Thursday, February 5, 2015

Stuff I Drew in Art School


Here is another post with old student samples, ranging back from 1976 to 1979.
That's my landlord's son Rene in the drawing. He would stop by my rented room once in a while with friends. They sometimes watched cartoons while I sketched them.

A couple of life drawings. My art teacher encouraged us not to get used to our favorite tool. So I tried marker, pencil, brush and ink and even finger paint. It's always interesting to see what happens when you experiment.




A rough self portrait. A little too rough.



Studying anatomy and rhythm in old masters' paintings.




And then having the audacity to apply that to a cartoon girl.



Occasionally me and my student friends would get together and pose for each other. The models at school seldom got into poses that showed any motion.






More of Rene and his friends.





These are drawn from Super-8 film footage I took of dogs in action. Trying to get a feeling for anatomy in motion.







Playing around with poses for cartoon animals, anthropomorphic or otherwise.



An exercise in shape and line. After a few rough doodles I choose one composition to create flat graphics. I had just visited CalArts and assignments like these were exhibited on the school's classroom walls. So I thought I'd give it a try.




Studying the great Uderzo, of Asterix fame and other iconic comic strips. What an artist! Meeting him years later was un indescribable thrill.




Dabbling in semi abstract forms. Look at my signature on the bottom right, LOL. Any similarity to an American Animation producer is coincidental.



Looking back, I had a great time as an art student. There were two things that turned out to be essential to my future career:
Giving myself assignments that related to the art of animation, and having Hans Bacher as my "after hours mentor".
Here is more of my student work from a previous post:
http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/01/post-100-old-portfolio-stuff.html

21 comments:

  1. Brilliant work, Andreas, specially in art school.

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  2. Seriously impressed with this "early" work. No wonder you were able to transition right into production at Disney when you were hired :-)

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  3. I don't think I could say enough how thankful I am that you are willing to share this type of work with the world and this audience. You are a legend in the making. I look up to you as an artist in many ways. Keep up the good work my friend. These are all absolutely inspirational!

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  4. "Studying the great Uderzo, of Asterix fame and other iconic comic strips. What an artist! Meeting him years later was un indescribable thrill."

    Sad you didn't animate on any of those films besides.

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  5. Wow Andreas these are great drawings. I think I am in that stage where I am experimenting. I always look to the Disney characters when I draw my own creations. I even showed this Disney animation book about storyboards in my Drawing class when we were doing pin point perspective. My professor was really glad I brought the book to class to motivate the other students. I owe it to you Disney animators for making such beautiful drawings and paintings. I always get my inspiration from you guys whether it's from the drawings or the commentaries on DVDs.

    I've had my dream of being an animator for six years now and I am making sure I stick to that dream no matter what. In fact I have this quote I always had in my mind whenever I draw my characters.

    My personal quote is "If Hercules, Ariel, and the Disney heroes were able to go the distance to live their dreams, then who's to say that I can't go the distance too."

    By the way Andreas, What was it like being in the Disney Animation
    Studios for the first time?

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  6. Love the Uderzo style Asterix character drawings. The alligator looks like you had been studying Preston Blair too.

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  7. All beautiful! I love the wolf and fox pieces especially.

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  8. Thank you for sharing! It's a beautiful post, please keep it up, your blog is just mindblowing.

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  9. Its little wonder with that kind of talent that you first got in then rose to be a master animator at Disney.

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  10. Hi Andreas! I've been following your blog with much interest for some time now. This year I am commencing research for a PhD and am hoping to explore the relationship between Disney animated films and the fine arts. I would be thrilled to get in touch with you and (hopefully) be able to ask you a few questions. My email address is sabrina_kaatz@hotmail.com, I'd love to hear from you!

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  11. I so love seeing such old sketches! Please post more! Very inspiring! :)

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  12. Hello,

    I would like to ask for some help wich I can not find in any of my books.
    Could you please help me how to animate dialoges(talk) , I know some rules but I have problem with timing. Could you please send a post with this theme?( Do you mess the time of words with a stopper? Or a programm?) Thank you forward for Your help!

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  13. Wow. You´re the truly the Master. Such a amazing art! Love that wolf and fox. Wow again.

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  14. I never imagined that Uderzo was known in the United States!
    I know that Asterix could never be released, even if René Goscinny spoke English very well, had tried to present his characters in America.

    I also had the chance to know Albert (I'm french, sorry for my bad english), what a giant! Today I can tell you that he has ceased to draw, with 70 years of practice, his hand ended up paralyzed.

    With Franquin and other Belgian cartoonists from the 50's/60's, he was heavily influenced by Disney. Besides Asterix has the same structure as Mickey ;-) Most surprising is that he never integrated school to learn drawing.
    In his youth he was watching Calvo, a great French artist, forgotten today, and I believe that this man had the proposal to work for Disney, but he had refused. It's difficult to find illustrations of him now, but you can really find similarity beetwen his drawing and the others pioneers of Disney at that time, like Hurter for example.

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    1. "I never imagined that Uderzo was known in the United States!"

      Some of us do.

      "I know that Asterix could never be released, even if René Goscinny spoke English very well, had tried to present his characters in America."

      There was s short-lived comic strip that was published in several newspapers here.
      http://youtu.be/teVrUF-BfjQ?t=6m31s

      There was also several US publishers that took a chance with Asterix too, going back to 1970 with three books published by William Murrow & Company. At recent, a company called Sterling Publishing publishes the UK Orion editions here (merely placing a price sticker on the backs).

      "I also had the chance to know Albert (I'm french, sorry for my bad english), what a giant! Today I can tell you that he has ceased to draw, with 70 years of practice, his hand ended up paralyzed."

      Sorry to hear that, at least he got to do the "Je Suis Charlie" thing a few weeks back.

      "With Franquin and other Belgian cartoonists from the 50's/60's, he was heavily influenced by Disney. Besides Asterix has the same structure as Mickey ;-) Most surprising is that he never integrated school to learn drawing."

      Being self-taught has it's advantages.

      "In his youth he was watching Calvo, a great French artist, forgotten today, and I believe that this man had the proposal to work for Disney, but he had refused. It's difficult to find illustrations of him now, but you can really find similarity beetwen his drawing and the others pioneers of Disney at that time, like Hurter for example."

      I have an English edition of Calvo's WWII epic, "The Beast is Dead". Love it!

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  15. I really love the dog gestures! So did you paused the film or they were really fast gestures? I've tried something like this from life, but the possess always looked stiff :D

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  16. I paused the film, once I found key positions that I wanted to study closely.

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  17. Was für unglaublich Arbeiten! 🤩
    Eine hervorragende Zusammenstellung! 👍😊
    Danke für die Lektionen in Sachen Eigenstudium und fürs Posten ihrer Bilder! 😃

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