Students will develop their visual accuracy when drawing poses, which will help in creating animations that feel more in line with nature and real life. From the basic principles to the importance of emotion, this course will focus on understanding how to create appealing and efficient 2D animations.

Learn how to navigate through basic key framing tools & techniques in After Effects to create 2D Motion Graphics for personal, advertising, and commercial use. Artists in any field can use these skills to enhance their demo reels, round out a pitch presentation, or add to their portfolios!

This class will help students understand how powerful 3D is and how to take advantage of different techniques to translate 2D skills into full 3D scenes. Students will render multiple scenes while learning to incorporate 3D techniques into their concept art workflows.

This course is an introduction to the basic drawing and painting fundamentals necessary in developing a strong foundation for becoming an artist in the entertainment industry.

Acting for Visual Storytellers takes a detailed look at how every choice an artist makes is an opportunity to tell a story. Whether working in story, layout or animation, it’s helpful for every artist to understand the vocabulary and skills used by actors for preparation, script analysis, character development and more.

As students continue to develop a basic skill set throughout this course, a special emphasis will be placed on the understanding and application of those basics to the human figure. This course will emphasize a process based approach focusing on the analysis of form, construction, and perspective.

In this class, we will deconstruct the materials, from their tensile strength and geometric construction to their surface properties or how they absorb and reflect light. We will work with the armature from the analytical figure drawing class and work on draw through as learned in dynamic sketching class, organizing the clothing into simple easy to use forms using the draw through approach.

Animal Drawing emphasizes developing an understanding of the anatomy of wildlife and domestic animals. Students will learn to construct quadruped skeletons as well as rendering fur and reptilian skin.

Research and the use of reference is one of the most important tools in the visual artist’s toolbox. In this course, improve your drawing, improve your knowledge of architecture, art, anatomy, objects and their place in history, geography and science, and bring that knowledge to your design process.

We will explore in depth ways to achieve layouts as well as backgound paintings. We will develop a finished portfolio 4-8 final keyshots, Isometric top down location drawings, Prop pages, and Environment pages.

In this courses students will cover: composition, prop design, designing a focal point and building layouts around it, style exploration, layout construction, and design principles. By the end of the course students will have a strong grasp of the job of a Layout Artist/Background Designer.

This workshop will help guide students from different art entertainment disciplines plot a route to career success and demystify the job application process. This course will focus on all aspects for applying and getting your first job as a professional artist.

This class will focus on taking your character designs through a production pipeline and learning to make your designs functional for animation. In this course, you will be acting as a professional Character Designer.

In this limited-seat mentorship, students will begin by determining, under Carlos’ direction, what art style and shape language best tell the story. With Carlos’ guidance, students will then explore their characters through rough sketches, expressions, and poses, and then take their designs all the way to a finished presentation and model packet.

The goal of this mentorship with Disney Art Director of Characters Bill Schwab is to develop a deeper understanding of shape, silhouette, attitude and style. This class will cover multiple aspects of character design, including research, rough concepts and final design.

This course will cover a lot of reference and breaking it down into the importance of things to consider regarding animation design. Allow your imagination to push what we can do in design and to push our boundaries in what we are comfortable with and what we feel we can do in animation.

This advanced course will explore the key aspects of creating character concept art within the games and film industries. Beginning with principles of design and the iteration process of generating ideas, the course focuses on exploring the essence of a character by developing that character’s attitude and digging deep into what makes the character feel real and grounded.

If you are a character designer and you want to be ready to take on freelance work, this class is for you. Freelance work can be a huge part of a professional artist’s career, and being prepared to adapt to quick assignments and varying artistic styles the way freelance work requires is a very important skill to develop.

This course is designed to be an intensive introduction to comics and narrative, from the very first stage to having the comic printed. We will begin by looking at comics and storytelling, then create storyboards and compose our comic pages.

This class will cover the fundamental principles used to create visually striking images as applied to illustration, film, games, animation, and publishing. The class will first begin by exploring how composition functions as a visual design language across a 2-dimensional surface by covering concepts like mass, proportion, movement, and symmetry.

Students will be taken through the process of creating costume concept designs from thumbnailing to final presentation. The course covers mood boards and thumbnailing, posing, head and face studies, color and how it relates to story, fabric and texture, and best practices for presentation.

The course will focus on: understanding of the difference in Eastern and Western storytelling (3-act structure vs 4-act structure, ‘Ki shou ten ketsu’), exploring silent storytelling and the “show, don’t tell” principle, and adapting and editing manuscripts and storyboards for maximum emotional impact.

This course will cover all the main fundamentals of creating pages using the manga storytelling method; from character building to story structure to developing layouts. By the end of this course, students will have learnt how to create Yonkoma, and have at least 8 completed, as well as learning the fundamentals of character creation, with a full character sheet of their own.

The goal of this course is to give you (the student) the necessary practical skills to make your own short film a reality. I will take you through the production process of making an animated short from concept, ideas to finished film, and distribution.

This course will teach you how to design your own creatures by using Earth’s animals as a guideline. Nature is a powerful tool when sketching ideas and Creature Design for Film and Games will show you just how to use real life references in your creations.

In this course students will learn the theory about design and how to consciously apply that theory until it becomes part of their nature. Everything here has a strong foundation and they will be able to design anything related to an environment as well as their general design practices.

Take beginning steps to familiarize yourself with additional digital drawing and painting tools as well as foundation principles using Photoshop and Procreate. This class is fit for anyone looking to venture into digital drawing and painting (character and Illustration) that have only very basic knowledge of Photoshop or Procreate.

This course goes over different color and texture rendering techniques for creating believable human portraits. Special attention is given to facial features drawing on surface structure, skin rendering (i.e. translucency, hue/saturation/value and color temperature, etc.), layered studies, and background/foreground manipulation.

Drawing & Rendering Techniques for Hardware Design covers the benefits of ideation sketching, perspective, visual language, rendering and presentation techniques, and design intent. Focusing on the fundamentals of drawing and design, student will learn a process to deliver stronger designs using established concept design processes.

This course introduces participants to the main principles of animation, and to how to apply them to dynamic animal sketching. Introduction to the general approach that animators use when making drawings, which emphasizes strength of the gesture and the use of simple volumetric forms to construct the figure, and a focus on performance.

This course is an introduction to an approach to figure drawing which emphasizes strength of the gesture and the use of simple volumetric forms to construct the figure, and a focus on performance. Disney animation legends techniques will be presented in order to illustrate the development of the art form at the Disney studio, and students will also see the value of applying the Animation Principles to sketching the figure.

Dynamic Sketching 1 is a class designed to develop a foundation in basic drawing skills. Students will learn how to break down objects to their most simplistic forms. Using pen and toned paper, students will learn to build confidence in their line work.

Foundational drawing is the most important aspect of being a designer. This class is designed to take the lessons from Dynamic Sketching 1, and further the practice of applying those skills in onsite drawing while creating new concepts from particular themes. There will be more exploration on the student’s part in going out and finding the required sites to draw.

Ecorché is intended to give students a thorough understanding of the superficial anatomy of the human form. Students will sculpt both the bones and muscles of the entire figure.

This course will guide students through the creation of compelling and thoughtful environment designs for the entertainment industry. From visual ideas and storytelling to gameplay aspects, we will look at how we can create the most entertainment value in our designs and how to use the fundamental knowledge of composition, color and lighting to bring these ideas to life.

The goal for this course is to gain a deeper understanding and mastery of the intricacies of environment painting and design, specifically for the video game and feature film genres. A longer-term project will include design tasks as exteriors, interiors, establishing shots, and design call-outs.

This class will focus on creating compelling environments with a strong and consistent design language. Students will learn a process from start to finish that will enable them to generate and iterate on their ideas to find the best image for the story.

Environment Sketching for Production focuses on creating visual themes for use in a production pipeline. Students will learn to create quick thumbnails and develop a final piece that is suited for production needs. Subjects include lighting, style, composition, and visual cues.

This 8 week course will teach students cutting edge techniques of painting in order to create expressive paintings that tell a story. Whether working on Concept Design, Visual Development, Illustration, among many other areas, the in depth and innovative approach taught in this course will enable students to create impressive works of Digital Painting.

Patrick will discuss traditional drawing rendering techniques which he uses to simplify anatomy into basic shapes and gestural line to create a language your memory will use to unlock and develop your personal style of drawing.

This is a project-based course during which students will weekly be given assignments found typically in the entertainment industry. Each week focuses on using different architectural styles and building mini projects from them that utilize a different design principle.

This is a beginning character design course with an emphasis on creating memorable characters with interesting personalities & shapes to tell a story. The goal is to visually communicate our characters from life observations, reference, and our imaginations.

Design pertains to nearly everything. From composition and lighting to the shapes of our characters to the vehicles they travel in. As artists, creatives, and designers, we need to be responsible for all these aspects.

Whether for film, video games, or digital feature animation, this class will focus on what it takes to create a compelling environment from the ground up. We will explore fundamentals such as perspective, drawing, storytelling, painting, creating atmosphere, establishing lighting, and how we can combine all these different elements into a full scene.

This is a basic, introductory course in linear perspective drawing. Students enrolled in this class will learn the most fundamental, basic rules, concepts and principles in perspective. The lectures, demos and assignments are created and designed with students who have no, to very little, understanding of basic perspective in mind.

This course will focus on all aspects for applying for and getting a job as a professional artist. The classes will cover developing a portfolio that best showcases your skills, developing a resume and applying for jobs, as well as preparing to present yourself well in an interview setting.

This course builds on the skills and information covered in the initial Analytical Figure Drawing course, as well as challenges students to push those skills through the introduction of additional subject matter of the human head.

This class is designed to help students create a compelling presentation of their story with visually striking images. Over the course of 10 weeks, students will be guided through the creation of a pitch package so that they can showcase their ability to come up with a suitable design language for a story and carry that across the different aspects of creating a visually cohesive world.

This mentorship will cover the fundamentals of illustration, focusing primarily on illustrations in the games industry. You will learn the skills necessary to develop an illustration-based portfolio while gaining insight into the industry and how illustrators function within it.

This course was designed to give students an overview of Blender’s main tools and tricks, using this 3D software to create strong 2D images. Whether working with Concept Design, Visual Development, Illustration, among many other areas, the in-depth, practical approach taught in this course will enable students to create fully finished, impressive scenes suitable for presentation.

This course focuses on teaching students how to create beautiful and cinematic key frame illustrations in a production setting, utilizing Photoshop and Blender to create project assets efficiently for sequential images

This class will go in-depth into what matte painting has become these days as well as what it will take students to create an epic and believable matte shot of their own. The course begins with an introduction to the subject of matte painting, embracing every tiny aspect of the profession.

Students will learn about the art side of the mobile game industry in general and how to design, research, and create tileable isometric buildings and props from thumbnail sketches to final renderings.

This course focuses on the skills essential for good image-making, and also on those skills which elevate an illustration to the next tier of professionalism. We will discuss what makes a lasting, impactful piece of art, cover some of the techniques and tools you can use to maximize your chances of success, and build the habits necessary to conduct ourselves in a professional environment.

In this class students will learn 1, 2 and 3 point perspective systems building upon existing knowledge, from either the Fundamentals of Perspective course or otherwise. The goal is to get a working knowledge to design a space and then be able to draw various accurate views of it.

Using the power of Houdini and it’s native fluid solver, PyroFX, you will learn how to create state-of-the-art, high-impact pyrotechnic effects. You will cover some of the most commonly used visual effects along with learning everything from sculpting coloured smoke plumes to burning down whole cities!

The objective of this course is to teach students how to learn the basics and get accustomed to Node Based shader systems, whether in Unreal Engine or in other Texture Authoring Programs or Engines. They will create materials and textures for video games in Unreal Engine.

The general overview is that we will take the core elements of Dynamic Sketching and pursue further mileage, or for those that want to push beyond the basic foundations discuss sketching from the imagination, and how to use observation and references with more effectiveness.

Students will develop their own ideas, characters and stories using written premises, outlines, treatments, fictional biographies and character histories, becoming the absolute authorities on their invented worlds – with an eye toward preparing each student’s creative development work for real-life application in their media of choice; film, TV, animation, comics, etc.

This class will walk you through some of the fundamentals, such as framing and cutting your scenes, as well as ways to transition into the next one.

This mentorship is designed to help each student become a better visual storyteller and a stronger storyboard artist. Students will work on their own projects/stories and submit their progress each week for instructor feedback.

This course is designed to teach students how to quickly illustrate realistic, live action storyboard frames, by focusing on what’s important to the story and capturing the essence of an idea.

This mentorship will explore the relationship of style to industries including but not limited to animation, children’s books, comics, apparel design and selling one’s own work independently. While the principles of drawing, painting and design are always needed, they are not needed by every industry in exactly the same way.

The Art of Color and Light is an exploration in the properties of color and light under a variety of conditions. This is an essential stage in concept art that develops mood and communicates the narrative of the story by means of visual cues.

In this course, students will refine their use of design fundamentals and gain an understanding of master planning, guest experience, iconic attractors, architectural scale, and spatial responsibility.

In this course students can learn to quickly build a 3D Sketch (Rough) model and can define a detailed subdiv model based on rough model. They will also complete a quick paintover on the 3D model for proof of concept.

The course will begin with students choosing a short story / personal project to develop, then breaking it down into a personalized schedule via a film-industry-standard “visual planning sheet.”

This is a structured mentorship that will allow students to continue their character art journey with a new or existing project. Students will receive personalized feedback and additional instruction on advanced topics. There will be weekly live sessions for specific questions.

This course focuses solely on acting shots, such as character dialogues and pantomime acting choices. It builds on prior material but goes deeper and further, showing varied strategies in approaching acting for animation to find meaningful and heartfelt performances. The course will cover useful tips and tricks for the blocking, in-progress, and final animation stages.