HOT off the presses!! The prompt for December is here!

Hope you a ready for a challenge, because this one is a doozy

It comes to us from @Jake-Parker :

"This month we are doing a character design challenge!

Your assignment is to design the fabled monster of the Himalayas, the YETI.

You've seen them show up everywhere from theme park rides (Disneyland's Matterhorn) to cable TV specials, and most recently a rash of animated films (Abominable, Smallfoot, and Missing Link).

What we want from you is a character design sheet with your own take on the Yeti.

Every entry must have 5 color drawings on ONE page:

1 neutral pose front, 3/4 view
1 neutral post back, 3/4 view
1 walking or running pose
1 sitting pose (ground or chair)
1 close up of face

What can you do to make the character stand out from ALL the other designs you've seen? Think of the character's background, personality, wants, and needs. All of these attributes will play an important role in the creativity of your design.

Allright, good luck!"

Hi everyone! Thanks for your patience! We haven’t done a big live event in a while, so we are still working out the glitches :smiling_face_with_open_mouth_cold_sweat:

So to answer your question YES, we’ll be posting the video from the live crit in the subscription next week, we’ll send out notification when it’s out

As for subscribers who didn’t receive the email with the live link, there were a variety of reasons why you may not have received the email:

•if you have opted out of our email newsletter, you will not receive any emails (except for progress notifications, these are auto generated by a different system)

•if you have a yahoo address, our email platform is experiencing issues sending email to yahoo, and many of these are bouncing

•if you cancelled your monthly subscription and moved to an annual subscription, our system may not have recognized the switch

•if you subscribed very recently, our system may not have caught up yet

•if you cancelled recently, our system sees you as cancelled even though you may still access through the end of the month

•various individual scenarios like expired credit cards and such

Our apologies if you did not get the email! Anyone who contacted me via email before the event, I was able to resend a link to.

Just fyi, Will, Lee and Jake want to do more of these kinds of events for our subscribers, so we are gonna try doing live crits on the first Thursday of the month for a while to see if there’s interest. What do you guys think?

Hello everyone! Just want to let you know we are doing a live event with @will-terry-art starting tomorrow! It's coming together very quickly, so we're still nailing down some of the details. But we'll be sending out links tomorrow!

Here's the plan: you'll be able to join in and ask questions as Will colors a brand new illustration! (Hint: it's called The Corona Session) He'll show you his coloring process step-by-step, so you can see it up close and personal.

The event will be over 3 days (Wed/Thu/Fri), for about an hour each, starting at 2pm MDT.

Stay tuned for details!

Hi all! If you are into picture books, you might want to check out our first ever picture book breakdown on May 27!

This is where we pick a favorite picture book and analyze the storytelling from the illustrator point of view

@davidhohn has been doing these for years as a teacher, so he will be walking us through this time.

We'll be reviewing the Caldecott-winning “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend” by Dan Santat.

The LIVE event kicks off at 2pm MST on Thursday, May 27. We’ll be emailing the event link to subscribers on May 26 or 27.

If you haven't received an event link email, shoot us an email, or look for it in the Jump Into the Studio class

Just in case you are unfamiliar with spot illustrations, they often have broken edges, and little to no background. In case you need one, here's an example of a spot illustration, from one of Lee's books:

Posting on behalf of James Toogood (This made the deadline btw, but there were some technical difficulties uploading)

Wow everybody, great stuff!!

Just want to let you know that we are planning a live event to announce the winners, and yes, Tom Bancroft is gonna be there!

We're still working out the details, but we hope to email the details to our subscribers early next week, so be on the look out

We are shooting for June 6, so if you are a subscriber and haven't gotten an email by then, do let me know!

And here's what we are gonna end up with!

These are really spooktacular! This is going to be a tough one for the judges Thanks everyone for submitting!

We'll be convening our next Critique Arena on Nov 12. We'll have more details about that soon!

And, we are working on the November prompt, it's going to be a little different this time, we'll have more details about that soon too!

Just to clarify: don't worry if you haven't submitted in the previous Yeti contests, you can still do this prompt! Just treat it as if it's a stand alone prompt.

So, if you don't already have a Yeti character, just create one. And by the same token, if you already created a Yeti character, but would like to change it, go right ahead!

We thought it would be fun to give you the option to create all the makings of a children's book, but it's not a requirement

I'm sure @Lee-White will have something to say

Hi! Just fyi, survey says it's gonna be Extra Yarn illustrated by Jon Klassen! Such a gorgeous book @davidhohn will be leading us through the analysis this Thursday, June 24 at 2PM MST. We'll be emailing links in the next couple days!

@kylebeaudette You can only access the course content from the Student Dashboard page, it's a quirk of the platform

Hi all! We had so much fun geeking out over Beekle with @davidhohn, we thought it would be fun to do it again! But this time, you choose the book!

If you head over to the Jump Into The Studio class in the subscription, there's a survey where you can vote for which picture book we do next.

These are the contenders:
•The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
•Extra Yarn illustrated by Jon Klassen
•Mrs. Biddlebox illustrated by Marla Frazee
•The Spider And The Fly illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi
•Wolf In The Snow by Matthew Cordell

Please vote by this Sunday June 20 so we can all the review the book before we go live with David on Thursday, June 24

BTW, the recording from last week's Critique Arena is now in the subscription!

@xin-li and @joosterwijk sorry for the delay! We actually had some technical issues with recording the livestream, but @davidhohn was gracious enough to re-record it! (Thanks David!!) You can find it now in the Jump into the Studio class in the subscription

And just fyi, he may be doing another one of these soon, stay tuned for details!

@K-Flagg Yes! We will get it uploaded soon!

Hey gang, today is Critique Arena! Hope you can make it!

It's at 2pm MDT today, check here for other time zones.

Event links went out yesterday If you didn't get one, or need some help, shoot me an email!

@williammeany howdy! What we are looking for is 5 different drawings of your character in 5 different poses, on one page:

• 1 neutral pose front, 3/4 view

• 1 neutral post back, 3/4 view

• 1 walking or running pose

• 1 sitting pose (ground or chair)

• 1 close up of face

All five drawings should be in color (not black and white). It's basically a character design sheet. Here's some examples from previous character design challenges:

• Fairy Tale Traveler

• Yeti

Hope that helps!

Just to clarify, this is not a real assignment, it's made up for the purposes of the contest! It's meant to be like a dream assignment