I’m writing this in answer to questions I’m asked on a regular basis!

There seems to be confusion about the difference between Video Game Design and Concept Art :  they are very different. The confusion is increased by the fact that many schools indicate that they teach both when in reality they are essentially teaching game design,  and offering a few concept art classes as part of the curriculum.

Video Game designers conceive and program games. Concept Artists design the environments, props,  and characters. To become a Concept Artist you will need more than one or two concept art courses.  This is a position that requires very developed art and design skills. Take a look at the curriculum of our four year diploma program in Concept Art for Animation and Video Games. Every course listed is part of the knowledge base required for this profession!

Although studying illustration in a degree or diploma program will teach you some of the skills required, they will not all be covered. Concept Art is really a mix of illustration, traditional fine art  skills, product design, animation and applied computer skills. It took us a year to work out our curriculum and we’ve been fine tuning it ever since.

I hope this helps!

Maxine

I’m happy to write that first year animation students are having a really exciting time in their first classical animation course, and Tina Seemann tells me  their enthusiasm makes it a joy to work with them.

Twenty year one students have signed on (pending successful completion of the first diploma) for the Advanced Diploma in 3D Computer Animation and Production. We’ll be introducing this group to 3D with workshops during years 2 and 3.

The current year 3 animation students are working on  the animatics for their film projects under the direction of award winning director Jean Pillote. The  films will be completed during a 3 week intensive at the end of this academic year. I’m looking forward to seeing them !

Carla Drmay,  Tina Seemann, James Miko, and the third year animation students recently visited Cuppa Coffee, a prize winning Toronto animation company, well known for stop motion animation, but also involved with computer animation. Three ‘09 graduates are working there, as well as some graduates from former years, and the company is very happy with their professional attitude! The report is that Cuppa Coffee is expanding and has added many computer stations.

In fact, the animation industry in the GTA seems to be rebounding from a very slow fall.  The spring should see many companies ramping up.

Sequential Arts: Comic Books and Graphic Novels and Classical and Computer Animation Basics students who are slated to graduate in the spring, will be using Blog Spot to post their blogs very soon. Year 3 Concept Art for Animation and  Video Games students will also post. There will be links to all their blogs on our gallery page. Since all graduating students must put up a blog as part of their portfolio development course, everyone  who wants to will be able to see the full range of work produced by all Max the Mutt’s senior students.

That’s all the news for now. I’m hoping to have the time this week to get some recent art work from Concept Art students posted!

In any art form what matters is what you have absorbed during your education, what you understand deeply enough to give you the resources to use your past experiences to meet the new challenges you face. For hopeful animators this includes a deep understanding of animation basics. There never will be a better way to do this than studying classical animation first.

What I like about programs outside the academic system is their ability to be professional schools, to dedicate all the student’s time to hands on courses.  I’m old enough to remember when if you wanted to be a fine artist you went to art school, if you wanted to be a classical musician you went to music school, if you wanted to be a dancer you studied at one of the schools associated with a dance company. If you wanted to be an animator, once you had art skills you’d get hired and be trained on the job by an animation company.

With the advent of computer animation, there is simply so much for the student to absorb that I’m hard pressed to understand how a degree program can do it in less then six years. I’ve been watching as Tina, in consultation with some top retired animators and animation teachers, has redesigned Max the Mutt’s animation program to enable students to start animating sooner, concentrate more on character animation, and take those skills into 2D and 3D computer animation. Even with all of our curriculum directed towards the career the student is aiming for, we find ourselves short of time (which is why year 4 has become so essential).

The big news at Max the Mutt is that for the first time the year one students, in addition to their Visual Arts Literacy courses, are taking Intro to Animation and are having a great experience in that course. We are also working to introduce 3D animation earlier to those students who have committed to the Advanced Diploma. The plan is to offer them  3D workshops in years 2 and 3 so that they’ll  walk in to the Advanced Diploma program already familiar with Maya.

Our current year 1 students are the first students who will experience the new animation program in its entirety. However, Tina has been offering summer animation workshops, and this year students will also be able to submit work for review through Concept Share, so current year 2 students will also get additional training. Those going on to year 4 will take a 3D workshop during year 3 to give them  preparation.

Any art form takes practice, practice, practice. One needs first to understand the principles, but that’s a long way from being able to use those principles well.  Animating is no different than any other art. It takes passion, dedication and lots of hard work to develop as an artist.

It also takes passion and dedication to work to keep Max the Mutt, in the face of all obstacles, as good as it can be!

Hats off to all our hardworking students, staff and instructors. The dream lives on.

This past  Saturday our friend and publicist Pat Christmas  lost a battle with cancer we never knew she was waging. My first reaction was regret: I hadn’t had a real talk with her in a long time, and I wished I’d had the chance to thank her again for all her support, advice, and generosity.  I’ll always regret not having had that last conversation.  Pat had an upbeat personality and a love of life.  The last time we saw her was at our industry evening in May 2009.  We never knew anything was wrong.  Pat believed in what we were trying to do and was always excited by the student work.  Her contacts in the world of publications trusted her- she was a publicist who worked for causes and companies she believed in, many of them non-profit.  It was her enthusiasm about us that brought a reporter from the Toronto Star to Max the Mutt. We ended up with a feature story about us and half a page of photos of student work.

We will all miss her, and in her memory we will establish a scholarship, the Patricia Christmas Memorial Scholarship. The first award will be announced this spring. We are in the process of working out the details.

Pat, it’s hard to think that we will really not see you again. Thank you for all you gave us.

We were told that she spent her last week with her husband and best friend watching her favorite comedienne, Lucille Ball, in old episodes of I Love Lucy. She left this world with the same positive spirit that energized her life. She will be missed.

Max the Mutt is retooling the animation program to put more emphasis on acting, storytelling, and character animation. In fact we will specialize in character animation. The culmination of this, is the fourth year: students not only deepen their knowledge of Maya, they work under a professional director on a real film project in which they are the animators.

In today’s world knowledge of 3D, married to a solid drawing and classical background and good timing and acting, will get good jobs for animators. in addition to the plethora of video game companies that will be looking for animators, we now have Pixar in Vancouver, and Starz in Toronto. The following article will be of interest to all current and incoming animation students.

by: Etan VlessingNov 24, 2009

I’ve copied and pasted this article because it shows just how rapidly changes are happening!  Classical and 2D computer animation are both options for hand held screens.
Written by Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks on November 19, 2009 – 9:14 pm -

The man behind SpongeBob SquarePants is testing out a new business model: launching an animated franchise on the iPhone -
instead of TV or film.

Hecht’s four-year-old independent studio, Worldwide Biggies, will debut Bigby, a new cartoon character that — rather than premiering as a half-hour weekly animated series on television — will make his first appearance as an iPhone game app.

Produced in partnership with online gaming giant Addicting Games, the Bigby game is based on an 8-year-old crime-fighting genius, who wears a bear suit, fights off pirates and dragons, and only eats chicken parmesan. 

Whatever the magic is, the Concept Art Diploma Program students (we have 5 in year 3, 15 in year 2, 11 in year 1 with 4 more starting in January who will join them for year 2 next September)  are everything an educator could ask for.  How could it be that group after group exhibit the same passion, work ethic, kindness, and generosity of spirit towards each other?  It won’t be long now until I can post some of the  work they’re doing this semester.  In fact, I’ll try to add some of it to this column by next week.

I’m happy to announce that Alex Ahilov has had an excellent experience with the year 3 students in Advanced Environment Design and Painting in Photoshop, and will return to teach it to year 2 students in January.  Sasa Radosavcevic will be teaching Drawing Props & Objects, a follow-up to Structural Drawing, to year 1 students. I’ll b teaching Figurative Painting once again to year 2 students,  Roksolana Tchotchieva will be teaching Sustained Figure Drawing, using the Russian Academic approach, to year 3 students. There’s too much  to list everything.

When the students are serious, and eager to learn, it motivates instructors to give more than is required. We have passion for the subjects we teach, and it’s exciting to share what we have learned over the years with younger people who share that passion. That’s when teaching generates energy and creativity.

Thank you all, staff, instructors, models and students for contributing to this really unusual learning community.

Maxine

Don’t forget to think!  Education is an active pursuit and you are an important part of the process.  To get the most out of your education you need to be an active participant.  Think about each assignment in a course: what is the point of the assignment?  If you are attending a program with a well thought out curriculum there is a reason for every assignment, a skill that you are teaching yourself by going through a certain process. Do the assignment the instructor gave you keeping the point of it in mind!  Don’t make assignments more complex than they are, but don’t skip steps.

As you progress through a program, instructors will be aware of what you have already been taught.  They are assuming that you have a body of knowledge, so don’t begin every course as if you know nothing.  Be aware of the knowledge and skills you have already acquired and use everything you know to solve the next set of problems.  There is no point in taking a course in design and composition if you don’t use what you’ve learned in every subsequent course.  There’s no point   studying human anatomy unless you know how to use that knowledge to improve the quality of your drawings of people.

Every time you enter a studio or begin to work on an assignment, think!   Center yourself.  Do some deep breathing.  Review in your own mind what the next drawing, or the next project, is about. What do you need to think about?  In what order?  What do you already know that will help you solve the problems?  Do you have the appropriate materials to work with?  Should you do research first?  Play to win.

Your education is not about grades and doing what you think the instructor wants. It’s about acquiring knowledge and skills that you will own and continue to develop over a life time!  We cannot teach you everything simultaneously, so we devise a series of courses, each designed to teach specific skills. To become an artist, in the end you will need to drive all the horses at once.

Eventually, your subconscious will do a lot of the work for you, but in the first years you have to use active mental energy to remind yourself what you need to be concerned with to have a drawing or project succeed.

To be successful you must take responsibility for your own education.  Think about  process and don’t skip steps.  However, do ask questions if and when you don’t understand why you are being asked to go through a certain process. Good instructors will  be happy to explain both “why” and “how.”

We are now beginning the second half of first semester! Eat well and get a walk in every day. You will be able to think better with the right “fuel” (not junk food or cigarettes or too much caffeine) and your body will help you to stay positive if you also make sure you get some exercise every day ( a 25 minute brisk walk will do the trick). Take pleasure in the fact that through your hard work and passion to learn, you are developing yourselves. Most things that are worthwhile are difficult to achieve. Expect to have your share of work that you wish was better or need to redo. Take it all as part of the process. Remind yourself of all that you understand and can do now that you couldn’t do before you started on this path.  Just be sure that you are doing your part,  and aren’t working on automatic pilot!

Last but not least, keep your sense of humor and support each other. We are all in this together.

Over the last few years I’ve tried to contribute in a positive way to the conceptart.org website, and I’ve also piloted  a now deleted Max the Mutt thread. I’ve tried my best to follow guidelines for recruiters. In fact, I’ve been thanked  many, many times. I’ve contributed information on painting, color, and was a regular contributor to a Nicolaides thread. I definitely also let people know about the programs at Max the Mutt when the information was relevant and requested and proudly posted work that was being done by our CA students.

I also received information, for which I’m very grateful. I found companies that are now manufacturing and selling, through the internet, artists supplies that I can’t get here! I found out about the anatomy DVDs mentioned in my last post.

All in all, it was a positive experience, and I would encourage Max the Mutt students to feel free to establish a thread and/or post work. However, the time has come for me to bow out.

Jason has been advertising his new on line school, which sounds like a great project that has the potential to help people without the funds to attend school!  I wish him luck with this project and don’t feel he is “spamming” or would be “spamming” if he tried to get the fact known across the internet!  Knowledge is power.  People have the right to know what is available, to investigate options, and then make the choice that seems a good fit for them.

In order to keep tuition as low as possible, we count on the internet and word of mouth to let people know about us, and our programs. It’s the quality of work that has been steadily produced by Max the Mutt students, and their professionalism, that has enabled the school to grow and expand. When a query on conceptart.org asking for an art school that teaches skills and is near Pittsburgh comes up, it’s impossible for me not to suggest that the writer take a look at our website!  If that’s spamming, I’m guilty.

I respect the fact that it’s Jason’s website and he has the right set the boundaries, but I cannot be present anywhere to do with art without Max the Mutt being part of who I am and what concerns me. Therefore,  with regret, I will no longer participate. My thanks to many of the contributors on  conceptart.org for their support and help when we were developing the Diploma Program in Concept Art for Animation & Video Games!  I’m sure I’ll still peruse the site, and I wish you all the best now and in the future.

We have a new Admissions Director, Julia Ma.   Julia is smart, generous and she found us!  She’s worked before in admissions and had heard about Max the Mutt. She wanted to find out if all the good things she was hearing were true.

At the time I didn’t know Lisa Mamers was going back to school, so I thanked Julia for her interest but told her we didn’t have an opening.  Call it fate.  Julia asked if she could have a tour anyway, and a few days after her visit Lisa announced that she wanted to return to school herself !  Being around art had made her realize that she was moving in the wrong direction: she wants to be a fashion designer.

Julia stepped right in and has been with us since the end of August. She’s piloting our first January start, and much to our surprise  it looks like we’ll have a full class!  These students will join the current year one students in September 2010 to begin year 2.   Since there seems to be a need for this option, we will offer it again for January 2011.

The magic of Max the Mutt from the beginning is that somehow what we need, the person or people we need, seem to find us just as we really need them! i can include so many people in that…Carla Drmay, who is our Secondary School liaison, Workshop Director and so much more… I’m thinking of many more, mainly instructors who found us…the list is too long!

The school is feeling very good to me these days. We have a solid core philosophy.  All the year one groups seem very focused and hardworking.  I work with the Concept Art students, so I’m more aware of what’s happening in their classes.

The second years are busy with all the intro CA courses: Intro to Environment Design, Intro to Animation, Intro to Concept Art, Background Painting ( a double course that starts with the brush and then moves into Photo Shop), Cartooning 1, and of course Intermediate Life Drawing (not an intro course but introducing new concepts).  The third years are taking Portrait Painting, and a full day of Advanced Environment Design and Painting in Photo Shop. They also have Advanced Life drawing and a course called Hands and Feet, which stresses anatomy.

The animation students have several new faculty members, including James Miko. He had an extensive career working for major studios, and learned the craft at a time when you learned  at a studio by being mentored, not at a school.  With that vantage point, he’s bringing some new approaches to learning animation to his year 3 students. (If we were degree granting, by the way, we couldn’t have seasoned professionals like James Miko teaching! We’d be required to hire those with the right “academic” qualifications, most of whom have very little real life experience).

Tina Seemann and I are working hard to get all animation students to realize that they need the fourth year of animation. In fact, we’d like to make it mandatory, a 4 year diploma that includes 3D.  To do this, we’ll need to go through the government and that will take time. In the meanwhile, I hope they’ll all be savvy enough to understand that as the studios -  unlike Mikko’s day- do less and less mentoring and want entry level animators to be at a higher and higher level, the necessity of spending more time in school is becoming a reality.

We’ve already introduced one beginning animation course into year one, and next year, animation classes will be longer in both years 2 and 3.

We are now asking all animation applicants and current students to think in terms of 4 years of study. The changes in the industry demand that everyone take 3D as well as classical and 2D computer animation.  We can help students to fund that fourth year, but, to state it again, everything we are hearing from companies in the industry leads us to feel that year 4 is essential for our animation graduates to remain competitive for jobs at the top companies.

The Illustration for Sequential Arts Program has really blossomed!  Thanks to Kent Burles, with an assist from Dave Ross, the year one and year two students are off to an excellent start.  The year three students, who will be our first SA graduates, have developed beyond expectations and are doing great work!  I really look forward to seeing their graduate show at our first industry evening showcasing both Animation and Sequential Arts!  We’ll have to wait until 2011 for the first Concept Art graduates.

I’ll try to post work from all three diploma programs when we get a little further into the first semester.  I’ll also try to write more for the blog.

Which reminds me, thanks to one of the threads on www.conceptart.org,  I found out about anatomy DVDs that show the body in dissection!  They were done for medical students, but I know they’ll be invaluable to all students at Max the Mutt, whatever their diploma program.  If these things had only been available when I was young… They should arrive soon.

Please post comments if there are subjects you’d like us to cover.  If I don’t have the answers, I’ll gt someone who does have the answers to write!  In fact, I really think Kent and Tina should start writing….in the meantime, keep drawing everyone!

This has been quite a ramble.  I hope you feel up to date.