Man vs. Art

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My guest today is the exceptionally talented Artist, Animator, Director, Professor, and Writer Nancy Beiman.
Nancy Beiman hails from New Jersey, likes to travel and owns a cat named Gizmo! She wasn’t the first woman to work at the Disney Studio. There were many women before her who worked on Disney films. But Nancy has earned the distinction of being the second woman to be credited on a Disney film. She has taught animation at Savannah College of Art and Design, and taught at Rochester Institute of Technology, School of Film & Animation until 2008. She now teaches at Sheridan Institute’s Animation department in Canada.

Nancy was offered a scholarship to be part of the inaugural class of the Character Animation program at CalArts straight out high school. Her classmates included John Lasseter, Jerry Rees, John Musker, Tim Burton, and Brad Bird. Nancy was the first woman to graduate from the CalArts Character Animation Program. After CalArts, She went to work at Jack Zander’s Animation Parlour in New York. She has animated Bugs and Donald, Snoopy and Goofy, friends of Fievel Mouse and Mickey Mouse, and Don Martin cartoons! She worked with Chuck Jones, Bill Melendez, Gerhard Hahn, Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney Feature Animation, the Disney Channel, Disney television movies, and Warner Bros.

Nancy Beiman entered an industry that was pretty much a boy’s club. Her raw talent and hard work, combined with an appreciation of tradition, tenacity and courage in the face of adversity served her well.

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There is so much that can be said about Color Theory that it could fill the Library of Alexandria. It can be overwhelming, so for the Man vs. Art Intro to Color Theory, I’m going to give you the underwhelming Cliff’s notes version. In 1666 the genius Sir Isaac Newton put together the first circular diagram of colors . Ever since then, artists and even scientists have studied and created numerous variations of this concept. Over the years much debate has been provoked due to the differences of opinion about the validity of one format over another. In my opinion, any color wheel which presents a logically arranged sequence of pure hues is valid.

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Hola Minions!
In today’s show I give you a few helpful tips on making your drawings more expressive! A simple way to make your characters look more expressive is to pay attention to the eye direction. When you are doing a pin up of a cartoon character 9 out of 10 times you should have the character looking at us. It is much more powerful to have the figure make eye contact with the viewer. A lot of artists show their lack of confidence by having the character looking away. Not good! Unless the eye direction is dictated by the story in a panel or action you should have your cartoon making good eye contact with us.

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Attention all Artists and Creators who want to hone their pitching skills!
This podcast is especially for you! Today I talk about how to effectively simplify your pitches and get to the point of your story quickly and effectively.
Project Jose!
Jose Gonzalez is a faithful Minion and developing artist! The guy loves to draw and I have taken him under my wing to help him improve his drawing skills! I assigned him to draw a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat and below is what Jose drew. I then took Jose’s drawing and went over it with red to punch it up a little and help him make a better drawing out of it!

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In today’s podcast I talked about the differences between drawing for Cartoons and drawing for Illustrations. I also offered up a few little exercises for you Minions to help prime your pump when your creative juices are dry. There’s nothing worse than having artist’s block!