Tucked away in a professional-looking office park in San Bernardino California is Art Institute Inland Empire, a career-minded school that trains artists in game art, web design, animation, fashion, and the culinary arts.
Santosh Oommen, the school’s academic director, (left) takes time away from his career in animation and visual effects to teach at the school. The school's geographic position in southern California allows it to attract a faculty with deep professional experience. Students in the class on conceptual storytelling, taught by Stephen Bautista, sometimes work with classic stories, such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells. They design characters and environments to blend with the source mood and material.
At the beginning of their academic program, everyone is issued a wheeled backpack preloaded with textbooks that they’ll use in their foundational classes.
The school was crowded the day I visited because orientation was going on, so some people had a hard time seeing the screen. Although young artists become versed in the state-of-the-art digital tools, they start out with traditional figure drawing and perspective. “We believe that traditional mediums are the way to start, and they go from there,” Mr. Oommen told me.
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Official website, link.
sorry james, i would have to go with boobs blocking my view over seeing your lecture screen any day....
ReplyDeleteI attended the Art Institute in Phoenix and there is a heavy emphasis on fundamentals. The upper level classes do introduce industry-specific programs, but this is only after classes like "Fundamentals of Design" and "Color Theory."
ReplyDeleteWe took three traditional hand-drawn 2D animation classes before our first 3D computer animation class and there were five life drawing classes required.
Wow, that tweet was...honest.
ReplyDeleteSo what texts do they read during their fundamental courses?
Stephen, not sure what's on the reading list. It was a short tour!
ReplyDelete@JamesGurney: Every class taught at the school has a required text that is paired with it.For classes like color theory and fundamentals of design, there are books that have extended information on what is taught in the class. For drawing classes, we have text books that give instruction on how to draw certain things that the instructor may not have time to cover. We also learn general education studies, so we need math books, english books, psychology books, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteWow, you went to Ai in Inland Empire! That's pretty neat! I'm attending the one in San Diego, if you are ever down here, please pay a visit! I would love to sit and listen to your lecture and see your slide show, you blogspot is already inspiring me all over again to paint in oils once more!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this blog, I hope you don't mind me tagging it to watch it more! :)