Latest from Joel Valdez

One of our most celebrated students currently enrolled in our program is Joel Valdez. He's been featured on the Academy's blog before on November 9, 2010 and November 20, 2011. This is what he's been up to lately. His assignment was to develop head design concepts for his theme while describing form and depth of field through the use of tonal shadows. He did a fine job with these two drawings.

Joel hails from Tucson, Arizona and will be interning under Philip J. Felix at Red Sky Studio this summer. He's also interning at Petra Gallerie in Beverly Hills while in LA attending classes with us. Joel has a bright creative future and we wish him all  the best as he continues to mature creatively.

Last Night's Lesson

Sharing the educational experience through the Academy's blog.

Last night a student in Character Design asked for assistance in a specific direction. He was having difficulty simplifying his concept designs so they would work in a more animated context. Most of what he was doing was too realistic and he needed help turning his characters into something different than his usual approach.

I began by letting him describe to me the character he had in mind, and from his description, I drew these three demonstrations. The first (A) in a manner similar to the way he was handling things, with a few stylistic embellishments of my own. The second (B) was purposely distorted, exaggerated and simplified from the previous sketch. The third (C) is a graphic interpretation of the character even more elementary than before, eliminating everything but the essential features necessary to communicate the design.

You can get a better view of the drawings by clicking on the image below.

If you're looking to vary your designs but find that most of what you're coming up with is one dimensional and too complex in nature, keep this lesson in mind and approach your work in a manner that will allow you to experiment and explore through exaggeration and simplification, or vice versa as the case may be.

Hope you find this helpful.

Spotlight on Romney Vasquez

A newcomer to the Academy, Romney Vasquez successfully finished Character Design 1 and is coming back for the upper level Character Design 2 class. Here are samples of what he created while in CD1. Some head design concepts and one of the 5 pose rotations called for in the course.


Romney is very talented and is already working as a freelance designer and illustrator, picking up a book illustration project during his time with us so far. He's developing his own distinctive style which I'm confident will be even more pronounced as time goes on. Looking forward to what Romney will be coming up with in the days ahead as continues his work with us.

Click on this link for a look at his website.