Sheridan Animation Portfolio 2018

- Sydney Sidoriak -

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This is my 2018 portfolio I used to apply into Sheridan's Honours Bachelor of Animation Program! I got my response from Sheridan on March 19, 2018 and was accepted into animation with a score of 91% at a cutoff rate of 87% for domestic students and 90% for international students. I am very thankful for everyone who has supported me this past year in preparing for this portfolio and am so excited to attend in the fall with so many amazing artists!

Score Sheet:

For the portfolio:

Observational Drawings

We needed four figure drawings, two long (5-20 mins), and two short (1-3mins).
Important things to look out for are clear actions, structure, and line quality. This will take a lot of practice and self-study so try to start early on your figure drawing! I started four years ago in 2014, and practiced seriously once every week for a year working up to now. You have to draw from life for these, because pictures aren't the same and warp the perspective a little! Try going out and drawing people from life until you can find somewhere to do life drawing with a model!

Figure Drawing #1 (5min)

Figure Drawing #2 (5min)

Figure Drawing #3 (1min)

Figure Drawing #4 (3min)

This last one is my favourite^ but they're pretty, eh, okay :')

Hand Drawing #1

We had to draw two line hand drawings of a hand anticipating picking up an object and the other holding it. I would say look out for proper structure and try to get interesting and dynamic poses! Avoid similar positions or those that hide fingers too much!

Hand Drawing #2

The hands are actually my favourite things in here! :)

Character Design and Animation

We had to make a character rotation of an original character that had a front view, 3/4 front view, side view, and 3/4 back view. This is my character Mona! It took a lot of revising to come up with her design. I've gone through probably four other character designs before I stuck with her. In terms of the rotation, it's good to lay out the papers so that they're all in the same position, and flip back and forth through them as you draw them to see if it indeed rotates correctly!

Character Rotation

Character Animation

We also had to make a short animation of a character (doesn't have to be the same one as the rotation, but I did that) and it basically had to show their whole body while they did some sort of action like a walk cycle or jumping or anything, and it had to have 24-48 'images' so about 2 seconds. My action was Mona picking up something, but then realizing it was a snake, and then flinging it away in surprise. It's good to pick an action that has a lot of opportunities to show acting and action, and that's more exciting than a simple walk, to give them something to look at! However I don't think they were being too harsh on this component since it's the first year they were asking for an animation.
Give yourself a lot of time to make this one because you'll need to revise it a lot and edit timing and position if things aren't as fluid or don't look right. I wish I spent more time to edit the end because she actually gets smaller, and the arc of the snake wasn't right, but I had to hand it in so I left it as it was. Also remember to double check all of your files because I didn't notice the little white flash (a blank frame) when I uploaded it to Sheridan. Thankfully they didn't mind it too much!

Storyboarding

We had to use either or both characters from this year, 'Clowny' and 'Possum', and make a story related to the theme of 'hunger.' I wonder if the professors will get hungry when they mark them!
Edit: I can't believe I scored perfect on this thing!! :0 It was by far the most difficult thing to do in the portfolio. I was constantly worried about making the character consistent and everything like coming up with a good idea and laying everything out was so stressful! But overall really satisfying as well, once I lined and shaded in everything. I was still quite worried about it though!

Storyboard

Layout

We had to do two perspective line drawings, one of a bedroom and one of a park.
Take photos for your own reference and make sure you are referencing the things you need like benches and trees in the case of the park! And make sure your perspective is right by starting out placing the basic components before you go in with detail, otherwise the whole thing might be off!

Bedroom

Park

Personal Pieces

These can be anything but should be able to display your skill in things related to the animation program and also showing a variety of mediums!

Personal Piece # 1

This was a creative self portrait that I actually quite liked when I was finishing it! In real life it's 3 by 4 feet. There is a lot that could have been fixed or changed but there wasn't any more time, and I thought it was good enough considering the circumstances!

Personal Piece #2

This was a compilation of digital drawings of characters that I made. I was kind of scrambling for things and just drew the skater characters to add to it, but I think the left skater is my favourite character (other than the white haired one with the sparkles) that is on there haha.

Personal Piece #3

This was a digital piece I whipped up real quick of some aesthetic looking bones with flowers. I thought they would like bones and animals since they study them in first year haha but they're a bit different.

Personal Piece #4

These are some pages from my sketchbook that I liked, but I didn't have many that I liked..so that's that I guess haha. I really liked drawing the animals at the Canadian Exhibition!

Personal Piece #5

For my last personal piece, I WAS actually going to include a concept drawing of a character in a greenhouse, but my teacher who was helping me pick my personal pieces said that he actually liked these thumbnail landscapes better! These weren't actually really complete, they were thumbnails/ideas for a larger painting that I was going to finish for the personal pieces but I didn't really like the direction it was going and had a very limited amount of time left so I just went with these. They're okay, but I kind of wish I went with one of my better figure drawings of Etienne (my favourite life drawing model!), I really wanted him in my portfolio ahaha :")

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Well, that's everything! I hope this was fun to look at, and might help some people applying for next year! And thank you again to my friends and family for supporting me throughout the portfolio making process! <3

Thanks for looking!