Andrew White
Illustrator / Animator / Table-top Game Designer / Graphic Design Generalist
Hey there! My name’s Andrew/Andy, I like to draw and I kinda do a little bit of everything. Illustration, 2D animation, Video Editing, Page Layout, Logos and Branding, Technical Drawing… Animal Husbandry? (I’m a farm kid) You name it, I’ve probably done it or have a pretty good idea of how to approach it.
Underlying everything the skills that really serve me best are my ability to take a problem, break it down, and find solutions; and then communicate those solutions in the simplest and most approachable way I can.
I’m a problem solver and a storyteller.
I live and breath design, art, film and games; there’s seldom a day where I’m
not thinking about how well a particular shot in a TV show or page of a book is
constructed. I love to break down the structure of things, work out how they
function and apply that knowledge to create better pieces of communication.
Anyway, enough talk for now, let’s get to my work!
Putting my drawings to work.
Story-boarding & Concept Art
Too often the tern “Concept Art“ gets thrown on beautifully rendered illustrations that should really be called “Key Marketing Art“. Real Concept art is about visual problem-solving and communicating with fellow artists on a project and more often than not is is highly utilitarian and ‘not-pretty‘ because it doesn’t need to be, if it was, it’d be defeating it’s core purpose GETTING THE POINT ACROSS!
The work I find the most fulfilling and creative is this kind of work, the not so pretty stuff, the ideas! The storytelling! So I’m putting that work right here, front and centre. Technical skills are important, and I have those technical skills, but what’s more important is the conceptual skills, the connective tissue, the four-hundred sticky note scribbles that came before the gorgeous finished piece.
So let’s go explore that underlying process!
Captain Thunderbolt
A Web Series for 10Play
“SAND SEQUEL”
Personal Film
Finding Alex
Visual Communication Design Honours Project
Drawings, Letters & Layouts
Graphic Design
When I first applied to study Visual Communication Design I picked it because I thought “I can probably do some drawing in that“. Years later and that degree behind me I’ve come to love all the minutia of graphic design; type, layout, balancing composition and the sheer utilitarian, clean, to the point philosophy of design thinking.
Suffolk Sheep
Logo & Branding
Jack Kills Giants
Table Top Roleplaying Game Design Project
Aaron White & The Passengers
Album Art
Closeup Stud
Logo & Branding
Fallen Stars
Table Top Roleplaying Game Design Project
Drawings Drawings Drawings
Illustration
I’ve been drawing since I was very young; we still have some of my earliest drawings laminated and in a cupboard at home. It’s always been a thing I just… do. It’d be impossible to count the number of times I’ve drawn something instead of reading a book, watching a movie or playing a videogame… which is probably why I’m so behind on a lot of movies and books.
In the last couple years I’ve gotten into Dungeons and Dragons and other Table top role playing games and my freetime drawing has skewed pretty heavily into RPG territory since then. And I’m even creating my own games and game products, which has been some of the most fulfilling work I’ve done so far.
There's something so creatively exciting about roleplaying games, some of the most well-rounded and detailed characters I've ever created have come out of RPGs. The free-form, improv style of story-telling and the idea of as a DM building situations for players to create stories instead of building plot provide an interesting creative challenge that has really taught me a lot about my creative practice in general.
It's also just really fun to have this whole cast of characters who's look and personality I've already established that I can then just draw in whatever fun situations I can think of.
Making Drawings Move…
Animation
I’ve always had a love for animation and the moment I realised there was an animation elective in my degree I pretty much started to turn my whole Visual Communication degree into a de facto animation one. No matter how much animation I see it never stops feeling absolutely magical.
The actual process of animating is an acquired taste; a lot of pretty monotonous drawing over and over; but apparently I love that taste because there are so many little things I’ve fell in love with about the process of animation. Fine-tuning the timing, the little subtle differences a single extra frame can make. And watching it play after working for hours on a shot is something else.
My current 2d Animation show reel as of June 2020. Music is "Downtown" by Podington Bear, used under license.
Break Block Projections
Interactive Projection Mapping Project
Daniel Johns: Going on 16
2D Rotoscoped Animation
CHVRCHES: Bury It
2D Clean-up and Colour
So… now you’ve seen some of what I can do.