About

 

Hello, my name is Cody Lake, a young Canadian artist & a 2019 graduate from the Arts & Animation program of Loyalist College. I wish to share my creations & knowledge with others, including fellow artists, enthusiasts, & even a new generation of young artists.

 

      From as far back as I can remember, I have had a passion & delight in drawing; with my most favorite subject being animals.  My greatest influence came from the traditional animated films produced by Walt Disney & DreamWorks Studios.  I came to discover dinosaurs, where I became so enthralled by them, it made me not only want to draw them, but also gain as much knowledge as possible about them.  From there, I self-taught myself to craft an artistic style reminiscent to that of my most admired animation studios, while ensuring that the creatures I created maintained the most up-to-date paleontological accuracy required for them.

 

      Among my accomplishments in art & paleontology, while in Bayside Secondary High School, I produced and published a book, as a major student assignment, with 10 Late Cretaceous creatures that I illustrated personally.  Along with the drawings I created, was a description of each of the creatures, and as many facts as I knew about them as possible.  The final product was so admired by the school staff & fellow students, that they purchased copies for themselves and even for the school library.

 

      With my success in high school, I decided to enroll myself in a combined four-year course at Loyalist College in their Arts & Animation program(s).  I learnt to perfect the process of creating in both traditional hand-drawn animation and CGI (Computer Graphic Imaging). 

 

      During my last year and final project, I sought to develop a fully hand-drawn animated sequence based on a scene from my most beloved dinosaur-fiction novel, “Raptor Red”, by paleontologist Robert Bakker.  The project development involved designing all of the storyboard scenes required; conceptualizing & illustrating the character art, creating the designs, drawing hundreds of animated frames, and compositing them all together in a video effects program. The finished product was given a passing grade with high praise, as well as high compliments from the original novel’s author, when I sent a copy of it over to him.

 

      This ignited a passion to share my creations with others, and I discovered that I could not only, encourage future interest in the arts & paleontology, but also, I could make it a career choice.

 

      Shortly after graduating, I started to post my artwork on various websites and launched my first website, depicting my unique style of art.  I have been fortunate enough to be commissioned to illustrate such works as, character design, fan-art, paleo-art and book covers; most of which produce recurring customers.  It has also allowed me to continue to discover my passions and myself.

 

      My personal background had me growing up in the small eastern town of Frankford, Ontario.  During the course of my life, I have overcome the misconceptions of being born with a form of autism.  This use to effect me in a negative way, but with the encouragement of my family, past educators, and my own perseverance, I have come to embrace my uniqueness.  It is this uniqueness that gives me the ability to envision my thoughts and produce my own work of art.

 

      I am well prepared for any challenge or opportunity that comes my way, and will always do the most exceptionally best of my abilities to accomplish them.  I will also strive to embrace my unique aesthetics and apply them to all of my work, hoping to even inspire potentially future young artists to do the same.