Animation School | My Art Journey

I drew this digital self-portrait before I went off to animation school in 2019.

Attending animation school a mature student, I had two main goals. I was keen to learn to draw like an animator, and I wanted to surround myself with other artists. (Being able to attend life drawing sessions regularly was a huge bonus, too!)

Since my twenties had been spent largely alone due to illness, I was used to creating art by myself, but I felt the external motivation and inspiration offered in the community college environment would help me to focus better and learn faster than I had thus far been able on my own.

​The first semester started out great! From my brilliant animation instructor, I learned to animate in perspective.

Pretty cool stuff, right? I drew all of these using a Wacom Intuos tablet in ToonBoom Harmony, which is the industry standard animation software.

Learning how to animate waves and characters came next. But first, it was necessary to design the character and props.

The legs look floppy like doll legs, don't they?

Our main project of the semester, was to illustrate a background drawing of a spooky house and then to animate the last leaf falling from the forground tree.

I spent a long time inking the background image for this assignment, and felt I achieved a professional polish.

I wasn't as impressed with my coloring job, perhaps because I have less experience digitally coloring artwork and I felt like the candy pumpkin lanterns didn't look properly grounded. But even so, my Graphic Design teacher selected it as one of a handful of student pieces from the semester to print and frame to decorate the campus studio space.

Our final project of the semester was to write a short winter scene to storyboard using all of the "shot types" available to us.

My time at Animation School was to come to an end earlier than anticipated. Due to a relapse in my illness and the abrupt government closure of all community colleges across Canada for the remainder of the school year, I didn't finnish the seccond semester.

But I am grateful for the time I spent learning from amazing instructors and exploring a difficult media I find absolutely magical!