Animation Foundation: why create a portfolio?
A portfolio is a personal collection of different types of work. It may contain sketches and drawings, or even paintings and video clips.
There are no fixed rules. It is essential to create a portfolio to be accepted onto the Animation Foundation course of your choice as well as the higher education Animation establishment you wish to progress onto.
It is particularly useful to guide teachers in discovering your work. Advice from Corinne Destombes, visiting staff for production and broadcasting at Atelier de Sèvres, explains how useful a portfolio can be.
Animation foundation course: interview and portfolio
At Atelier de Sèvres, the Animation Foundation course is accessible for students from the last year of high school, from all pathways, aged 17 to 24.
As a private institution, Atelier de Sèvres is not accessible via the Parcoursup platform. If you want to apply to our Animation Foundation course, all you need to do is book an appointment over the phone with the Atelier de Sèvres teaching staff.
An interview will then be arranged according to your availability, during which you will speak, over the course of around thirty minutes, about your academic background and present your portfolio.
The portfolio can contain all the work that you feel is useful to present to the Animation Foundation teachers, as long as it is recent enough for your work to be judged accurately. Your skills in drawing and other disciplines will obviously be taken into account, but to be accepted at Atelier de Sèvres, it is most important to be enthusiastic with a desire to learn.
Your portfolio: a passport to the top animation schools
Your portfolio will accompany you throughout your school career and beyond. The portfolio you construct during the Animation Foundation year can, of course, include pieces from your first portfolio, but it is, above all, important to show the development of your artistic thinking and all work that demonstrates your skills.
"A portfolio is a tool enabling you to share your creativity with as many people as possible. You must ensure that it makes people want to work with you, to know more about your creativity and your individual universe. It's a bit like an artist’s painting: we see it and we want to share it and to know more about the person behind it." (Corinne Destombes)
Make sure you find out about the requirements for the Animation School to which you are applying. For example, some schools ask for a video in addition to your portfolio.
Some go even further by doing away with competitive exams entirely in order to focus on candidates’ portfolios at the interview, in a similar way to the admissions process for the Animation Foundation at Atelier de Sèvres. Such is the case, for example, for École Émile Cohl.
If you have any questions about the portfolio that you will need to create, do not hesitate to contact us at Atelier de Sèvres by phone or via our website.
