Outreach

Crop of image: a student using a Cintiq display from Fanshawec.ca - animation

Who is this guy?

Thanks for having me visit today. I'm David Latour. Here's my LinkedIn profile. You can see my filmography on IMDB. You can also check out my tutorial content on Vimeo.com and YouTube. You can also see all of my teaching activity recorded here on my blog dglatour.blogspot.com (you're here now)

Why is he here?

I'm a teacher and coordinator at Fanshawe College in London Ontario. This is part of a new outreach initiative to connect with potential students for our digital arts programs. 



This is the kind of work we do:
 

My goal here is to let you play with some of the tools that we use and give you a bit more information about the programs we offer that might interest you. 

Here are links to the digital arts programs I teach at Fanshawe College

Animation (ANI) (2 year, diploma)
3d Animation and Character Design (ANC) (2 semester, graduate certificate)
Game Design (VGD) (3 year, advanced diploma)



For a rundown of the ANC program, you can watch the orientation here.

What are we doing?

In our programs at Fanshawe we use Autodesk Maya, zBrush, Unreal Engine 5 and the Adobe Suite. Today we're going to be using a simple (and free) drawing program to play with the Wacom Mobile studio pro 16. This is a similar device to what we use in the school: the much larger Cintiq 24. Hopefully this gives you a taste of what class is like.

We'll be using one of the following programs:

         Photopea                            GIMP                            Krita                            SyncSketch

1) Warmups

The objective is to get the arm and the eye working together. Don't worry about making nice drawings.
Try some simple parallel lines and then cross hatching them. See if you can keep them evenly spaced.

You can also draw two parallel lines and then draw a third line between them

Another easy warmup is to draw circles of different sizes. Try drawing clockwise and counter-clockwise. Experiment by drawing at different speeds too.

Once you have some circles, use a different colour brush and subdivide the circle like a pie. First in half, then into four equal parts, then eight. 

2) Layers

We're working digitally, which allows us to create in a non-destructive, additive way. For that we use layers. We use separate layers to organize our drawing. As a starting order, try rough forms/silhouette, rough line/construction, tone/greyscale, colour, and finished line.

If you're new to the toolset, check out the tutorial content:

    photopea: learn layers

3) Free Play!

Enough noodling, just have fun and draw something cool. 

Thanks for your time and attention. Reach out to me if you have any questions. If I have any swag, I'd give to you now (be sure to ask)

Thanks for playing. Buh-Bye!