New Blog

New blog, new address

Seneca student wins province-wide design contest

Second-year Independent Illustration student Weimar Lee is the winner of the Ontario Library Association Super Conference Design Competition.

Students and recent graduates at post-secondary institutions across the province took part in this contest.

Weimar’s winning designs earned her $1,500 and will be used as the “visual identity” at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference — Canada’s largest library conference. Her work will be featured on programs, signage, the Super Conference web site, brochures, t-shirts, mugs, pins and much more.

More than 20 students from Seneca’s Independent Illustration took part in the competition as part of their Digital Tools course, which is taught by Professor Barney Wornoff. In fact, Weimar's classmates Sean Fritchley and Salini Perera were named runners up. Their work will also be featured online and in one of the conference’s event programs.

The Ontario Library Association estimates more than 10,000 people will see the work of our students.

1st Ever Illustration Grad show

The first EVER Independent Illustration Grad Show took place in York University Faculty of Fine Arts Special Projects Gallery during the week of April 18th. The work of 14 students was showcased Opening night, April 18th, was a huge success with industry, family, friends and faculty in attendance. Sponsored by Longos Food and Steamwhistle brewery provided the refreshments!

Bill Grigsby from Reactor Art + Design

Bill Grigsby from Reactor Art + Design came to Seneca and spoke to the entire group of Illustration students. He spoke about the history and the future of the world of Illustration, how and when to get an agent, and general words of wisdom. It was an insightful and meaningful talk.

4th Semester Launched!

The 4th and final semester of Seneca's Independent Illustration diploma program is up and running. What will make this semester particularly enjoyable for the students is the homeroom that is exclusive to the 4th semester students. They will be able to work on their final projects with greater continuity. It is a great room with a sink and some fabulous new taborets!
This semester Jim Graves will continue on with the two semester course Visual Development. As well Jim leads the specialization studio for the students who have chosen children's book illustration and advertising packaging. David Bluestein leads the other half of the students in this specialization course, for the students who want to work in comics and graphic novels. Todd Sullivan comes from the animation department to teach Lifedrawing. Barney Wornoff returns to teach Interactive Illustration. The 4th and final business course is being taught by newcomer Terry McElligott who is both a savvy businessman and the midday Jazz host on JazzFM . JoAnn Purcell returns to teach the Traditional Illustrative Media which will culminate in a final student group show. Here's to great final semester!

Tim Burton

Artist and filmmaker Tim Burton was live at the TIFF Lightbox yesterday and conducted an Animation Master class, followed by questions of all sorts from a range of college and University students. His exhibit, organized by the MOMA NYC opens this Friday and his films are playing over the next few weeks down at the Lightbox.

Scholastic and Osborne visit

Werner Zimmerman took the 3rd semester students to Scholastic books as part of his Children's Illustration course.
"We got the red carpet at both Scholastic and Osborne yesterday. At Scholastic we got and hour and half of the board room and tour with Diane Kerner, director of publishing, Andrea Cassault, head art director, and Denise Anderson, Marketing director. Diane gave them an in-depth look at what and how Scholastic publishes along with a editor's view of what makes a great book. Andrea spoke about the complexities of the areas of image in books and a very good guide to how to approach publishers with portfolios. Denise spoke at great length about the market and its complexities. In the end they were encouraged to send work and maintain a dialogue. I hope this may translate in to an internship along the way. Overall I was impressed at how seriously scholastic treated this event and at how much time we were given.

At the Osborne the students were given a tour of books from the 13th century illuminated manuscript to most recent. Lori McLean and Leslie McGrath were amazing in their enthusiasm and willingness to pull out more and more works, especially the pop ups and to share their knowledge.

I know more than a few eyes were opened to new things that day and heads filled with possibilities and new knowledge. I was very pleased with the richness of the day and the enthusiastic response of the students. The more I get to know them the more I see they are a great bunch of talented individuals."

Society of Illustrators 2010 Educators Symposium

Summary of the Illustration Educators Symposium

New York City

October 8-10, 2010

Concept Art

Artists from Pixar’s Animation Studios showed their concept art for Toy Story 3. The process by which they create characters, sets, props, lighting, colour palettes is all done with pencils and paints by illustrators. The process for hiring artists is the artist’s sketchbook filled with diverse, creative work!

E-Commerce and Illustration

This session was a panel consisting of Molly Crabapple, Daniel Burwen and Pablo Pablofino. This discussion looked at the current and future growth of the on-line market:

Digital illustration allows for easy re-purposing of work, and no worries about resolution and image quality as are present with print. According to the views of this panel, disposable print objects will cease to exist and print will only exist as “paper fetish objects”. The news happens too quickly for editorial illustrators to keep up.

In the huge growth area of online gaming illustrators can create myriad of objects, design the look, the props, the sets, the characters, etc. There is a real opportunity for illustrators here. 2^nd life has user generated content. World of Warcraft is controlled by the game creator. Eve is a game created in Iceland that has an internal economy, an economy so well managed, the Icelandic government consulted with it’s creators to see if there was something in it that could help boost the decimated Icelandic economy.

With the growing popularity of E-books mass market paperback books will disappear. According to these panelists hard covers will increase in quality and have smaller print runs. The payment structure for the artist changes, ie. author/artist receives 70% through the apple i-store vs. approximately 8% from a print house book.

Take a look at Alice for the i-pad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw

There will be two types of Illustrators-the illustrator/concept artist who is anonymous and the illustrator who is a big time brand.

Comics will see a renaissance of visual storytelling. Comic=film when you add motion to it in an e-book. The business model of the rare expensive object coupled with the free object. See Daniel Burwen’s graphic novel built from the ground up for the i-pad (a first!) here.

Research: The future of Illustration

Alan Male http://www.directoryofillustration.com/ArtistPortfolioThumbs.aspx?AID=579

presented his niche of illustration whereby the artist does the research on an as yet unimagined item, event, animal etc. and illustrates it for the world. Some of his examples were a prehistoric animal only seen in fossil form, or a historic battle, a cell process etc.

Online Education

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/an-online-vs-face-to-face-throwdown/

There is a real push towards online education. The San Francisco Academy of Art http://online.academyart.edu/schools/illustration offers its entire curriculum online as well as in a studio. The online education student expects 1:1 attention whereas the studio student expects 1:25. Delivery methods: synchronous or asynchronous. The software “Elluminate Live” http://www.elluminate.com/Products/Elluminate_Learning_Suite/?id=72/

or “Angel” for interactive live visual course delivery and feedback. (As well as moodle and dindin).

Google sketchup –visualization software for students. http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/product/gsu.html

Illustration Next

Illustration is no longer only for “print”

http://www.drawger.com/

Hanoch Piven (illustration from found objects)

Buttons

Shoes

Tupperware

Surface design

Skateboards

Illustrated games

Murals

Type

Self generated-publish your own e-book

Meegenius (online books for children- http://www.meegenius.com/ )

Aaron Meshon http://www.aaronmeshon.com/en/ makes stuff, collects royalties, and ensures he retains the licensing, a key to making money on this stuff.

Virtual Goods Market

The online gaming market brings in $1.6 billion each year. One family spent 35K. EA, Disney and Facebook games ie. Farmville. The business model is built on you get the free version to start with and then if you want more out of your experience, that is when you pay.

E-books are projected to overtake paperbacks by end of 2011, as projected by Amazon. This raises new issues of copyright, security and royalties. If a book is animated, do you need film rights?

Summary

There was a fantastic exchange of ideas this past weekend. If there are conclusions to be made, the future looks very bright indeed for illustrators. The convergence of digital media, animation and illustration will create challenges, but that is what a brave new world requires!

Semester 3 is underway!

The program continues to roll out with Semester Three beginning last week. There are some new faculty who bring some more experience, enthusiasm and inspired curriculum to the program. Werner Zimmerman is teaching Children's Book Illustration. He comes to this course with numerous publications under his brush, as well as many years teaching life drawing to the animation students! Rui Albino is back teaching sculpture and has a number of fantastic projects to take the students through visualizing in 3 dimensions. David Bluestein, esteemed comic book illustrator, storyboard and editorial artist will be teaching Editorial Illustration. The artist Claire Correia will be teaching creativity and concept development 2. She comes to the illustration program with many years of teaching creativity and drawing to the Graphic Design students. Illustrator Jim Graves will be offering an intense two semester course developing and visualizing a storyline, complete with characters, environments and props. Graphic designer Sandee Roelke will be teaching web development and the tools required to make an online site and portfolio.

Another busy and exciting semester of Illustration at Seneca!

Second Semester is Launched!

Today is the second day of the launch of the second semester of the Independent Illustration diploma. We have a great line-up of instructors on board this semester. Returning faculty include Susan Hedley, Barney Wornoff, Debbie Suddick and Brian McPhee, who all survived the first semester with enthusiasm and have added excitement for the coming semester. New to the program are Rui Albino, Bill Suddick and Jim Graves! We are looking forward to another fun, creative, and inspiring semester. There a number of field trips planned, guest speakers booked and lots of drawing and painting to be had!

Vladyana Krykorka

Children's book illustrator, Vladyana Krykorka, visited Seneca and presented her books and experiences. She came into the classroom, rolling in a large suitcase filled with her books she help create over the past 20 years. She described her current project that has been in the works for a couple of years now: a board book about the North. She discussed her inspirations, her process and showed her roughs and a couple print-ready pages. After years of creating illustrations for picture books, she had some great stories to tell.

Gail Geltner

As part of a lecture on Conceptual Illustration, the artist Gail Geltner came and shared her wisdom and experience as an illustrator. She brought her sketch books and process drawings to share how she approaches an assignment. Her well worn book of etymology was used in a few demonstrations as to how she starts the creative process. Pattern recognition was reinforced as a method to create juxtapositions and associations to build greater meaning.

She also talked about the drawing process, muscle memory, emotion, the senses and a host of other gems of knowledge in the world of creating!

Garrick Webster and Computer Arts Mag

Garrick Webster, a writer, editor and project manager from the UK came to Canada in February of all months! and spent a couple hours talking to the illustration students. He focused on the business side of the industry, the brief, the players, the pay, negotiating etc. Then he shared some artists whose work he is enjoying at the moment. Listing them in order of presentation:
Dongyun Lee
Pirates
Ben Jelter
Yulia Brodskaya
Lizzie Mary Cullen

Two great Art Exhibits

Last week we took a field trip to the ROM to see Portrait of a Patron: Janusz Dukszta at the UTAC (University of Toronto Art Centre) http://www.utac.utoronto.ca/current-exhibitions The exhibit comprised 70 portraits of himself by a variety of Toronto artist over the last 44 years. They were often collaborations between artist and collector and together documented not only Dukszta's path but the Toronto art scene as well. It was a hugely successful trip with a personalized guided tour by Sunny Kerr, Student and Education Program Coordinator. As we were leaving, Dr. Dukszta walked in and we wasted no time asking him to talk about the work and his feelings about the exhibit. He was gracious and funny and donated a exhibition catalogue to the program.

We then made our way up to the ROM to see Dan Perjovschi: Late News in the Institute for Contemporary Culture http://www.rom.on.ca/news/releases/public.php?mediakey=x22qoemq7w. The artist had almost finished his installation of current editorial illustrations on the inner walls of the museum, so he had time to talk to us about his process, his past life in Romania and thoughts on Toronto.

It is not often that you get the backstage pass twice in one day!

Applying for September 2010

The Ontario College Application Service, OCAS, is accepting applications online for the Independent Illustration Diploma until February 1st for equal consideration. After that date your application will go to the end of the line, and will be considered only if there is still room in the program. Portfolio and written requirements can be found at this link . Your portfolio will be due at one of the two program orientations at the college late February and early March. At this point you will also do a drawing test to validate your portfolio. For those not successful the first time around, Seneca offers a fantastic one year Art Fundamentals program to help fine tune those drawing, painting and design skills.

Great Illustration Links

Magazines
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/home
http://www.cmykmag.com/site.cfm?page_id=62&sect_id=7
http://www.uppercasegallery.ca/

Agents
http://agoodson.com/
http://reactorart.com/
http://www.magnetreps.com/
http://www.debutart.com/

Online portfolios
http://www.illustrationmundo.com/wp/
http://www.americanillustrators.com/about.php
http://www.rednosestudio.com/
http://www.workbook.com/illustration
http://www.theispot.com/

Good Resources
http://societyillustrators.org//index.cms
http://www.canadiancartoonists.com/index.html
http://www.canscaip.org/
http://drawn.ca/
http://www.justonemorebook.com/about/

Galleries/Museums
http://www.illustrationhouse.com/
http://www.fashionillustrationgallery.com/
http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/illustration_awards/index.html

Conferences
http://pictoplasma.com/
http://www.theillustrationconference.org/index.html

The First Semester is ready to go!

We have an amazing line up of faculty who will be teaching the first semester of the Independent Illustration Diploma! Brian McPhee will be teaching the Traditional Illustrative Media course, Susan Hedley, the Lifedrawing course, John Stuart, the Conceptual Drawing course, Barney Wornoff will be getting all the students up to speed digitally in the Digital Tools course, Debbie Suddick will be teaching the business side of Illustration and I will be teaching the History of Illustration. The schedules are set and we are getting closer to launch!

Program Launched!

After much heralded anticipation, the Illustration Program at Seneca is finally launched. We will start classes in January 2010, with our first graduates expected June 2011! It is a two year diploma, with the expectation that when you start your education in this program you already have a strong foundation in art. When you graduate you will not only be an awesome illustrator, but also be able to manage the business side of freelance work. You will have a website, a developed portfolio, pst and gst numbers (or hst as the case may be!), an arm load of contacts, and some mean accounting skills to help you get launched.

Check out the curriculum and the portfolio requirements on the School of Communication Arts at Seneca College website.

You can apply now at the Ontario College Application website.