Nicolaides Animation Art

WHAT IS IT EXACTLY?

It is a complete and relevant education of Art needed for a strong career in animation. This same education can be applied to variety of other creative careers not possible to mention here.

WHY THIS CAMPAIGN HAD TO BE STARTED?

Animation is actually an extension of Art. It is an evolved form of Art. It uses technology and softwares to create next generation animated artworks.

Its common experience with animation students and professionals in India and around the world, that they get enough exposure to technology and softwares but are not able to build the required art grounding and hold. Very soon in their career they start feeling this deficiency not letting them grow the way they want to.

There are enough tutorials, courses, academies and colleges in India and around the world teaching all the animation softwares needed in the industry. The component that is strongly scarce in this education is the complete relevant art needed for a career in animation.

This campaign is a sincere effort to fill that gap completely in the lives of all animation students and professionals. It involves art exercises evolved by masters like Kimon Nicolaides, Walt Stanchfield, Shamus Culhane.

CONTENTS

This education involves three progressive stages –

a.     The Natural Way to DRAW

b.    The Natural Way to ANIMATION DRAWING

c.     The Natural Way to ANIMATION DESIGNING

Let’s understand these slightly.

a. The Natural Way to DRAW

This is the most important part of this education. It involves more than 60 Art exercises devised by the greatest art teacher of all times - Kimon Nicolaides and also the exercises by Betty Edwards. These exercises form the basis of art education in top art colleges as well as animation colleges around the world. Sheridan College being one of them.

There is a distinctive methodology and technique of Nicolaides for teaching art in his exercises, which has been universally acknowledged by the entire art world, including masters like Betty Edwards, Walt Stanchfield, Shamus Kulhane, Chuck Jones and so on..

This course/stage is a must for any artist working in any medium or field of visual art. This includes illustrators, painters, designers, cartoonists, sculptors, 3D modelers, animators, 3D animators, character designer, storyboard artists, comic book artist and so on.

Hands on exercises involved in this are for 400 hours.

b. The Natural Way to ANIMATION DRAWING

Animation drawing requires the ability to draw spontaneously a given character in an appropriate emotion for a situation, from any desired camera angle. All Disney Masters have this ability. This ability seems to be too difficult to acquire.

But there is a natural way to do so. Using the learning methodology of Nicolaides and using exercises of Shamus Culhane (the Disney Veteran and a great writer on art of animation) and Walt Stanchfield (The Teacher in Walt Disney Studios for 20 years), this ability can be learnt in a very natural way.

With this you can handle any given character for story books, comic books, storyboards, pose sheets and of course for animation. With that you will also learn the widely popular technique invented by Shamus Culhane of speed drawing to open up creative barriers.

Hands on exercises involved in this are for around 250 hours

c. The Natural Way to ANIMATION DESIGNING

Designing starts when you start implementing your opinions on the reality using the laws and sensibilities of design.

This cannot start meaningfully without completing stage ‘a‘. Unless you are able to experience the reality with emotional participation and build opinions on it, you cannot ‘distort‘ it to create a designed version.

This stage will extend Nicolaides exercises and methodology to give you the ability to create illustrations and designs in various styles. It also opens the door to find your own characteristic style.

To mention the minimum, you will extend your ability to create caricatures, cartoons, original character designs for various styles of films. Also you will be able to attempt to design animated films from scratch, including backgrounds, props, layouts in established or original styles.

It will also introduce you speed drawing technique for storyboarding and cinematography to create seamlessly flowing camera storytelling.

Hands on exercises involved in this are for around 250 hours

DURATION OF TRAINING

Each stage asks the learner to put a particular number of hours in the exercises. Duration for learning each stage depends upon the learner, how soon he/she puts in that much hours in the exercises.

One to one learning pattern will be followed in this course, hence allowing learner to learn at his/her own pace.

Ideally if one is able to put in 15 hours per week, following comes out to be the duration approximately –

Stage a – 6 months

Stage b – 4 months

Stage c – 4 months

Total – 14 months

For most part-timers it is convenient to put in approximately 8 hours a week. At this commitment, following comes out to be the duration -

Stage a – 12 months

Stage b – 8 months

Stage c – 8 months

Total – 28 months