration major. as soon as he enrolled in CCAC he took as many anatomy classes as he could fit into his schedule. There were some things that were a mystery to drawl, until he took anatomy class and understood how to drawl them.
Jason in an character art director at pixar, a day for him is to split 50/50 between meetings and design time. The whole 13 years he has been there he has worked on ten productions. And they are, Monsters inc.,Finding Nemo,Ratatouille,Wall-e and etc. The most fun for him when he is working on something is when the design starts to come together and he has a great idea in his minds eyes.

[weaver106]

He is 30 years old. He loves to share his work with family, friends, and fans. He studied graphic design for 4 years at University. He has a simple process in which he creates characters. He works long days and likes having fun. He has worked for Marvel, DC, Warner and Disney. He has his friends help him do his work. His career just started so he doesn't have a favorite project yet. Disney and Warner are hard companies to work for because of all the rules. He stays creative by traveling, playings sports, hanging out with friends, and experience. He loves the old-school Disney characters. He likes coming up with his own characters. Movies, cartoons, t.v. and his interest in drawing influenced him to become an artist. He learns everyday about art because of the graphic world we live in. He likes looking at other artist's blogs so he can stay creatively fresh. His advice to new artists is to have fun, take criticism well and work off of it, and be open to failure to get better. He is releasing his first sketch book this summer.

Working with Disney and other big companies has helped him progress. It may be hard but it is worth it he said.

[bardis525]

Antonio Santamaria says in an interview that he was always the odd one out in his family. He was the only one who took a true interest in drawings, comics, cartoons and simply being creative. But the childhood he had was surrounded by many comic superheroes and villains. He states that he did study at the prestigious comic school known as, Academia Joso in Barcelona. He studied there, diligently, for 4 years learning everything he could about drawing. Then he says, when he was 25, he really began to dedicate his life to drawing.

Santamaria states that most of his work is done from home and mainly works alone. He says he has his own personal studio in his house. He enjoys working from because it gives him freedom and is able to spend as much time as he can with his two children and wife. He states that he is very proud of a particular piece that he worked on. He made his own personal version of sleeping beauty that was featured in a Spanish film, “Fragile.” This was and still is a huge accomplishment for Antonio Santamaria.

[Vaughn406]

Cory grew up in Corsicana, Texas. Cory was known as the kid who could draw so he was volunteered to draw for almost everyhing. Cory went to a art school in Laguna Beach California. (It was a college). Cory still uses ideas from his childhood all the time in his drawings and designs. When he is desgning a character Cory is very spontaneous. He doesnt have a plan when he goes into a design. Cory is a concept artist, he has three other peopleworking with him in his studio. Four including him. Cory has been working for Carbine studios for the last five years. Cory feels that drawing is a very inconsistent ability, some days are garbage others are gold. You just have to keep your self motivated and not give up. To keep himself creative Cory watches kids shows in the morning. Cory favorite thing to draw are dinosaurs he wishes he had the chanceto draw more then he does. There such an easy solution when you just need to add more awesome.Hes always been able to draw, and its one of the few things Hes happy doing all of the time. He loved Disney animation when he was growing up. He always dreamed of working there and it was always that desire that made him dislike anything else he was doing. But it was his family that gave him the encouragement to actually do something about it. Corys words of wisom are don't waste time reworking old failures. Leave them alone. He used to keep a big Rubbermaid bin of old Colerase drawings that he'd root through if he found myself in a slump. He used to think he was finding inspiration... all he was really doing was repeating old mistakes. If you keep going back, you're missing out on a chance to do something new.

[Hord392]

Mike Dougherty recieved his first formal design and illustration training in 2003 at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He had taken a series of helpful drawing classes from animation artist Mike Mattesi which is now a art director at Leap Frog. Two years into his education at Art Center, he took a semester off to try to start a professional career in the animation industry. In January of 2006, he landed his first professional character design job on Nickelodeon's show, "Tak and the Power of Juju." Mike worked alongside with what he called, "the ever-so-talented Jennifer Wood" in designing character assets for what would become Nick's first in-house CG cartoon show. Since then he has enjoyed nearly-steady work at Nick. In July 2007, Butch Hartman hired him to team up with fellow character designers Gordon Hammond and Ernie Gilbert on season 6 of the Fairly OddParents. Mike also contributed designs for the penguins in the movie Madagascar.
Mike is currently working on the Fairly OddParents and previously worked on Tak and the power of Juju. He has contributed some character designs for Kung Fu Panda animated series. He is working on designing a book with his brother Thomas Dougherty that he should finish this summer. He also freelanced for a short time on My Gym Partner's Monkey at Cartoon network, and he also freelanced character design for the Mattel Corp.

[kielty3436]

Sanford Greene
By: Daniel Kielty
Sanford life is pretty smooth he wakes around 9 in the morning makes a few calls draws a little bit, or a lot depending on how close his deadline is. After that he’ll take a break from noon to 2pm. Then hit the drawings again. He’ll stop drawing around 6pm to have dinner with his family and he will maybe stay up till 11 at night still depending on his deadlines.
He got a B.A. degree in graphics and illustration at South Carolina. He got an internship with a graphic design firm for 2 years then entered a portfolio to Comic Con. Dark Horse was interested with his work. They liked how he does research before just drawing away. Ever since then he has been moving on up from the Dark Horse comics all the way to DC comics such as Superman, Legion of Super Heroes, Teen Titan Go!, and Bat Man Strikes. He has done other comics like Marvel, Archie comics and grand central publishing.

[sackett2993]

Jorge Lacera was born in Colombia but grew up in Miami, Florida. He grew up around art, because his father and uncle have careers in art, because of that ever since he could hold a pencil he was drawing. Lacera went to Design and Architecture Senior High. He then attended and graduated from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Illustration. The main influence in his work is his constant praise from his parents about his work.
When Jorge goes about designing a character he starts by trying to understand the character. His or her background, history and the place in the story are a few key things he gets first. Then he draws the first thing that comes to mind so he can try to get the characters shapes and attitude knowing he will change it a later. Then he decides on the best and most interesting silhouette, shape proportions that best describe the character. Next he starts to “flesh” the character and add details, keeping in mind the specific traits described in the story.

[Ross284]

Rad Sechrist studied and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from UCSB. After graduation he studied at L.A. Academy of Figurative Art and other schools. HE learned to draw cartoons by pausing Disney movies and copying the characters to try and figure out how they drew them. To start off his day he goes to work early to have breakfast, hang out with friends, and talks about the movies for a bit. He always starts out with at least an hour of warm up studying.
He has worked on two movies at DreamWorks Animation. Both movies are still in development. He is also working on some short stories for anthologies. Before he worked for a little bit at Sprite Animation doing character design, and before that I did freelance comics, character design, and illustration work. He uses Photoshop for everyone of his animations.

[Watts260]

She is a 35 years old Lived in Milan most of her time, after classical studies shifted on to artistic ones in Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has always been fond of comics, so she started to draw them, as soon as she understood she could have made a living out of it so she just kept doing it.

A typical day for Andrea Spada is to wake up, breakfast, email, street market (if it’s a Friday), work, email, work, lunch, work, choice of what to eat, choice of wine, dine, movie, sometimes work again. She also has worked on some animation, like Charlotte’s Web, she has directed a dozen commercials, animated a lot, designed some of the commercial, not only graphically.

Andrea says that research to her is the fun part, She see nothing really hard in designing, but, if something, animals are not exactly her cup of tea. She was inspiredto become an artist when she was a little kid and made drawings for her parents.

[martin287]

Chris Sasaki like many kids wanted to get into animation. He was told to go to calarts but didn’t get accepted .he ended up going to Woodbury University where he meant some very nice people. Chris thinks that the quality of teachers is better than the school you attend. His senior year he started working on his portfolio. At the time he was an intern at the dream works art department. Where he meant tony siruno who later became his mentor.

His first real gig was at Jim Hension doing straight to DVD features. After that he worked with Disney a couple of times doing free lance work. He got connected with laika from an old friend at Jim Hension. Chris like to draw freakish people .His dad once told him before he could walk or talk some lady came up and sayed he would be an artist. Chris has always worked hard and is now a successful artist.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f22/15/72/13/09/sil10.jpg

[smock264]

Sean L. Moore was born and raised in Toranto, and has been drwing since he was a kid. Sean’s insperation came from Jim Hansen and the “Muppets”. Sean was really in to how charaters where made and shortly after watching the muppets he was dedicated into making his own characters but bring them to life as well. Soon after his Muppets obssetion he epicly failed in clay modeling and puppet making. Once he relized clay wasn’t his thing he continued in drawing and eventually got hooked into animation drawing!
A year after high school he was accepted into a classical animation program at Sheridan College. Sean says before he starts his work, he does a lot of research and needs a little inspiration for his characters… After his strong thoughts about his character he takes off on his work! Sean has a big interest in making children drawings and shortly started cleaning his work digitaly. Also Sean is into blog hopping because he says it ives him good ideas for his drawings and likes to hear about other peoples ideas!

[stet536]

Ryan Woodward is a very talented man. He began only at Ricks College in Idaho for 2 years and then went straight to working for Warner Bros. in an internship/training program. This allowed him to learn from people around him that had more experience, and he even got to work on some of WB animation films! Ryan says he feels lucky to have been able to work on animated films before all the 3D animation started. After working for them, he went on to get his BFA at Brigham Young University and his MFA at the Academy of Art University.

When Ryan first starts drawing a character, he focuses solely on shapes. Using a variety of sizes, he slowly starts seeing his character come to life. After focusing on the shapes, he goes to the details, the clothing, the accessories, etc. Ryan believes in focusing on nature for design. He says that when we like a combination of shapes or a design better than others, it's usually because it mimics nature in a special way. He uses all of this to create his genius characters.

[Galeener123]

The artist I chose was Darren Rawling because his art look the
most unique. His style is really dark looking which its probably
because he‘s from Toronto Ontario, Canada. The things he‘s
most famous for is the comic book series Agent Orange and
some of the X-men series which is pretty cool. His comic book
Agent Orange is has a unqiue look to it, most comic books look
colorful but his looks art looks very dark and dangerous.
He like to draw robots which is pretty sick .



Darren Rawling work is seen on ESPN, ABC, NBC, and CBC sports.
His inspiration in his life to become a graphic artist his mom, everybody told him
that he shouldn't get into art but his mom didn't give up on him. He also did
some spider man comic books witch is pretty awsome because I love spider
man. Some of his favorite artist that truely inspired him were Eric Canete,
Jason Kim, and Steve Lambe. He likes the designs of Ben 10 and Avatar the Last Air
Bender also Kong Fu Panda.

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