SamSzymSketch

[Samszym]

Thanks for the comment Mono! Glad you like the pokemon, I think I'll try to do them more frequently. I was making one a day a while ago, they'd probably be a nice addition to my daily warm up! And I'd be happy to tell you more about TAD.

I just finished up my first year at the school, and I've been very happy with my education! My teachers are all extremely talented and knowledgeable. Some are better teachers, but everyone really knows their stuff and shows genuine interest in your improvement if you put the effort in, and all my classmates have been (Save for the handful who dropped out after the work got heavy) There's a saying I heard a couple times in my first semester, "It's easy to GET into TAD. It's hard to STAY in."
I'm currently in the foundations program and I'll be going into my last semester of that after the current Summer Break. After that students start their programs. I'm interested in the animation program, which at the moment is just a collection of elective courses, so what I do after this semester depends of if the program's established or not. (if not I'm considering trying to get into Gobelins, but that's another story) Our classes so far have focused on perspective, drawing the figure from observation, learning the anatomy of the human body (skeleton first, then muscles) and a lot of emphasis on good composition/picture making. I get enough assignments (and they're mostly good and fun assignments) to learn what the teachers lecture about, but the saying "you get out of art school what you put into it" is completely true, even for great art schools like TAD. I wish I had taken more time to do lots of personal work and studies to further apply what I was learning and to build up a portfolio. (and that's what I'll be devoting this summer to by golly!) So far I've only had a couple classes which I considered to have a heavy workload.
I thought of an analogy a while ago, TAD has been like the TM floor in the huge mall in Goldenrod City in pokemon for me. It's been like my trainer, introducing me to a lot of fancy, powerful new moves from TMs. Meanwhile other pokemon are actually out in the wild getting into fights and leveling up. Now I feel more equipped to fight and level up with the skills and knowledge I've acquired, but I need to take charge and get into some big fights and apply it!

Well. enough of that hoo-ha. Time for some pictures! I'm been working on Preston Blair studies and drawing more from imagination. Looking over these drawings again I really need to be paying more attention to perspective and construction and shape design and eveeerything. More hitting the books! and more finished stuff augh!


I'd like to take this moment to promote a really really cool game demo I've been playing called Undertale! It seems like a normal indie RPG, but if you get into it you'll find it has a lot of clever satire and really thoughtful battle mechanics, plus a very interesting story and a killer soundtrack! It takes less than an hour to play through the whole thing once (but you'll probably want to run through again), so if you're looking for a quick distraction I suggest checking it out! I bring it up, because I've been doing a ton of fanart doodles for it, and here they are XD