Animation Resource Library
Resources for Specific Courses
Quick Jump
Drawing I: Observational Sketching | Perspective I - Introduction | 2D Animation Introduction | Figure Drawing & Anatomy | Animation Fundamentals 1 & 2 | Background Design | Colour & Light | Storyboarding Fundamentals | 3d Resources | Past Portfolios
Overall Resources
Inspiring Artists
Character Design References Grand Portfolios - Basically, a list of a ton of amazing artists in or around animation that you should check out from time to time to re-inspire your work.
Tools
Lazy Nezumi plugin for Photoshop, Clip Studio, Krita, etc. - Cannot recommend this plugin enough for drawing backgrounds, or anything in perspective. Takes a little getting used to, but it’s well worth it. For my extended notes, see Background Design below for a full write up.
Drawing I - Observational Sketching
Inspirational Artists to inspire your homework:
Scott Watanabe - Big Hero 6 BG Artist
Jeffery Thompson - Another Gravity Falls BG Artist
Steven Sugar - Incredible BG Artist, known for his Steven Universe work.
Baptiste Lucas - Great BG Artist for Dreamworks and more.
Tadahiro Uesugi - Beautiful colour, shape language and BGs, but more of a visual development artist.
Sean Jiminez - More Gravity Falls BG art.
Angela Sung - Incredible visdev and BG artist. Wonderful use of colour, texture, and exaggerated perspective.
Incredible sketch artist from Riot Games giving tips on sketching
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Composition I
Perspective I - Introduction
Inspirational Artists to inspire your homework:
Scott Watanabe - Big Hero 6 BG Artist
Jeffery Thompson - Another Gravity Falls BG Artist
Steven Sugar - Incredible BG Artist, known for his Steven Universe work.
Baptiste Lucas - Great BG Artist for Dreamworks and more.
Tadahiro Uesugi - Beautiful colour, shape language and BGs, but more of a visual development artist.
Sean Jiminez - More Gravity Falls BG art.
Angela Sung - Incredible visdev and BG artist. Wonderful use of colour, texture, and exaggerated perspective.
Week 2
Historical Building Inspiration Pinterest board
Futuristic Building Inspiration Pinterest board
Week 3
Nature Inspiration Pinterest board
Week 4
Building Interior Inspiration Pinterest board
2D Animation Introduction
Our recommended animation software:
Inspirational Channels to inspire your animation:
Figure Drawing & Anatomy
Life drawing reference images
In the past, we have referred students to various free sources for life drawing poses, however, there is a significant quality difference from the free options than from some of the paid options.
Important! Ensure you do not use poses on your portfolio that could not have been held from life (like a leaping / airborne pose, or one leg raised), or that show an exaggerated “wide angle camera lens” view with distortion. These are good references for comic book hero drawings, but not for observational life drawing. These are tell-tale signs of using photography as reference. Some schools (like Sheridan and Seneca) are quite fussy about working from photographs.
For the free options, these have been the most beneficial to past students. They are ordered in priority of quality as judged by our instructors:
New Master’s Academy Life Drawing Playlist on Youtube (careful, this playlist is well used by many students, so look elsewhere for creating drawings for your actual portfolio, but this is fine to practice with)
Draw This! Youtube Playlist (only clothed models though, not the most ideal for figure drawing for anatomy and structure of the body)
However, the quality difference is pretty great if you would like to spend a little more than free! For superior quality reference images, we recommend using either:
Grafit Studio on Artstation (this is an incredible resource - large photo packs, and the quality if superb - use coupon code GARTH10OFF for 10% off your order!)
Reference Pictures on Gumroad (a little more specific to figure drawing, but also very good quality images).
Additional Tutorials
Incredible 3D Realistic Face Rig (Helps you to see the range of emotions and exactly what parts of the face moves to achieve them. A tip: download the video with a Youtube downloader (link) and use Quicktime to view it so you can pause it and use the arrow keys left and right to move incrementally through it to see movements happen slowly.)
‘The Practice and Science of Drawing’ by Harold Speed (great book to read on general drawing and rendering methods)
Animation Fundamentals 1
Week 1
Additional assistance / deeper knowledge: How to Draw Hands with New Masters Academy
Week 2
Additional assistance / deeper knowledge: Anatomy of the Figure with New Masters Academy
Weeks 4-6 (Character Design)
Character Design Challenge from Character Design References. It’s a nice challenge to try out!
Weeks 7-8 (Layout)
Additional assistance / deeper knowledge: Perspective I with New Masters Academy
Animation Fundamentals 2
Our recommended animation software:
Week 1
Additional assistance / deeper knowledge: 12 Principles of Animation with New Masters Academy
Thingiverse Animation Peg Bar (same as above but allows you to download the 3D printable file)
Animation paper 8.5 x 11 standard letter size, already punched
NerdWriter Youtube | Hitchcock | A Serious Man | Children of Men
Dan Fox - Directing the Fine Arts of Blocking and Composition Youtube video
Every Frame a Painting Youtube | Akira Kurosawa | Chuck Jones
Colour in Storytelling | Editing in Storytelling | Composition in Storytelling
Twitter / Patreon of Jess Hamm.
Worldbuilding: Background Design
Lazy Nezumi plugin for Photoshop and other drawing apps - $39 CAD cost (Update: This works with a number of apps, but do email them if you’d like to check if it is compatible with a specific app. Works very well with Photoshop and Affinity software. Due to this fact, I highly recommend signing up for an Adobe Photography Plan for the duration of this course, which is far cheaper than using the full Adobe package).
I just love this plugin and highly recommend it for navigating through some of the complexities of drawing in perspective. It is also highly used in the industry of animation.
Additional assistance / deeper knowledge: Perspective I with New Masters Academy
BaM Animation’s Drawing Backgrounds Video - a great all-around video on drawing background art for animation!
BaM Animation’s Grids and Tips Video - a nice way to make a perfect perspective grid in Photoshop
This is an incredibly thorough Youtube channel involving navigating the challenges of perspective manually. To start, we recommend watching his Setting up perfect perspective manually tutorial. These are more great introductory perspective tutorials that each have a special emphasis - Drawing Within Boxes tutorial, Organic Forms and Contour Lines tutorial, Inclined planes in perspective tutorial, Drawing Ellipses tutorial, Turning objects in perspective manually tutorial (and Part 2 here).
Steven Sugar’s background design portfolio - great inspiration for background design!
Marcin Jakubowski’s visual development and background design portfolio - worked on Klaus, really incredible work
Storyboarding Fundamentals
For Storyboarding Fundamentals, I also highly recommend purchasing the Lazy Nezumi app mentioned above for Worldbuilding: Background Design. You can purchase it here.
Toniko Pantoja - Blue Eye Samurai was a tough show to storyboard on - Gives you a great sense of the complexity of modern storyboarding, especially something that is aimed to resemble live-action more than animation.
Week 2
Colour & Light
Coolorus plugin! I’ve been using this colour plugin for years and it definitely will improve your Photoshop mixing capability. I highly recommend it. Very affordable as far as plugins are concerned.
Muddy Colors blog articles on thumbnails (‘Composition Basics’, ‘Five Types of Thumbnails’, and ‘The Thumbnail’)
My video: Photoshop Thumbnail Setup
My video: Installing Digital Brushes in Photoshop
Grab my favourite brushes for Photoshop here.
Master Studies on Pinterest.
Master study library at ARC Museum.
MET Collection for more master study material.
FilmGrab for incredible screenshots from a large number of films.
3D Resources
Bran Sculpts - Character Sculpt Tutorial in Blender - recommended by Sam!
Past Portfolios and Artworks of Students
Cynthia’s Portfolio - Accepted in 2022
Bella’s Portfolio - Accepted in 2022
Daisy’s Portfolio - Accepted in 2022
Su’s Portfolio - Accepted in 2022
Veronica’s Portfolio - Accepted in 2022
General Art Inspiration
Environment Design
Videos
In this section, we’ll add videos that we’ve made as well as videos we recommend from others.
Handpicked recommendations tailored to aspiring animators.
This is the Animation Tutor’s most highly recommend 2D Animation software! Enjoy our 20% off discount code!