WIP Cream by Croo

We thought we’d kick off our blog with sharing the top 5 artists who inspire our work the most. These people are the reason we love to illustrate, animate, design and bring ideas to life.

5) Ryan Woodward

Ryan Woodward is a storyboard artist and animator who is famous for his animation Thought of You and his animated comic Bottom of the Ninth. He started off doing animatics for Warner Bros. and storyboards for Sony Pictures on movies like Spider-man! Ryan has a great talent for smooth and fluid motion. His work is wonderful to look at if you wanna see anatomy and smooth movement.

You can find his work at http://ryanwoodwardart.com

4) Armand Serrano

Armand Serrano is a Visual Development artist who is currently working at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. He’s a Filipino who moved to the US to work in WDAS. We attended his workshop back in college and just fell in love with his work and visual development. He worked on Mulan, Tarzan, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Surf’s Up, Hotel Transylvania and Big Hero 6 just to name a few!

Visual development for Hotel Transylvania 

Visual Development for Big Hero 6

You can find his work at www.armandserrano.com

3) Skottie Young

Skottie Young is an illustrator and cartoonist who has done work for Marvel and Warner Bros. Skottie is from Illinois and lives with his wife and kids!

Skottie Young’s work is amazing because it’s unique and originally his. I will never look at Skottie’s work and think it’s anybody else’s. His characters have so much energy and personality that they can stand without descriptions.

You can find him on skottieyoung.com or follow him on Instagram @skottieyoung. If you’re interested in picking up some of his work, you can buy Fortunately The Milk by written Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

2) Stephen Silver

Stephen Silver is a British character designer who has done work on one of our favourite childhood series, Kim Possible! He also has his own school called the Silver Drawing Academy in Sun Valley, CA. He gives terrific advice for artists especially for those pursuing a career in character development.

We highly recommend following him on Facebook. He makes Art Talk (5-minute long snippets of advice from Mr. Silver)posts every week. It’s like a free short lecture for young artists! You can find more of his work at http://stephensilver.blogspot.com and his school at www.silverdrawingacademy.com

1) Glen Keane

We saved the master for last.

Glen Keane said, "Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity,” something we had to repeat to ourselves as we crawled through 3 terms of animation classes. Those words are evident in all his great character designs, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid. His other beloved heroes and heroines include The Beast from Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, Tarzan, Pocahontas, and Rapunzel from Tangled. He worked in Disney for 38 years, mentored by several members of The Nine Old Men. He left Disney in 2012, to pursue new frontiers of animation. Some day, we hope to attend his lectures at CalArts, sharing his love of sincere animation and believable characters.