CalArts Accepted Portfolio 2014 - Tori Niu

I’ve been waiting until my admissions decisions to post this. I was accepted into Calarts over a month ago, and really I’m still not over it. I feel kind of dazed, though I’m taking it better than I thought I would.

The experience of applying to this school has been a rough ride. It was long, emotionally draining, nerve-wracking, but I did enjoy myself, and it was worth it.

I almost did not apply to Calarts actually. When I visited the school last April I was simultaneously blown away by the student work and paralyzed with fear that I would never be this good. But after getting a good convincing from my parents, I decided to commit, and I actually did it. Man.

Preparing for Calarts taught me an important lesson; the act of trying and commitment. Believing in yourself is just as important as your base artistic skill if not more important. Improvement begins with the commitment and courage to try. For those of you hopefuls, and those reapplying, that’s probably the #1 thing you need to keep in mind. This mindset carries into any application really. It’s hard, it’s so hard. I’m still not as confident as I want to be about myself, but at least give yourself a chance to try.

I’m only going to post a part of my portfolio. There have been a lot of people looking at past Calarts portfolios and copying directly from them. Please don’t do that because people can tell if you’re just copying a style and not understanding it, and it’s not your personal expression either, which is detrimental to your own artistic vision. There are certainly requirements in the portfolio that you have to follow, and the aesthetic for animation has its differences from other art practices, but there is so much variety even in that. Don’t try to prescribe to one “Calarts” style. If anything, try to stand out (it gives you better chances too in my opinion).

If you guys want to talk to me more stuff about applying, shoot me a private ask on my tumblr or email me at toriknew@gmail.com

Figure Drawing

Supplemental

Sketchbook

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RISD (MICA & SVA & ART CENTER) ACCEPTED PORTFOLIO 2014

My RISD application for 2014. I also applied to MICA & SVA with this. Looking to hear back from those schools, will update when that time comes.

The portfolios for MICA and SVA have the same content generally, though I took out a few pieces to meet the limit. I submitted more sketchbook pages and digital artwork to SVA.

For Art Center, the requirements included figure drawing, portraits, at least 3 painting and drawing foundations pieces, environment drawings, some creative stuff, and a recommended sketchbook portion. I basically used a hybrid of my RISD and Calarts portfolios.

Personally from other portfolios and student work  I'd say the life drawing requirement for Art Center is more focused on accuracy in capturing the form, though without sacrificing stiffness in high-renderings. I don't think they're as excited about experimentation so using plain old charcoal is alright. I didn't have time to do more foundations focused figure drawing so I just recycled stuff from my Calarts portfolio. I hope it'll be alright?

I chose 15 images from my Sketchbook as well to supplement. Had mostly observational drawings + some character design + narrative sequential stuff yepp.

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Advice I've heard from others is that RISD has a huge emphasis on foundation potential, so for preparing make sure to include a lot of studies that have a ton of detail. The more detail the better. It's also good to have a range of what you can do, such as different subjects and mediums.

The portfolio is standard for all students entering regardless of preferred major, so I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who wants to go into illustration, but I'm sure there's also ways to get in from a design or conceptual perspective with good scholarship. Here is a good infographic that helped me.

Here's the guts. (click to enlarge). Total: 25

                                

 (LINK TO COMIC) 

Sketchbook Pages (taken out of my Calarts sketchbook)

Home Tests

The Prompt I chose:

• In the course of a single calendar day, draw 11 related images in a single visualization

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