Many thanks to APW student Megan Sheppard for letting us use her photographs of her classmates and instructors.

Our over goal in working with Rajesh was twofold.

Firstly, to impart a set of drawing concepts and supply practical tools that he would be able to use successfully on his own once we had completed our studies in the Portfolio Workshop International together.

Secondly, to focus on a very specific area (gesture) that would have a permanent and profound impact on all the other areas of Rajesh’s drawing practice and professional animation portfolio, and make certain that upon completing the Portfolio Workshop International, he was leaving with a thorough practical knowledge of this subject area.

Animation character poses that are life-like and natural come from an understanding of gesture as observed in the human figure.  After completing the PWI, Rajesh later took part in the APW Character Design Challenge and submitted several character designs based on various basic shapes.

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The block of the rib cage and of the pelvis are carved and shaped.  Out of the general blocking of the head, the cranium and facial regions become more pronounced.  These masses are developed as an extension of that initial 5 second gesture that captures the wholeness of the entire figure.

A sound comprehension of gesture is an integral part of being able to capture the relationship of these masses in space.

“To keep Rajesh on his toes, the drawing exercises would constantly rotate in class so that the primary raw effort of grasping at that whole gesture in 5 or 10 seconds and getting the whole thing down on the paper would keep recurring over and over again.”

Gerard Sternik APW Director

We like to call that initial effort to feel and grasp the whole gesture as a unit the “prime motivator”.  We keep this idea fresh and in the forefront of our students consciousness for all the drawing exercises that we do.

“Our next step – translating Rajesh’s ability to feel and draw gestures of the human figure to drawing gestural poses of animation characters became an area of focus in week 3.   Emphasizing the connection between gesture drawing of the figure and strong natural feeling poses of animated characters was crucial”.

Vince Peets APW Director

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The key was to think of every element of the figure as being part of the developing gesture that was introduced in the first 5 seconds of each drawing.

“Everything has to grow out of that initial contact with the model as a whole unit through gesture.”

Gerard Sternik APW Director

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Considering his animation training, the biggest challenge for Rajesh at first was simply to let go of what he had learned to date and cultivate an approach to our work together that was very flexible, open minded and not result oriented.  In this case, the “result” in the phrase result oriented refers to “making drawings” that “look nice” and are “acceptable” examples of “good” work.

When one starts to study gesture, if you’re really “going for it” most of the drawings produced can appear to be quite a mess.

“As the saying goes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omlette, and when you’re going all out to learn how to draw a gesture, the broken eggs in the equation are usually the student’s ego.”  APW Director Gerard Sternik.

Since he had a lot of previous experience using line in his work we decided to encourage Rajesh to explore the relationship between contour and gesture right away.

It is evident from the examples below that Rajesh did quite well in week one, producing some very strong work.

“We had a piece of newsprint with a hand-drawn ‘no parts’  sign on the wall for the first week as a reminder to avoid the temptation to draw parts of the figure and always look for the movement through the whole.”  APW Director Vince Peets

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Classes for the 2011 Portfolio Workshop International took place in July and saw Rajesh Pai complete 4 weeks (Monday to Friday) of intensive Life Drawing and Drawing for Animation classes with APW Instructors Vince Peets and Faisal Raja. APW Program Directors, Gerard Sternik and Vince Peets worked together with Faisal Raja to design a course of study specifically for Rajesh. Prior to beginning the 2011 PWI with us, Rajesh had just completed 3 years of study in Vancouver Film School’s Animation department. Because of this experience, Rajesh was not starting at the very beginning. He had specific needs in areas of his drawing that he wished to work on with us to upgrade and improve his professional animation portfolio. Each week Rajesh was introduced to new drawing exercises designed with his particular path of development in mind. Read all of these 4 blog posts – they offer an overview of Rajesh’s PWI experience by focusing on his progress from week to week. In addition to posting drawings from the month-long PWI Summer Session, Gerard Sternik, Vince Peets and Instructor Faisal Raja have contributed their thoughts on Rajesh’s progress. If you have any question let us know and as always, feel free to comment.

Rajesh and PWI instructorFaisal Raja develop character designs.

Rajesh and APW Instructor Faisal Raja in a more serious moment.

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Have a look at a few drawings – just click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

With apologies to the ROM…We kind of took over the T-Rex exhibit.

With the help and guidance of the APW team of instructors and TA’s, our students spend hours in the museum doing various gesture drawing and mass-analysis exercises as they get ready to put together their animation portfolios.

APW students draw dinosaurs and instructor Chris Cherkas draws animals with a group from the 2011/12 Session.

Character sketch by Saud Boksmati

Saud Boksmati spoke to the 2011/12 Session about the importance of dedication to drawing as a way to get into animation school and as a valuable skill that will continue to open doors.  “If you can draw a box from any angle you can draw anything”.  Saud also added an encouragement to “not give up on yourself” and remain committed to learning about all different facets of life in order to grow as artists.

Have a look at Saud’s blog “A Breadcrumbs Aristocracy” to see his character designs, layouts and all kinds of other interesting and wonderful “artistic endeavors”.

Character sketch by Nate Gaul (from the APW Character Design Chellenge)

Nate Gaul is involved in production design and character design for video gaming.  When Nate visited class, he talked about his creative process.  A big fan of the “old school” feeling of drawing on paper, Nate keeps a sketchbook with him at all times to constantly sketch caricatures of the people he sees in daily life.  Nate also suggested studying the work of other designers and artists to learn more about drawing and the many different approaches to designing characters.  Have a look at Nate’s blog “Fat Nat Sketches” to see more of his sketches and crazy characters.

Oh, and did I mention that just a few short years ago these two artists were APW students?

The APW 14 Day Character Design Challenge is not a competition – in fact, it’s the opposite.  Artists are welcome to participate no matter what their stage of development is.  Ultimately, it’s all about sharing character design ideas and learning from each other.  In recognition of the time and effort people have put into designing their characters, we’ve decided to offer a Character Design Challenge Prize- a video review of one character.  APW’s Vince Peets will do a video character session where he’ll talk about your design and make sketches to suggest ways to further develop your drawing into an animation character.  Here’s how it will work:

• For each time you enter a drawing (either by posting to APW’s facebook page or emailing to vince@animationportfolioworkshop.com) your name will be put into a hat.  On Monday, November 7th – the final and 14th day of the Character Design Challenge, one name will be pulled from the hat and that person will win a video character design development session with APW’s Vince Peets.  Since APW is all about learning how to draw and in this case, how to design characters we will open this up for students only.

• The student whose name is drawn wins a video-character-design-review with APW’s Vince Peets.  The winner will be announced on Monday, Nov. 7th. Your character will be reviewed – it’s strengths and weaknesses pointed out and suggestions made as to how to fully develope it into an animation character.  The video session will be posted on our blog on Thursday, November 10th.