Day 1 of the APW Character Design Challenge!

Day 1 of the APW Character Design Challenge inspired a bunch of crazy character designs. This character (designed by APW's Vince Peets) was taken from a number of designs that people posted on our APW facebook page. They are all based on the shape (1/14). You can see more of this as it developes on the APW facebook page.

14 Day Character Design Challenge Oct. 24 to Nov. 7!

Take APW's challenge and design a character a day for 14 days. Two weeks of a new design everyday. It should be fun - everyday we'll post a shape on the APW facebook page. Use the shape as a starting point/inspiration and design a character! Just one pose will do it - try not to spend more than 15 minutes on this - the idea is to explore different shapes while designing 14 one-a-day characters . It's pretty wide open.

Starting on Monday, October 24th and continuing until Monday November 7th there will be a basic shape posted on our facebook - one new shape at 9am each morning. Feel free to post your drawings on our facebook page, too! Have fun!

Room Drawings by Elsie Zheng

As part of their animation portfolios submitted to Sheridan or Seneca's animation programs, students need to include 2 room drawings. One drawing must show the room (drawn using perspective), all of the furniture and objects within the room, and a character. The second drawing of the same room, should be drawn from the point of view of the character in the first drawing. The exercise shows a student's ability to draw an interior environment from two different angles and maintain a sense of spatial volume and consistent proportions of various objects/furniture in the room. Here is an example of 2 very intricate room drawings by APW student Elsie Zheng. Elsie applied to Sheridan and recieved an offer of admission for September 2011. See more of Elsie's drawings.

APW students get offers of admission

This last week has been a busy one for all of the students who submitted animation portfolios in late Feb/ early March of 2011. Schools are now responding and offers of admission have been recieved by a growing number of APW students. Read these reactions from the students themselves and from the APW instructors as well.
The dramatic hand drawing is by 2011 APW student Richard Kosnar. Richard recently applied to Sheridan and received an offer of admission.

Interviews with Jim Zubkavich.

APW Director Gerard Sternik spoke with Jim Zubkavich (Coordinator of Seneca's Animation Arts Centre at York University in Toronto) about a range of animation school-related topics. In this 5 part interview, they answered questions like, "what is an animation portfolio?", ""what specific kinds of drawings does an animation school need to see from a potential student?", and "what is more important, software knowledge or drawing ability?"
Take the time to listen to all 5 parts. You won't find this kind of information anywhere else. If you have any questions about what you hear, let us know.
Parts 1 & 2
Parts 3 & 4
Part 5

Enjoy!

2011/12 Session starts up in May!

The 2011/12 Spring/Summer Session of the Animation Portfolio Workshop begins on the weekend of Saturday, May 7th and Sun. May 8th. The team of instructors and TA'a are looking forward to the challenge of working with the new group of students.

Rombick's Blog

After taking the APW session last year, Roman used his animation portfolio to be accepted into the animation program at Sheridan College in Oakville ON "I am 1st year animation student at sheridan, born in last century in the country that doesnt exist anymore." Have a look at some of Roman's drawings (and paintings) in his "Rombick's Blog".