Mentor of the Day: LeUyen Pham

If you haven’t seen the work of LeUyen Pham (pronounced LeWin, for those of you who were wondering) , you’ll be blown away when you do.  Check out her very entertaining website filled not just with amazing artwork, but some great Flash animation!   You can instantly tell, LeUyen is a very gifted artist and storyteller.

For anyone who’s ever wanted to get into children’s books either on the side or as a full-time career, you won’t find many people as accomplished as LeUyen. She has created over fifty books for children and has a variety of styles.  Her work ranges from phenomenal ink work to incredible watercolors, and from very graphic shapes to beautifully rendered scenes.  She makes switching styles look so effortless!

Before doing children’s books, LeUyen also had quite a career in feature animation.  In an article with The Noe Valley Voice, LeUyen shares her story:

The semester before she graduated Art Center College of Design in 1997, DreamWorks offered her a job in its layout department. “I was the only girl and the youngest in layout,” Pham says. “It was great to be with the best artists in the world–I learned so much there.”

But the world of animation began to change. LeUyen was working in a new department called 2-D/3-D, where she used her drawing skills as well as what she had learned at SGI to lay out animated movies. “In layout, you do the drawings, and you have to be an all-around wonderful draftsman,” LeUyen explains. “But those draftsmen were being replaced with 3-D modelers, who have a strong compositional eye but don’t have to draw well. I had gone into animation to draw, but I was hardly ever drawing.”

On the side, LeUyen had started to illustrate children’s books. “It’s a tough [industry] to get into,” LeUyen says. But she persisted and gained enough moonlighting work that allowed her to quit DreamWorks after three years.

LeUyen then took her savings and traveled around the world. Another talented DreamWorks artist and friend, a Frenchman named Alex Puvilland, heard she needed a place to stay in Paris and found her a cheap apartment. When he learned that LeUyen had broken up with her boyfriend, he showed up on her Parisian doorstep. The two were married in the fall of 2005 and now live San Francisco, California.

Needless to say, LeUyen’s had quite a career, one I’m sure a lot of us hope to have!  So if you’re trying to get into the children’s book industry now or sometime in the near future, consider applying to be LeUyen’s mentee!  She’s open to taking one lucky person from anywhere on this planet and sharing her knowledge about getting into this difficult industry as well as helping you create portfolio pieces to submit to publishers.  You can’t beat that!

Some of LeUyen’s books include:

• Freckleface Strawberry Series, written by actress Julianne Moore
• God’s Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• Grace for President by Kelly DiPuccio
• The Alvin Ho series written by Lenore Look
• Big Sister, Little Sister written and illustrated by LeUyen Pham
•All the Things I Love About You  written and illustrated by LeUyen Pham

A complete list can be found on her website.

And also check out LeUyen and Alex’s contributions to the SketchTravel project!

Mentor of the Day: Chris Alzmann

If you’ve ever watched a major block-buster summer hit, you’ve probably seen the work of Christian (Chris) Alzmann at some point.  (Be sure to check out his extensive list of credits at the bottom.) After graduating from Art Center College of Design, Chris began working for  the Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company, founded by George Lucas, Industrial Light Magic (ILM) For over twelve years, he’s worked his way through the ranks and currently sits as a Senior Art Director.

In an interview with The Gnomon Workshop, Chris spoke a little bit about being an Art Director compared to a concept artist- “Well now [as an art director] it’s about designing for the whole picture. So you have to keep an eye on the production designer’s vision. For every design you have to art direct someone building that asset. Also depending on the size of the production you might have a crew of artists working with you that will need direction and schedules for their time. All of that and you have to produce a bunch of artwork.”

In both interviews with the SFGate and Gnomon, Chris expressed the need for young artists to develop strong “foundation skills like drawing, sculpting, perspective, anatomy, life drawing and painting. Learning software is great but there will always be new and better software to learn. It will always be changing. The basics will always be the same. Also, look at the world around you for inspiration and ways to set your design sensibilites apart. It’s sad and true, but a lot of great designs can get ovelooked if they are executed poorly. A portfolio or reel always stands out when the foundation in it is strong.”

Currently, Chris Alzmann is willing to take up to 2 mentees for our SPRING 2012 mentorship program and open to mentoring internationally.  Chris is looking to help his mentee advance to the next level in their work, whether that’s improving foundation skills, design skills or just organizing a better portfolio. So if you’re looking to give general career advice for those looking to get into concept design for live action film or animation Chris Alzmann is your man!

Filmography:
2011 Cowboys & Aliens- VFX Art Director
2011 Rango- Concept Artist
2010 The Last Airbender- VFX Art Director
2009 Terminator Salvation- VFX Art Director
2008 Indy 4- VFX Art Director
2007 The Spiderwick Chronicles- VFX Art Director
2006 Eragon– Visual Effects art Director
2005 MUNICH – Digital Artist
2005 JARHEAD – Visual Effects Art Director
2005  WAR OF THE WORLDS – Visual Effects Art Director
2004 THE VILLAGE – Visual Effects Art Director
2004 TALISMAN – Concept Artist
2004 VAN HELSING – Visual Effects Art Director
2003 PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN – Concept Artist
2003 THE HULK – Concept Artist
2002 TERMINATOR 3 – Concept Artist
2002 STAR WARS EPISODE 2 “ATTACK OF THE CLONES” – Concept Artist
2002 MEN IN BLACK 2 – Concept Artist
2001 THE MUMMY RETURNS – Concept Artist
2001 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – Storyboard/ Concept Artist

Mentor of the Day: Octavio Rodriguez

Our first featured mentor is the amazing Octavio Rodriguez!

Currently a Story Artist at Pixar Animation, Octavio has worked over 16 years in the animation industry. Before joining Pixar, Octavio has worked at some great animation studios including Starz, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, Cartoon Network, Disney, Nickelodeon, and Lucasfilm animation.  Some of the titles he’s worked on include:

• Monsters University
• Captain Simian & Space Monkeys
• Catdog
• Sponge Bob
• Mighty Mouse (development)
• Jackie Chan
• Johnny Bravo
• Megas XLR
• Evil con Carne
• Drawn Together
• Spawn(Development), Happy Elf
• Catscratch
• American Dragon(2nd Season)
• Emperor’s New School
• Spectacular Spiderman
•  Mighty B!

A more detailed list can be found on IMBD.

Octavio is very passionate about drawing and storytelling.  In an interview with Character Design Blog, Octavio says, “I’ve always drawn my whole life, it’s second nature to me. I can remember creating extensive origins on characters I would draw in junior high, and loving every stroke! Those drawings and bios eventually became comics that I would sell to the other kids in school. So, in a sense I always knew I wanted to be a storyboard artist, even if I didn’t know the correct terminology.”

In addition to crafting storyboards during the day, Octavio has self published five books since 2006 – “Cano Scribbles,” “Cano scribbles 1.5,” “The Adventures of Plat and Dave,” “The Adventures of Plat and Dave 2,”and “Ciudad”.   All his books are currently available through his website.

Best of all, Octavio loves sharing his knowledge and giving back to the art community.  Octavio is one of our mentors willing to take multiple mentees – up to 4 in total! And he’s able to communicate in Spanish so is open to teaching internationally. In addition to participating in our Mentorship Program next Spring, Octavio also shares his knowledge at The Art Center.  So follow him on Twitter and check out what he’s hoping to accomplish with his mentees!

Mentor of the Day

While it’s very exciting to present to you the very talented mentors we have participating  in our Motivarti Mentorship Program next Spring, we also realize it might be a very difficult choice for some of you when deciding to who apply for.

First off, please note that you are more than welcome to apply to multiple mentors!  You don’t have to pick just one.  And if two or more of them offer you a spot you can decide to take one, both, or none!  Also note that I can’t promise all our mentors will be coming back.  (That will be up to them.)  So take advantage while you can in case they don’t.  Remember, they’re very busy professionals!

Now, back on track.  To help you guys get to know our mentors a little more, we’ll be starting to doing a “Mentor of the Day” post each day for the next several weeks.  These posts will give you a bit more info about the mentors in terms of who they are, what they’ve done, their style, ideas, influences, etc.  Hopefully in doing so, we’ll shed some light on who would be the best fit for you.  So if you haven’t do so already, please join our mailing list (to the right) or follow us on Facebook or Twitter so you’ll know when these posts go live.  Thanks and stay tuned!