Has APW worked?

Learn why the APW curriculum has consistently helped thousands of students create successful animation portfolios and gain admission to top animation schools worldwide.

When you combine the areas of expertise that APW Directors Vince and Gerard share between them and have actively worked in as practicing visual artists, it makes for quite a remarkable list:

Storyboarding
Character design
Character animation
Film
Layout
Sculpture
Painting
Drawing
Artistic anatomy
Scenic painting

As accomplished artists in all of these areas combined, and, as seasoned gifted instructors with years of teaching under their belts cultivating young artists and burgeoning animators in the Sheridan animation program, the resulting APW curriculum that the two collaborators produced was, and still is, a unique and potent force in cultivating authentic growth that translates into well crafted application-ready portfolios. From the start, the emphasis in the APW curriculum has not only been the end result of crafting a top quality portfolio, but also to provide young artists with a pedagogical road map that favours sustainable, long-term results over quick, temporary wins.

Being an APW student shapes the young animators whole future life, both as an animation student and as a professional working in their chosen field. This is because from its inception the APW curriculum had been designed to cultivate artist /animators, not just “portfolio producing machines” that would get them into the animation school of their choice.

Is making the portfolio important – yes, absolutely, and APW maintains a track record of having helped placed thousands of highly trained students into top tier animation and visual art schools all over the world. But due to the depth of experience that Vince and Gerard brought to the creation of APW, both as practicing visual artists and educators, they had the wisdom to construct and implement a curriculum that put the longer term goal of cultivating skilled artists with deep and authentic creative skill sets before every other curriculum goal outcome. They knew that the creation of a top tier portfolio would occur as the natural byproduct of a curriculum that emphasized this kind of effort and focus on artistic growth….and they were right.

APW has a maxim – a great portfolio is simply a shopping list of items that showcase an artists ability to really draw/ paint/ design, and, to think and perform creatively. If an artist puts all of their energy into training themselves in these areas, the portfolio then simply becomes a ‘to do’ list, presenting challenges to the artist that can actually be enjoyed as they are implemented. There is nothing more satisfying then earning the creative freedom that comes with having developed an appropriate skill set. Through the very careful crafting and skillful implementation of the APW curriculum over decades, Gerard and Vince have played a crucial role in delivering generations of talented APW grads into the fields of animation, design and visual art.

The effects of APW’s pedagogical philosophy on future generations of visual arts educators cannot be underestimated. With the growth of APW, Gerard and Vince also focussed their formidable skills as educators and mentors in the direction of developing teachers. The success of the APW curriculum inspired them to build the APW teacher training program, a system for producing skilled instructors through a series of developmental training intervals.

These are some of the factors that continue to set APW apart from the variety of knock-off / copycat ‘schools’ and tutors that have tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate what we do. APW has consistently, from year to year, maintained a depth and breadth in its programming and pedagogical philosophy that remains unrivalled. APW is in a class of its own.

Has APW worked?

The short answer – we’ve knocked it out of the park.

Learn more about our APW Signature Program and Register Now!