Schoolism Live—Toronto 2015

MULLINS DEMO:

Mullins was wearing a loose casual winter sweater (black with a few horizontal stripes) that looked a bit
too big for him, baggy comfy pants (sweatpants?). Shorter hair than in the past. He had glasses on when
painting. A very calm composure about himself, an air of humble confidence and assurance, though a bit
uncomfortable at the amount of people. "I didn't realize there were going to be this many people in the
crowd here." Embarrassed smile when Bobby introduced him and talked him up. Seemed fairly relaxed
and in control of the entire room as soon as the demo started. The entire room was in silence and giving
utmost attention and respect (you could feel it in the air). Mullins joked quite a lot, sometimes self
deprecating, sometimes about his image, sometimes about the state of things or at the expense of
things he didn't like (art renewal, mac computers etc). Audience always laughed genuinely and lots at
every little joke. He also made lots of "mmmmmm"s with lots of various inflections that also caused
some laughter, or he made some faces at things that were funny. He alternated painting and talking,
and kept asking the audience if it was better for him to keep painting and not talk, or to answer
questions. The audience always yelled "PAINT!!!", but I felt it was more interesting when he spoke, and
in the end I think either the audience or Mullins himself came to the same conclusion and he spent a fair
bit of the time answering questions.

-the demo is intended to be "halfway entertainment/teaching"

-tight line drawing over a sepia stained canvas texture...simple one point perspective room, a high
ceilinged 19th century studio filled with paintings, clutter, a table with still life material, a woodburning
stove etc. and the painter in a chair working on a canvas in the back of the room

-"90% of your struggle should be with the drawing", that being said, if he were to paint the demo as a
real personal piece then he wouldn't use tight lines to start like that (done as a way of not messing up in
front of audience or waste time struggling on drawing, meant to be reliable, not a failing process)

-he showed some examples of his paintings not posted online; done 100% with mixerbrush--all the
capabilities of Painter, but the mixerbrush is "a lesson for another day"

-recent ways of pushing his limits and exploring new avenues involve using exploring mixerbrush in new
ways and painting images at extreme resolutions like over 10k pixels wide

-repeated stuff from gnomon vids--schedule time for failures, try new approaches and starts etc

-"You're going into an extremely crowded market" -- he complains that the industry is very incestuous,
and you should stand out from all the competition by getting other influences

-he praised Alberto Mielgo (and seemed a bit disappointed that when he asked the audience only a few
of us knew who he was)...says Mielgo reinvented a way of painting in PS so that it didn't feel like other
digital art before it (except perhaps some early stuff from the 90's done with a mouse), but it works
because the entire thing is tied together by good drawing skills

-"It's not enough to learn to draw and paint, a lot of people can do that really well"
-"You need to find your own voice to get money" (he says it that way because the statement phrased in
a more "touchy-feely way" of why you need to have you own voice like how his friend Iain McCaig says it
makes him uncomfortable)

-on demo he pasted another painting he had previously done underneath the new linework. It was
another demo of an interior room, and he chose it because there were lots of colour progressions built
in already (rather than repainting from scratch). The file he had on hand was too small and had to be
blown up, says it is a bad idea to do it like that since it gets all blurry and he would never do it if working
for real.

-wanted a way to hold 2 keys and then interactively resize the brush by dragging the mouse, couldn't
figure it out on a mac and was frustrated and spent several minutes trying to figure out before
eventually giving up (but several minutes later someone else figured it and told him and he was very
happy)

-used clone stamp tool to remove recognizable shapes or unwanted contrast in the painting he pasted
under the lines

-makes an effort to avoid blocking in the main masses of his painting, since that would destroy the
texture base...gotta "tickle" around the textures (which he says is what photoshop was originally
designed for)

-LET WHAT'S UNDER COME THROUGH--he painted with a light hand and likened it to glazing or
scumbling rather than opaque painting

-despite this attention to texture, he says he still loves using the basic round brushes for paintings

-"boy that changes the sound when I take my glasses off!" His microphone changed the sound, and he
seemed pleasantly surprised at the odd occurrence, and was happy to have noticed such a thing; he is
intrigued by new discovery

-complains about current artists abusing atmospheric perspective or backlighting/rimlights, and if/when
people bring up to him that he's done that in his work, he says "I did that stuff in 1990-something, I
don't do it anymore." He says he will try everything out, he even has old stuff with lensflares, but that
doesn't mean it should be done.

-he wants to do NEW things, not the same old tired stuff

-when asked (I was the one who asked!) if he thinks of the lighting or atmosphere much at the start
when he was doing the line drawing, he said no, he hadn't considered it and was just concerned with the
drawing problems (I wonder then how much visualization he does ahead of time then...it seems he relies
a lot on intuition and following where a piece happens to be going?)

-says if he were doing the demo as a real painting he wouldn't do the stuffy sunlight in a studio (which is
what he painted for us) since it has been done so much, instead he would perhaps paint it as a night
scene, and then put a big stained glass window on the back wall, but make sure it WASN'T backlit in any
way, so he needs to figure out how to light the materials from an unusual lighting
-"when they teach classic lighting/painting in school, they give a value scale of say 0-10, and then you
paint everything in the dark as values 2-4, and the lights as 7-9, so the light and dark shapes are really
separate...then people go and paint everything like that" He then brings up HDR photography--how
come it can still read as a recognizable image when the values are all messed up? Look at that type of
image, like in 3d when there is tons and tons of ambient light. You make good decisions based on
shapes. Like how you can use any colour so long as the value is right, the value can be wrong and still
read...you have freedom as long as the drawing is strong. "I can light this image in 50 different ways, and
it would all read beautifully" He suggests playing with simple 3d and move the lighting around and play
with the lighting and see what looks best. You will see/learn things other than what was taught to you in
Lighting 101 at Art Center.

-wanted to play with interesting cools and warms of a metal wood stove in the demo image, but said
that there was no time to do it and seemed a bit saddened at the lost opportunity

-The brushstrokes themselves were done in a loose accuracy...hard to describe but it showed mastery
and a confidence and knowledge, very deliberate and accurate despite extremely loose, sort of a
calculated speed of not too fast and not too slow...often he doesn't lift the pen and goes back and forth
lightly to cover a larger area in one stroke

-"It's not easy painting in front of people...I feel like I'm doing everything I said not to do"

-for speed he says he often colour picks directly off the canvas, but "I probably do it too much"

-toggles off line layer to "see what's bugging it" (he has only been painting under the lines so far)

-"I'm more panicking than painting" (said in a calm voice)

-says he doesn't want to push highlights and contrasts, unsure if he meant in general or for this specific
painting

-says his new home is near the Brandywine Museum and Andrew Wyeth's studio, and his demo looks a
bit like that

-so far he has been gradually sort of scumbling in the local values of things and constantly jumping
around to different areas of the painting, maybe only doing a few strokes in each part before moving on

-despite the above statement, he actually zooms in on sections quite a lot to do some accurate but loose
strokes

-"A few selective darks can do wonders in the right place"

-a very busy pattern that was originally in the line drawing for the tablecloth was beginning to be
painted in when he said that the area had too many lines (since hte highlights on the vase on the table
and some other things were also lines), so he changed the pattern to sort of a splotchy circle thing, like a
cow
-"If I was doing this for real I'd hit a bucket of golf balls and think about the image for a while", then
made a few jokes about playing golf during a demo and then explaining to the organizers that it was a
part of the creative process

-decided to show a "Photoshop trick"...the back wall which had a lot of paintings hanging on it (paintings
within the painting) he said he wanted a lot of them to have white on the canvases, so he painted the
entire wall white on a new layer, then painted the gradations of light on the wall from how the window
light hit it, then masked out the layer and painted out the mask where he wanted whites on the
canvases...so this way he gets all the right tones but doesn't paint it all manually with small brushes

-still leaves line layer on top and visible, but sometimes takes it away, the messiness of the painting
underneath now reads more painterly without lines holding the shapes together. For some areas rather
than just paint under the liens, he has the line layer on and looks at the drawing, then removes the line
layer and puts in a couple strokes from how he remembers...this way it is very painterly and loose but
the drawing aspect is still there

-"The lighting is a bit like Sargent's Breakfast Table...I always loved that painting"

-"At a certain point you do wanna, you know, turn off that drawing" (line layer), but he doesn't get there
in the demo

-started fiddling at a painting in the back of his painting, but quickly recognized this and said he doesn't
want to "get dragged into" any area and stopped working on it and moved on elsewhere despite not
liking it

-"there's only one thing more boring than watching paint dry, and that is watching paint be applied"
(audience got a good laugh here)

-at one point while working on the painting the artist in the painting was working on, he laughed and
said he should have made this old academic painter in this 19th century studio working on a painting of
a goblin instead of a landscape

-"sometimes you don't have to paint things you thought you had to" then used an edge of the tablecloth
as an example where there is a hard edge, but if there is no value change you can leave it all out and the
mind still reads it...also talked about the same happening on the head when viewed from certain angles,
you want to indicate the bridge of the nose because you know it is in front of the eye socket, but that
edge may only exist in space and not value (says it's a tricky area to paint)

-"Why is this canvas here?" [discussing a canvas within his painting, highly foreshortened and sort of in
the middle and quite large] "It's so awkward...that's why it's there." (intentional rule breaking and going
against expectations and shoulds)

-"Practically speaking, there is no such thing as composition"

-"composition rules are crock", he discusses how for every rule he can find many counterexamples,
therefore the rules are either wrong or very incomplete/lacking...our understanding of perspective is so
poor that you can just say there are no rules
-advice for composition is to "stick with what you like" and if someone says it's not good to do this or
that you should just walk away from that person

-when asked on his influences, he mentions Sargent and Syd Mead as having the biggest influences
through his career (Syd more in the early stages though), but he loves lots of things and has many
influences, quickly mentions that he loves many Russians who are sadly little known, likes Ashcan
School, likes Wayne Thiebaud (but says you need to see the originals to understand/appreciate him),
seemed like he could go on listing a lot but didn't want to spend much time thinking about it really,
instead saying it would be a better question to ask him what he DOESN'T find interesting...then jokes
that half of the stuff Art Renewal praises falls in that category, before going on a small rant about how
close minded and stupid they are

-when actually painting he concentrates immensely and sometimes sticks his tongue out slightly...when
answering questions he usually stops painting to answer

-recommends you expose yourself to things you don't understand...if lots of people find value in
something then there is something there. Try to understand it, even if you can't in the end it is good you
tried and you may find new things that expand you.

-when asked about various approaches, he says he likes finding accidental things he wouldn't have come
up with otherwise, things like the program Alchemy or if you have a line drawing, put a MASSIVE file
underneath it so that you can move it around and tiny sections of the massive file are there under the
lines filling the whole canvas and you can see cool new things

-when asked about advice for those who are fresh into the industry or trying to break in, he stopped and
thought a bit before saying to learn anatomy really, really well--says you should know the bones and all
the muscles and where their insertions and origins are. He says he could open up Z-Brush right then and
there and sculpt a full accurate human skeleton from his memory. This is the bare minimum of
knowledge he says. You should be able to do a skeleton and then layer on the muscles on top, no ref.
You need to know all this to draw figures, he says without knowing it you can still get good gesture and
such, but you will never get GREAT gesture.
-next piece of advice is to DRAW
-also suggest learning or playing with 3d as you will pick up some new things
-last bit of advice, he repeats that you should DRAW ALL THE TIME and DRAW EVERYTHING and
to draw it any way you can think of (construction, no construction, memory, from ref etc etc)

-he then discusses that a lot of people do concept art the same or sculpt the same...if he asked everyone
in the room to sculpt a chair then all the results would be the same pretty much (which is a shame he
says), but if he asked everyone in the room to draw the chair, then the results would all be very different
and individual. So he says by drawing you develop your style since it is individual. He really repeatedly
stressed drawing a ton.

-when asked what he would be doing if not commissions, he said his "own" work would be different
from what he is doing now, but he honestly has no idea what...seems lost without clients telling him
what to do?
-also warns that his approach and mindset is so locked into illustration at this point in his career that he
essentially can't get out...when younger it took 5 years to stop drawing like an industrial designer after
only a bit of ID...now he has done so much illustration he can't escape it

-warns about the dangers of classical teaching since it can be hard to undo that teaching

-when asked about publishing a book of his work, he seemed to hate the idea since "you can see my art
on my site anyway" and the entire thing to him is nonsense and for vanity. He wouldn't feel right to have
his bookshelf be "Sargent, Mucha....Mullins?!!!" He also mentioned that he doesn't like people looking
at his work for inspiration or copying him. That being said, there have been some publishers coming to
him and talking about a book, so it may actually happen in the future.

-mentions insecurities in his art, that he now takes skills for granted almost...things he finds natural and
thinks everyone can do, he has to be reminded by his wife or others that most artists can't do it.

-research is a part of the process (while the room in his demo was invented, he did look at some ref first
to see characteristics, like the high ceilings, the clutter, the wood burning stove)

-when asked about what makes his brushwork so nice, he pulls up his brushes and points at
them..."these ones are Jaime Jones's brushes (he worked hard to make them), but the ones used in the
demo were just the default photoshop brushes"....so he says it's not the brushes at all that look good,
it's the SHAPES and not the stroke. He shows how he sucks at strokes and can't control the pen tablet,
like he couldn't draw a circle or ellipse on a tablet at all, and even a straight line was wonky (he
mentions others like Hampton can do those things with ease, but for him he can't).

-mentions some anecdote about how Syd Mead can do any ellipse perfectly and freehand...and then
talks in admiration of once when he was a room that Syd was working in, and Syd's manager(?) was
really angry that someone took something off his desk and was screaming and swearing, and Syd was
just painting away nice and slow and so focused he didn't seem distracted at all by the screaming or
even seem to notice it, Syd was in his own slow and calm painting world

-when asked about the industry, he mentions work being given overseas and also general rates getting
worse, and says even though it's not what we want to hear, it is happening

-mentions we are competing against everyone in the world. Against all these talented people. Mentions
how now we compete against those rare talents in the billions of the whole world, rather than just the
local people around us.

-"you guys have your work cut out for you"

-"the only thing I can say is to draw constantly because that's how you'll find yourself"

-"become widely educated"

-"find your joy elsewhere [not concept art]". He gave the impression that the incestuous nature of the
industry was tiresome, he wants outside influences
-"The more you know about the world the richer your art will become". Mentions he reads large tomes
on non-fiction topics. Suggests learning history, mechanics, science, etc. When asked what historical
figure was an inspiration to him, he mentioned Newton and some other scientists, also the people who
invented and programmed Photoshop and other programs, calls them geniuses who are under-
appreciated.

-Bobby Chiu asked him about the truth behind an old rumour that years ago during a demo Mullins was
provided with a tablet and asked for a mouse instead. Mullins responded that he didn't recall the exact
event, it may have happened, as he painted for several years with only a mouse...it didn't matter really
since his approach isn't flashy brushwork or fast strokes, but rather precise shapes, and at the time the
tablets he didn't like since he felt he had little control. Says the people of the time mostly used it for
cheesy effects anyhow like adding speed lines to images.

-he mentions that painting with gouache will teach you lots since you can't blend with it, so must do
paint all the shapes right

-when asked if has ever used clay models or other physical models to explore form or light instead of a
3d program, he responds with "of course" and that he has tried just about everything (though it is messy
so doesn't do it as much as digital 3d). Mentions that it is good to get out of the digital space though
since even the best 3d program is still just an approximation of real life, and he compares it to life all the
time and finds deficiencies that others don't notice or assume are right. Says he does play with clay and
modelling with his daughter(s?).

-when asked about what lessons or exercises or things caused his skills to jump up the most, he thought
a bit and said two things impacted him the most...1) understanding how light interacts with the basic
forms (cubes, spheres, cones, etc), and 2) when he was in his early 20's he got a Sargent book that blew
his mind

-"GO LOOKING FOR THINGS; YOU'RE NOT GONNA FIND IT IN YOUR STUDIO"

-discussed the super-hi-res file things that got passed around...turns out to be private commissions by
some millionaire geek (got rich by using trucks to take the inventory of small comic book shops going out
of business, then sorting and selling all the stuff online). The geek is an Edgar Rice Burroughs fanboy and
writes crossover fanfiction and hired Mullins to paint various scenes in it...meeting.jpg is Tarzan and
Jane at a fancy party in Africa meeting John Carter of Mars...

-when questioned about him teaching Schoolism courses in the near future, he said he will be teaching,
but also made it sound like he doesn't know what he wants to teach. Mentions he has put a lot of
thought into what should be taught to students and in what order. He came up with a pyramid idea
where at the bottom is the most basic things and it gets more advanced as you move up, and the
volume of each section is how many people can do it. So the bottom level is a wide base, Tracing,
everyone can do it, even an orangutan. The next level is Contour drawing. Next is Construction. Then
Lighting on Basic Forms. These types of progressions continue until the very top level at the peak of the
pyramid, where you can paint any body type and any object in any pose from any angle made out of any
material with any lighting on it....all perfectly without reference. He says there is no one, or almost no
one, in this level. But then he asks, what if you take someone from this level, and make them go to the
bottom level and trace an image...their tracing will be very different from the orangutan tracing. So all
the levels are connected and related even if it seems there is a progression. And how does he fit into all
this? What if the level to teach is about anatomy...is he the one to teach it? Well, he knows anatomy and
could teach it, but it would be better to go to someone like Michael Hampton or Rey Bustos who know
more and have dedicated their lives to teaching it. The same can be said about any other section of the
pyramid. Mullins then jokes that the class would be you pay and show up, and he just has a sign there
saying "go to learn anatomy from Rey Bustos" then when you come back there will be a different sign
pointing you to a different teacher for something else. In the end, Mullins sounded like he had no idea
what he was going to teach, despite having thought lots about what people should learn in what order.
-when asked to pull up images (masterpaintings) onto the screen and discuss what he liked about them,
Mullins had a big smile and said that he couldn't do it now, but it was an idea for a class..."a museum
trip with Spoogedemon" (chuckled to himself then awkwardly explained that he supposed most people
missed the reference)...he seemed very happy and almost in a far off place when he thought of a class of
looking at masterworks. Really gave the impression he appreciates master paintings and wants others to
appreciate them too and know more about them.

After the demo a large lineup/crowd immediately built itself around him and people were shoving prints
in his face to get signed and getting their photo taken with him. He smiled uncomfortably and signed
away, but you could tell he wanted to leave and get away from all the people and attention. Afterwards
he left and didn’t hang around for the afterparty with the rest of the instructors. He also didn’t seem to
attend any other demos (whereas the other instructors could be seen hanging around)
SAM NIELSON DEMO:

I didn’t take many notes for him since his workshop was covering topics I already am comfortable with…

He began by discussing how creativity is problem solving, but made it clear that you need to identify the
proper problems. Many times people are solving surface problems when they should be focusing on the
heart of the problem.

-light in animation has two purposes: appeal and story

-showed a Venn diagram with three sections about your image that you need to think about in relation
to the audience: How the audience is interacting or viewing the image, How they are feeling, and What
they are thinking. If you manage to succeed in two categories you have good design, if you hit all three
you get great design.

-showed some examples of his work and things he did to hit the goals (pretty obvious stuff such as
choosing a certain lighting to emphasize a certain aspect, like a front lighting to make it friendlier)

-had a chrome sphere and a cloth to cover it, used that to show matte and specular lighting on a sphere
with a lamp. Also used a volunteer and lit his head from different angles to show how it can affect our
perception of a face on an emotional level. Gives quick overview of basics of lighting and some common
definitions.

-recommends learning perspective, 3d, and sculpting in order to build your mind’s 3d render skills (and
allow you to handle things that are difficult to calculate like cast shadows projected onto complex forms)

-suggests painting a sphere light test for each painting—paint it out 3 times: matte with all the light
sources, specular with everything, and a matte with the main light not included so you can get proper
values of cast shadows on subject. Use these spheres as guides for complex forms.

-for demo he already had the flat colours and just added lighting on it based on emotional points from
suggestions of the audience

Process:

-flats separated by layer (uses to get clean selections when he works above all the other layers)

-soft ambient shadows

-used an overlay layer to bring sunlight in

-he uses a special smudge brush to remove the sloppy lay-in of the overlay layer and to turn form
smoothly

-then he paints on top

-he paints all surfaces the same matte appearance at first, then paints the speculars on top at the end
HELEN MINGJUE CHEN DEMO:

Story beat illustration

 It is a part of a bigger whole
 Must have a quick read (via values/lighting)
 Get an emotional hinge in there

Elements of a storybeat:

 Set
 Camera (composition) – viewpoint, type of lens, etc
 Lighting – organization, hierarchies
 Character –this is the cherry on top and provides a connection for the audience

-Helen showed examples of screenshots from The Incredibles, showing how they achieved various
feelings from the mundane to intensity. Choices such as camera angles and colours play into this a lot.

-it is important to know what the set is supposed to say

-Ensure a clear value read –this usually means it is a simple graphic composition with large value masses

-ask yourself what the moment is about…characters? the set? How does this image fit into the whole
story? Are there any keywords you want to hit (eg claustrophobia)? Do you have an opinion on it?

- says cinematography is often neglected by artists, but is extremely important to learn, it is something
Helen is just beginning to pick up in the last few years

-for the demo she starts by writing the ideas she wants to get first—in this case “dense city”, “busy” and
“lost girl”

-recommends thumbnailing BEFORE any research, as this keeps the compositions fresher and based
more on your own personal experiences (she said she is using her time in China to help with this image)

-first thing to do is find the camera angle—she did several thumbnails very rapidly (maybe 30 seconds
each), just a few simple lines and no value, very loose and to decide the horizon line/viewpoint and such

-she chooses one and blows it up to a full sized file

-googles for reference images, says she is looking for fact, but also FEELING in the ref (she googled things
like “Japanese alleyway”, and used images from Tokyo and other busy cities). Searched very quickly for
images, says if it were not a demo she would spend longer finding appropriate reference

-set up a quick 1-point perspective grid freehand “I really love perspective”

-people see shapes first, so use large value shapes for the main read
-“I draw with paint”

-wants to have a separation of the alley and street, so lays in a flat grey opaque shape of the entire alley
ontop on one layer (though still has perspective layer above)

-lays colour directly ontop of the grey shape opaquely and on same layer, begins breaking up into
smaller shapes and varying things, adding interest

-when asked if she has storyboards to work off of, she says sometimes but usually not…her job is to
express a certain feeling, a moment—does that before fleshing out design

-when asked how many of her sets make it to the final product, she says 20-30% of hers have…”I’m
lucky, that’s high”

-paints textures manually in another document as a flat on straight view, then later copies to main
document and skews it into perspective. Did this a few times during demo, once for a brick wall and
once for graffiti on a different wall, also to skew a bicycle into perspective. Masks out parts of it with a
texture brush to integrate it and make it feel more worn out.

-“sometimes doing something wrong is better than doing something kinda right, since the art director
can point out what NOT to do”

-She handles lighting as the LAST step…but thinks ahead in the thumbnail stage a bit on what she
eventually intends it to look like. So far she is painting everything in very neutral muted colours with
ambient lighting so that other lighting effects can be added later.

-tries to get a lot of variety in textures (materials)

-says even if you are asked to paint something you don’t enjoy, you can always find a part of it to grab
onto that you like

-she flattens a lot of layers, keeping only foreground, midground, and bg separate. But if she knows
though that she will be asked to make many changes to an image later on, she will keep everything on
its own layer to make this easier.

-one of the most important lessons she was given is to build a sense of history into a set, make it feel
really lived in. She recommends looking at Rockwell to help learn this.

-advice: “Don’t be a dick”

-“don’t be afraid to kill your painting for your art director”

-so far in the demo the foreground alleyway is nearly complete, and the bg is still the white of the
canvas, untouched

-she says painting within section like this helps her, she can just focus on the one area then and it is less
intimidating…lay in the main interesting shape then break it up and add design to it
-she paints very opaquely, almost never has to erase or correct things much after laying it in

-says she learned to do this from an oil painting Quickstudies class, where they had only 20 minutes to
do paintings of things (still life, plein air, etc). This taught her about confidence in markmaking.

-when asked how long she takes to do paintings for her job, she says a finished piece can take up to 4
days, but for quick lighting keys she can be expected to pump out 2 or 3 per day. Typical work hours of
9am to 7pm.

-“I am a sucker for depth of field stuff”

-only really uses 2 brushes, a squarish block-in brush and a chalky texture one. Both are quite opaque.

-“don’t be a slave to the perspective grid”

-when asked what she as an art director looks for in artists she mentions a good work ethic as well as
strong draftsmanship

-mentions Rodolfo Damaggio as being an incredible artist

-To add lighting to the image she uses various layer blending modes—seemed like mostly multiply and
colour dodge, but she experiments and uses a lot. Uses these in very large areas and with big airbrush or
gradients.

-RESTART THE ENTIRE IMAGE IF IT GETS AWAY FROM YOU

-Helen felt the image got away from her partway through but continued anyhow for the sake of the
demo…she was disappointed in the end result (despite the general consensus of the audience and what
bobby was saying, I have to agree with Helen that the image fell flat shortly after she began to add the
lighting to it)
STEPHEN SILVER DEMO:

This demo began very much as a motivational speech kind of thing. Stephen was really energetic and
enthusiastic and talked about both his own history and just general motivational quotes and such. He
was very well prepared and talked fast, covered a LOT of material, and had a well-organized slideshow
for it all with probably hundreds of slides, and at the end did some quick sketches in sketchbook pro to
show some ideas. He also had short clips of videos such as animations he worked on. Despite some
technical difficulties where the projector was projecting all in pink and grainy, he managed to work
through it surprisingly well and fix it on the fly my stomping on a part of the stage that must have had a
bad cable connection underneath. Overall a very interesting and educational lecture/demo that kept
you busy constantly through either learning new things or doing exercises in your sketchbook.

-Belief leads to success—example of 4 minute mile being thought impossible for a long time, then many
could achieve it

-Fall forward, don’t fall back. Use momentum to push through failures and learn

Reasons why you may NOT be moving forward:

-you look for shortcuts instead of putting in the work and taking the harder (but proper) road

-you have no initiative—you want some else to give you a push and answers and guide you…you
must self-guide and learn on your own

-you don’t draw unless you are required or told to

-you don’t seek out great art

-you don’t study/copy other things or artists enough

-you don’t listen to criticism

-you’re showing your artwork to the wrong people (for example those who just give praise and
nothing else)

-you believe it will be too difficult

-you wait for approval before taking the next step and just trying

-you don’t know what you want to do (you need a direction)

-you’re in your comfort zone, not experimenting

-you’re not OBSERVING

-Put yourself out there, keep growing, don’t stay stagnant in one spot
-“My belief was always…why not?” (he used examples from his life, such as deciding on a whim to go
into animation and makes a portfolio despite not knowing what it should look like…because of this his
ends up standing out from the others and it works)

-it is important to be versatile—you should copy other artists and be able to understand and replicate
their shape language

-“you’re gonna make it in the industry with friends” (they will help you out, recommend jobs, etc)

-“there’s no loyalty in this industry. You’re a nomad. It’s the way the industry rolls” (talking about a
company’s loyalty to you…once a project is done and they have used you how they want they will toss
you out)

-between jobs he decided to publish books of his sketches, but publishers he approached weren’t
interested, so he learned how to self publish and it gave him a lot of success

-“you don’t need to know the end result to get started. Take the opportunity to at least try things”

“why not try? If it works, great. If not, move on. It’s a journey and there’s no destination.”

-“know what your intention is”…different mindsets lead to different focuses. Don’t try to do absolutely
everything.

-Don’t feel pressure, like “I’m never gonna make it unless I do X”

-understand WHY you want something, then the HOW will become clear.

-mimicry is the prerequisite to creativity—pick a small handful of artists to admire (internet is bad in this
sense since it overexposes us to so much good art we get lost)

-you don’t know what you can be until you know what you can do

Success requires 3 things:

1) Burning desire
2) Definite purpose
3) Take ACTION. Don’t be just talk.

-set goals, go on journey, let things happen

-he quotes Famous Artists Course: SEE, OBSERVE, REMEMBER

-practice daily—even if for only 15 minutes, practice

-Persistence, Patience, Confidence

-the worst that can happen is someone says “no”

Steps to get good at drawing:

-Draw the face lots, learn it well

-lots of life drawing—but don’t just copy, try to caricature the poses and push the essence of it,
observe closely, you should be able to invent it afterwards, you should switch media every so
often and use anything and everything to draw with

-MEMORY SKETCHING

-TV Recorder—use this to pause and sketch out movements—he showed sumo and boxing
matches he paused repeatedly and drew out, try to capture the gestures and movements

-fill sketchbooks—aim for at least 5 full sketchbooks per year. Make sure to observe well and to
remember….don’t just doodle mindlessly.

-Joshua Reynolds: “Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labour”

-Recommends an exercise called Caricature Pop Up…a face pops up for about 2 or 3 seconds then you
close the image…draw a caricature from memory. This trains your memory to capture the essential
information (say, they maybe have a big nose and eyes close together…this will be what defines their
likeness)

-look for the general shape of the head—is it squarish? An oval? A circle? Triangular? Long?
Wide?

-use magazines and earthsworld.com for reference for this exercise

-don’t ever rely on reference…use it as an idea

-if you’re in a rut that means you need to get out of your comfort zone

-learn to recognize and fix your mistakes

Character Design for Animation:

-it’s not always designing new characters, often you are reworking a storyboard and adding the
design over it

-style AFTER—life/movement first, just draw it your own way

-gotta do enough drawings to pull style out of you—already inherently in you

-don’t try to make stuff up—pull up reference

--don’t copy your rough—constantly edit it at each progressive stage

-don’t worry about it being beautiful at first, work on proportions, big things first
Deep dark secrets of design :P

Visualize:

-format (comic, TV etc)

-stylistic requirements

-what ref

-Demographics

Research:

-do research

-what visual imagery will guide you?

Action:

-roughs/thumbs

-don’t overdraw the first idea

-try many possibilities and variations

-draw over and over

5 keys (in order of importance):

1) Content
2) Gesture
3) Design
4) Form
5) Details

-let your ideas flow loose instead of getting caught up in editing

Character:

-Who is it? Where? When?

-Personality/attitude

-appearance/age/physical details
 -“You’re a casting director as the character designer”

-How does your character sit? Consider everything

-you want to incorporate some kind of feeling

-rockwell pushed things (showed examples of Rockwell’s photoref vs final painting)

-Don’t just stick to the ref—take the idea of it, the action

-build habits of daily working on your goals—even 30 minutes per day

-“Don’t be competitive—be creative. Don’t worry about the competition.”

Design: organization of forms/shapes

-basic shapes, iconic, identifiable

-speak your own shape language

-when copying, say it in your own way

-variation of shape

-everything is design—he showed examples of turning lamp shapes and bottles into characters,
also stole shapes from fish for things

-general to particular, get the basics down

-arrange things differently, see what happens, create new perceptions (he had photos of various
blocks arranged in different ways)

-recommends watching The Human Face (documentary) by John Cleese

-distortion can lead to new ideas

-avoid the go-to

-draw through

-clarity in design through simplicity

-don’t neglect negative space

-Where does the eye go?

-be aware of spacing

-Through repetition you can juggle numerous aspects of design at once

 -avoid tangents to pull out clarity

-exaggeration in scale

-(this whole time he has been showing images on slides to go along with it…he showed some
Erich Sokol but I missed the other names because they moved so fast)

-emphasis by contrast

Exercise: Blind Feeling Drawing

-more useful than blind contour drawings

-look at ref while drawing without looking at paper

-rather than a slow careful contour, you draw loose and fast and try to capture the essence of it, like for
a face perhaps start and see the large forehead so scribble in a large forehead, then move down, there
are some beady eyes you do and move on from there until everything is put in

-at this point you have a general face on your page that will have a TON more character than if you just
drew it normally, and it is probably exaggerated in ways you couldn’t do intentionally. You can now
spend a couple minutes drawing over and refining it normally.

-Don’t just do this exercise (and others) one time and say “oh cool”…no, you must do REPETITION
CLAIRE WENDLING DEMO:

This one is a bit hard to describe since it was so different from all the other presentations…both in
format and just how Claire is. I’ll try to write what I can based on memory and my notes, but I feel it all
falls somewhat short of the actual experience and anything I write will be full of holes from things I can’t
express from memory well or things that are in my memory and didn’t think to write down. The demo
started about 15 minutes late since she was doing pencil drawings and they were having issues in filming
and projecting it and having the pencil lines actually show up on the screen properly. Bobby Chiu sat
next to her on stage to ask her questions and guide the whole thing, to help her understand questions
from the audience, and also probably just because he is a fan of hers and wanted to see it up close.
Claire sat sort of hunched over, she gave a very timid and quiet impression, but kind and sweet. She had
hollow cheeks and a thin frame and seemed to move slowly and carefully. The “demo” was more of a
casual interview/conversation in which Bobby and the audience would ask her about her thoughts, her
art and her life. She was incredibly open, and spoke at length about personal topics such as her nearly
crippling self-confidence issues, her battles with why she even does art (she almost quit!), and talked
briefly of her illness, though focused more on how it affected her than the specifics of it (she didn’t want
to bore us with medical stuff). Despite the language barrier, she spoke and understood English quite well
and made many jokes. Often when describing things or explaining them she used analogies or phrased
things in a somewhat poetic way—she claims this is largely due to her not knowing how to articulate it
well in English, but I think much of it is just how she thinks of things. She also had some sketchbooks
where she flipped through and pointed to some drawings to say a certain thing about it. Many of them
she tried to skip over because she felt they were bad. She approaches a lot of things in a very intuitive
way, and relies on feelings instead of technical thought out rules or processes. The first portion of the
demo was just her answering questions and talking, and then it was a while before she began drawing.
The drawings were hard to see at first, but in the end you could make out what she was doing. She did
several small drawings, and ended up giving up and putting aside the first few she did partway through
working on them, saying they were bad. When the time was up and Bobby tried to wrap it up, Claire
insisted she wasn’t yet finished her drawing and spent another 10 minutes finishing it up and talking
more.

-copy yourself—reuse your ideas, and use doodles as starts for full drawings

-doodle constantly, even if it is bad…and if it is bad you should not feel bad because the drawing is a part
of your life you put in, it is time (she talked a lot of self-acceptance throughout her demo)

-when asked about how she draws things like cats so well and makes them look so good, she relates a
story of a man she knew who would draw buildings, and his job was to make them look as good as
possible, so he would use a “fake” perspective, he pushed things and changed the perspective in ways to
make it look better—this is how she approaches anatomy, you can “fake” things to make it better

-drawing is like adding pieces of clay

-there is life in animals, and she wants to capture this…she owns cats and observes them lots
-she is acting in a way while drawing, she feels inside her the tension and pull…so you must draw with
your entire body in that sense, you feel with your body

-“I just doodle cute things to relax myself”

-She draws a lot in cafes, no one around her really cares much or bothers her

-when asked what inspires her, she responds “If only I could know”

-when you’re a kid you draw just for the fun of it (she tries to do the same now, have fun…she sees
drawing as playing with toys, like she draws animals now in the same way she played with plastic
animals as a child)

-“lots of likes on facebook is like being rich in Monopoly”

-she stopped drawing for several years due to her sickness…when getting back into it she gave herself
exercises. One was to buy a stack of A5 papers and choose a single topic then draw that topic until the
whole stack is filled (she started with things like fairies since they were somewhat comfort zone for her
and she could ease back into it)

-it took 2 years to relearn to draw

-“I draw on everything” (though she does says she likes drawing on cheap paper since it takes away
pressure…the good paper she has sits unused on the shelf staring at her)

-when she draws she very rarely lays in any sort of underdrawing or structure, instead she seeks out a
main line and works from there, deciding things along the way and working outwards, but keeping in
mind the main action or twist she wishes to show

-“the speed you draw changes everything” (referring to speed of your hand as you make lines…she
recommends you calm down)

-“I draw 5 hours a day cause I’m lazy” (when relearning to draw she start with 1 hour and increased it)

-often she likes to start with a patch of tones, without lines

-PUT EFFORT without worry

-There needs to be a meaning or idea in every drawing…it doesn’t have to be big or important, but it has
to be there. In her last drawing she drew a fairy with a hat and the idea was she was tying her shoes…a
small idea, but an idea.

-if you can’t accept your bad art you aren’t accepting yourself. You are too hard on yourself.

-“when I feel there is no life in a drawing I throw it away”

-“I want my work to be as living as possible”

-while she draws she likes to listen to soccer games—it helps to disconnect her from stress

-when asked her three favourite artists she chose: Jeff Jones, Winsor McCay, and Dino Battaglia

-play with accidents, don’t aim for anything in particular

-she says she starts with “clouds”…fuzzy shapes or ideas, either in her mind or on her paper…so this
could be a tone she lays down, or a line. Or she likes to take another drawing and put it underneath her
current page (maybe needs a lightbox) to have a fuzzy impression of the drawing show through, and this
gives her new ideas and lets her see things in the same way you see dragons in clouds in the sky

-recommends giving yourself assignments to make yourself at ease with drawing

-when asked about how she learned to draw everything from memory so well she didn’t really know…
Bobby asked if she did memory exercises and she just said a simple “nope”. Quite a lot of questions
were answered in this way. She didn’t seem to do anything special other than draw a lot, and it is as
though she doesn’t quite know how she got to where she is now or how she does what she does.

-she spoke fondly of a drawing book she received as a child…it was leather bound and had nice gold
lettering on the cover. It covered a number of topics on basic drawing and stuff on gesture and so forth
and she claims it taught her lots even though the drawings in it were crude.

-says the first 5 years as a child she never saw another child, she just spent time with nature and at
home

-when she was sick she was on her deathbed and nearly didn’t make it, extreme health problems such as
kidney failure. She stopped drawing for several years, and then had to deal with many questions of why
she draws at all. Nearly quit permanently but felt like something was missing from her life.

-she struggled with intense self-confidence issues since she needed to relearn how to draw—how could
she do what she did before, never mind do something better than it and proceed further?

-she does tons and tons of doodles, most are trash or used to warm up, only maybe 1/10 is good, but
she likes to do them and can find good ideas in them even if the drawings are poor