Sam Draws

I lied earlier— can’t pick a favorite,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:27:00 -0400

I lied earlier— can’t pick a favorite, everyone’s the favorite

Worked with the pencil tool, pre-selected colour palettes and cartoonishness, had a blast!

Sneak preview of a thing! I tried out inking with the pencil...

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:40:35 -0400

Sneak preview of a thing! I tried out inking with the pencil tool and more deliberate stylization. All of the alpha kids will be there eventually but Roxy might be my favorite so???? she gets to be the preview I guess

Lesson learned from DR1: hedge your bets by picking several...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:13:00 -0400

Lesson learned from DR1: hedge your bets by picking several favorites

Been drawing an awful lot of modcloth lately! zero regrets

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:00:55 -0400

Been drawing an awful lot of modcloth lately! zero regrets

A lil birthday portrait of Mariah (a recently-Whovian...

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:54:06 -0400

A lil birthday portrait of Mariah (a recently-Whovian friend/teammate) as Ten! Also featuring her goofy dog as a goofy alien dog

A little song about team breakfasts, sung to the Adventure Time...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:03:00 -0400

A little song about team breakfasts, sung to the Adventure Time theme obviously!

There was a half-hearted attempt at AT-style animation for all of two frames at the beginning but man, was that ever short-lived. It’s pretty terrible but I still really like it.

I lied, more penguins Just finished this final! Might upload the...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:04:42 -0400

I lied, more penguins

Just finished this final! Might upload the rest of them later, this is my favorite one though

Falkland Islands environment studies with little penguins, awww.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:58:44 -0400

Falkland Islands environment studies with little penguins, awww.

wow you are ridiculously talented

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:54:16 -0400

That’s very kind of you to say!

Foundation stuff for Spartanpancake

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:31:00 -0400

Ok! This got really long so posting it as a text post. If any fellow students want to add anything please do!

So! Foundation Computers is pretty basic: simple overviews of photoshop, illustrator, indesign, imovie, and sometimes flash. There’s generally a wide range of skill levels in the students (from people who have done zero digital art to people who consider themselves digital artists) so if you’ll basically get out of it what you put in. You clearly have a pretty solid digital drawing/painting background so there probably won’t be many huge revelations in that respect, but there might be some programs that you aren’t familiar with? It’s also a prereq for a lot of later classes and for borrowing equipment from the computers lab. The lab is really, really nice (the computers are new and enormous, it’s pretty sweet) and it’s a good idea to get familiar with the place, as you’ll be using it for other class assignments for years to come!

I took Foundation photo even though I’m not big into photo either, and I have zero regrets. You learn to process and print your own film, which is pretty neat! I personally loved being in the darkrooms. It is VERY EXPENSIVE though! You can borrow cameras from the photo dept. but you’re on your own for film and photo paper, which is costly as heck. If you’re interested in the class even though photo’s not your speciality (and you can afford it) I would recommend taking it as you might not get another chance to take a photo course, but if you don’t think you’d be excited about it then I’d give it a pass.

The movement course wasn’t around in my year! It sounds pretty great though?
I didn’t take wood and metal, but if you do you’ll be able to use the school shop for other future projects!

A fair amount of people end up taking some foundations in the summer or in second year; either classes they had to retake, or need as a prereq, or they want to be able to use the woodshop etc. So it’s not a big deal if you have to go back! There were at least two second years in my foundation computers class. If a foundation class is a prereq for a higher-level class you’re interested in taking second year you sometimes can speak to the instructor if you can show them that you’re sufficiently skilled in that area.

For class recommendations:

Paint and print is a combo course, so it doesn’t get really deep into either medium- you get the bare, BARE basics of painting (with acrylics) and an rudimentary overview of some printmaking techniques. It’s still useful if you’re going to take any further painting (it may be a prereq for Intro Paint, but I am not totally sure). You DO get to try a bunch of different printmaking processes which are real cool, and you might not get to try them otherwise! A lot of people do their first prints in Paint/print and then go on to take some second/third year printmaking classes.

I took modelled forms in foundation, which I had no background whatsoever in beforehand and I enjoyed it immensely! It’ s a good class just to learn about making things, and to get used to learning new skills and media on the fly.

I do recommend taking design. Even if you’re going into fine arts, it’s good practice for coming up with a lot of viable ideas quickly (for us, most projects required 60-100 thumbnails to start with), as well as presentation and creative problem solving. It’s handy to have some basic design skills at your disposal. Not everything in the class will be directly applicable towards your main area of interest, but you can usually find a way to incorporate your strengths into your projects. The in-class assignments were really fun! (It would be things like, ‘come up with a tv spot, print ad and billboard for this product, and pitch it to us. You have one hour’) You basically just pretend you’re on Mad Men, it’s great.
Some things our design class did: packaging for energy drinks, marketing campaign for downtown Dartmouth, orthographic drawings of kinder surprise toys.
Our final was a group project— designing and building a chair out of cardboard.

In closing! I know picking Foundation classes can be intimidating, it’s your first year and it’s hard to know what to expect. It’s good to remember that every other students will be in the same position as you; the way the courses are set up everyone gets in at least a class or two that aren’t really their area of expertise (you will witness first-hand the unfortunate film and photo kids in your drawing or painting foundation classes, and it will be equally tragic and hilarious). The instructors know that this will be the case, and although it is expected that students have a basic level of capability the instructors are generally willing to help students catch up on the technical aspects if they show that they’re putting in the effort (this was me in Foundation). Although there’s an emphasis on technical skill on Foundation, it’s also a good time to ‘art student’ skills: churning out a high volume of material in a short time, staying on top of the (insane) workload, trying new things, taking technical and conceptual risks, working the crits.

Sorry for writing you an essay, but I hope this was helpful! If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Main part of my Illustration 2 (Character design) final. I...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:56:00 -0400

Main part of my Illustration 2 (Character design) final. I recommend the fullview!

not for much longer though! had to get this out of my system...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:46:00 -0400

not for much longer though! had to get this out of my system beFORE TOMORROW oh man oh man

twenty is a lot of years

(EDIT: OH AND there’s a new Gravity Falls ep out on my birthday, that was a major point of this I guess!)

"Ok so I’m fed up trying to upload this gif i made, if you want to see a penguin throw a..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:43:00 -0400

“Ok so I’m fed up trying to upload this gif i made, if you want to see a penguin throw a snowball click this thing here”

-

Space knights vs space dragons!!! Fullview it...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:03:00 -0400

Space knights vs space dragons!!! Fullview it please!

Illustration 2 assignment, we illustrated each others’ short stories.

Done and done! I am really really happy with how this turned but also extremely glad I don’t have to work on it any more?? that is often how these things go, I find.

Armor based off this sweet 1500s Italian gear and dragon inspired by this rad spinosaurus!

illustration WIP part 2: flats are done! gettin there, gettin...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:04:33 -0400

illustration WIP part 2: flats are done! gettin there, gettin there

Illustration WIP, lines lines lines

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:22:00 -0400

Illustration WIP, lines lines lines

Creation of the fish lamp by Monica Waugh and Sam Hall (me)! It...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:28:01 -0400

Built wire frame to pre-decided measurements.

It looks flimsy but is actually pretty sturdy!

Marked feature placement with placeholders. Started getting excited!

Built the jaws and planned the cardboard base

Attached jaws and base.

Extend base to tail

Put in wiring, started to apply inner tissue layer. Plugged in lamp as a test and got super excited, jumped around a little

Attached tail and began scaling (cut out a MILLION FRIGGIN SCALES with a scalpel) but oh man it looks pretty great lit up

Finished product! wow so great! Presented to class and got some friggin RAVE REVIEWS

OH MAN WHAT A FISH

Creation of the fish lamp by Monica Waugh and Sam Hall (me)! It was a three-week assignment that took a lot of teamwork and a great many hours!

This photoset is missing the ‘learn how to wire lightbulbs in series’ step and I also sadly don’t have many of the process drawings that were so important to the project, but this should give you a pretty good idea of how it went down! Explanations of each step if you click on the photos.

gonna go ahead and file that one under “troubling...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:12:00 -0400

gonna go ahead and file that one under “troubling developments”

one day i will have a comic, and in this comic (spoilers!!)...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:04:57 -0400

one day i will have a comic, and in this comic (spoilers!!) people will change their costumes :O :O :O

(maybe even more than once??)

space dragon!!! illustration WIP i was super into ben...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:03:00 -0400

space dragon!!! illustration WIP

i was super into ben caldwell’s fantasy cartooning book back in my early drawing days as you can see here! good times, drew a LOT of dragons