MENU

WORK

PODCAST

WRITING

ABOUT & CONTACT

SHERIDAN ANIMATION
YEAR 1 SEMESTER 1

My name is Terry and I’m in the animation

program at Sheridan College. Below you can find
all my assignments from Year 1, Semester 1.

Before each assignment I briefly explain the

requirements. Overall, I got a 3.8/4.0 GPA.
However, I won’t share my marks for individual
assignments (if you really want to know, you can
email me at [email protected]).

If you’d like to see my work for second semester,

you can find it all here.

A BREAK DOWN OF
YEAR 1 SEMESTER 1
The first semester in Sheridan’s Animation
Program has a total of eight courses broken into
nine classes:

1. Principles of Layout: 2 hour class

2. Introduction to Painting: 2 hour class
3. Character Design: 2 hour class
4. Introduction to Life Drawing: 3 hour class
5. Animation Principles: 2 hour class
6. Introduction to Digital Tools: 2 hour class
7. Story Development (composed of two
classes)
Storyboard Class: 2 hour class
Story Principles Lecture: 1 hour
class
8. Composition and Rhetoric: 2 hour class
1. Composition and Rhetoric Lab: 1
hour

The last class, Composition and Rhetoric is an

English class which is mandatory for all Sheridan
undergraduate programs. However, I was
exempt since I have a previously completed
Bachelor of Business Administration degree from
Wilfrid Laurier.

Now, without further ado, here is my portfolio

from each class.

PRINCIPLES OF LAYOUT
In Principles of Layout, you learn how to use
vanishing points to create objects and characters
that appear correctly in any type of perspective.

PROJECT 1: CHARACTER IN A
SCENE
In this assignment, you must draw a character,
then find the vanishing points based on their
stance (shoulder line, hip line, and foot line).
Then you simply fill in the rest of the page with
structures and objects to create a scene.

I chose to draw Juna, a character from my

fantasy novel. Looking at the image below, you
can see how the perspective lines are drawn
from her shoulders, hips, and feet to find the
vanishing points in the distance.

PROJECT 2: STORY USING

DIFFERENT SHOTS
For this assignment, you must recreate 3-5 shots
(long, medium, close-up) from the character and
scene in the above project to tell a story.

My story is about Juna searching for a pendant.

My last panel, which uses 3-point perspective,

has a major flaw – according to the perspective I
used, Juna is stretched out to be something like
20 feet tall! If I were to redraw it, I would do a
better job measuring her proportions, which
would make her much more condensed.

PROJECT 3: FIELD GUIDE

In this assignment, you must take one scene
from the Project 2, and apply industry field guide
labeling to it, which is a fancy way of saying
what animation happens in the shot and how the
camera moves.

In my scene, Juna walks from left to right as the

camera trucks out. You can find the field guide
instructions to this in the bottom of the image
below.

PROJECT 4: PAN
For this project, the goal is to create repeating
foreground and background layers. However,
you don’t want a viewer to notice that the layers
repeat, so you must draw indistinct details.

You’ve likely seen repeating pan backgrounds in

many animations, such as when a character is
running, or when the camera pans quickly
through a scene.

You can expand my pan by clicking on it below.

PROJECT 5: LAYOUT
ASSORTMENT
During each class in the semester we learned
how to draw a different type of layout, such as a
curving road, or how to draw gables on houses.
The final assignment is to polish up eight of these
in-class assignments.

Below are my eight redone layouts. You can click

on each image to see a larger version, and to
discover what the assignment was.

INTRODUCTION TO
PAINTING (WITH
GOUACHE)
The purpose of painting class is to teach you the
principles of light, shadow, opaque vs
transparency, gradient, depth of field, sky,
colour, and texture.

PROJECT 1: OPAQUE,
TRANSPARENCY, GRADIENT
The requirements of this project speak for
themselves once you see my studies, but
perhaps the biggest learning curve is simply how
to paint with gouache. Gouache is not an easy
medium to start out with – it’s somewhere
between watercolor and acrylic, but never fully
dries. It’s also quite expensive. It costs anywhere
from $10 – $20 for a small tube, and you need to
buy eight different colours, which are below:

1. white (you’ll need a big tube!)

2. black
3. warm yellow
4. cold yellow
5. warm blue
6. cold blue
7. warm red
8. cold red

Here are my opaque, transparent, and gradient

studies:

PROJECT 2: FORM RENDERING –

LIGHT AND SHADOW
The purpose of this project was to study how
light interacts with objects and creates shadows
to create realistic looking form. To do this, we
shone flashlights onto wooden shapes and then
painted our observations.

We were also graded on our attention to the

eight basic elements of light and shadow:

1. Highlight (where light directly hits the

object)
2. Halftone Light (the rest of the lit side of
the object)
3. Terminator (the mid line between the lit
and unlit parts of the object)
4. Core Shadow (the main dark area of an
object)
5. Reflected Light (the dark side of the
object, which is slightly lit by light being
reflected back onto it from the ground)
6. Occlusion Shadow (the darkest point
which is where the object is closest to the
ground)
7. Cast Shadow (the shadow created from
the object)
8. Penumbra (the soft edge of the end of the
shadow)

Finally, we learned the Rembrandt technique of

background lighting, which creates more
appealing images. The technique is simply to
paint a lighter background beside the shadow of
an object, and a darker background beside the
highlight of an object. This makes the object
stand out more. You can see this technique used
in my studies.

Here are my studies:

PROJECT 3: GRAY TO COLOUR

There are three main aspects to this project:
depth and tone, gradient, monochromatic
colour. Each aspect requires its own painting.

First, you must create a layout which

demonstrates depth of field using layers, light,
and color. You are encouraged to study other
paintings to create your layout.

Once you’ve developed your layout, you paint it

in flat tones.

The next step is to paint your layout again using

gradients to show light.

The final step is to paint your layout in a

monochromatic gradient (color of your choice!)

PROJECT 4: CLOUD STUDIES

The reason we study clouds is because the sky is
present in nearly every scene created in an
animation. The sky is also important in setting
the mood of a scene (think of a thunderstorm vs
a sunny day).

We are also encouraged to experiment with

different techniques to create different cloud
effects, like adding salt to the paint, or painting
with a sponge.

Here are my six cloud studies:

Here is my final cloud composition:

PROJECT 5: TEXTURE STUDIES

This is the final assignment of the semester. We
must choose four different textures (hard, soft,
hairy, etc.) to recreate photo-realistically.

I chose strawberry cheesecake (juicy), crystals

(hard/sharp), cherries, (shiny) and water droplets
(watery).

CHARACTER DESIGN
The purpose of this class is to be able to create
and communicate animation-ready character
designs

PROJECT 1: CHARACTER IN
ROTATION
The purpose of this assignment is to create a
character and use proper 2-point perspective to
consistently rotate it in space. This is important
because an animator must know what the
character looks like from every angle in order to
animate it in any situation.

Here is my character, Wilton. He’s a

businessman who’s been deserted on an island.
The rotations are:

Front
3/4 Front
Side
3/4 Back
Back (not necessary, but I wanted to do it
because of bonus bum!)

PROJECT 2: PROTAGONIST,
ANTAGONIST, COMEDIC RELIEF
One of the biggest ways to enable storytelling in
animation is to make the visuals very simple and
clear. This means that any viewer can
immediately recognize any element in the
animation, be it the location, action, or
characters.

For this assignment, we’re tasked with creating

three original characters that are immediately
recognizable as the Protagonist, Antagonist, and
Comedic Relief.

Here are my characters. My idea is that they are

from a show about a Women’s NASCAR Racing
League.

PROJECT 3: CHARACTER
POSING
Another important visual storytelling component
is the information conveyed in a character’s
actions.

For this assignment, we were tasked to create

eight character poses that immediately convey
what the character is doing. We were also to use
a variety of angles: front, 3/4 back, 3/4 front, and
side.

My idea was a jellyfish who leaves the ocean in a

suit to explore life on land.

PROJECT 4: CHARACTER
EXPRESSION
Continuing on with visual storytelling, this
assignment is to create a character and explore
their expressions. You must create nine
expressions from different angles: front, 3/4
back, 3/4 front, side.

The character I created was a bellhop who’s

been sentenced to the elevator pillory.

PROJECT 5: CHARACTER IN
ANOTHER ARTIST’S STYLE
The final project in this class is to study another
artist’s work (your pick!) and create a
presentation on them, which includes the
following:

A brief history of the artist’s life and work

(1-2 minutes)
The elements of style the artist utilizes
What can be learned from their work
A creation of your own character in the
artists’ style

For my presentation, I chose Matt Layzell. He

was a Supervising Director at Nickelodeon and
Cartoon Network and is currently directing his
own show for Netflix.

I first discovered Matt’s work on Instagram and

immediately fell in love with it. I encourage
you to check his stuff out too by clicking the
image below:

I attempted Matt’s style by drawing a waitress

from a diner who’s wearing the menu (plus a
bonus pup!)

I tried to get in touch with Matt to show him, but

was unsuccessful

INTRODUCTION TO LIFE
DRAWING
“I wish I had gone to more life drawing classes”
was one of the most common things I heard
from animation graduates.

Now I understand why.

I’ve found life drawing to be the most difficult

part of the program so far – and the only way to
get better is to practice over and over, hundreds
of times.

Life drawing is extremely important to

animation, because it teaches you to draw any
character in any pose in seconds.

A good life drawing will also convey many

elements, including:

pose (weight, movement, etc.)

structure
line weight
contour
foreshortening
and more

In the animation program, we have Life Drawing

class once a week, but it is also offered every
night for extra practice.

PROJECT 1: PORTFOLIO 1
This project is due at the end of the first half of
the semester, where you must submit 10
drawings:

2 thirty-second poses
2 one-minute poses
2 three-minute poses
2 five-minute poses
2 of your choice

Here is my first portfolio. You can click on each

image to increase its size and see how long the
pose was.

PROJECT 2: PORTFOLIO 2
This project has the same requirements as the
previous one, it’s just submitted at the end of the
second half of the semester to show how you’ve
improved.

PROJECT 3: HANDS AND FEET

PORTFOLIO
The requirements for this project are to study
human, reptile, insect, bird, and mammal hands
and feet. You must also choose a theme to tell a
story.

Here is mine. Click on each image to expand it: