Pre-College Courses

This class will focus primarily on the production of two-dimensional animation, exploring storyboarding, visual development, animation, and post-production. The final assignment will be a group project, where each student adds their unique voice and style to create a single animation reel. You will leave this course with a demo reel and an animated short for your portfolio.

This class is highly recommended for anyone who wants a better understanding of how to create animated films or hopes to enter the animation industry. Students will gain knowledge of industry-standard techniques, terminology, and how to work in a professional production timeline.

Through this course, students will be able to explore multiple mediums, materials, and techniques, experiencing how they overlap to create a cohesive body of work. Developing a multi-faceted artistic practice is essential to the successful creative. Elements of drawing, painting, printmaking, and collage will be brought together over the course of two weeks for students to experiment and create with. We will operate the first week in a workshop format, learning different processes and mediums as a class. During the second week students will be asked to bring together the learned components to complete 3-5 pieces that speak to their own individual artistic practices. Each student must also write an artist statement to display with their work, and keep a documentation sketch book throughout course of the class.

Through many playful drawing processes, students will develop their own inventive imagery and designs. We will then make use of the great digital tools and facilities at CIA, taking those designs and making them into different products.

In this course students will learn to screenprint, output their designs as vinyl stickers, use the laser cutter and so much more! This course is especially geared towards students who have an interest in making multiples or are interested in the entrepreneurial opportunities of sharing their artwork with a wider audience.

This course will equip students with the fundamentals needed to create a variety of glass forms. Students will learn shop safety and etiquette, tool function, gathering and shaping glass, bubble setup, blown forms, color application, cold working techniques, and open-faced plaster mold for casting. Our goal is for each student to manipulate the bubble into a blown form, texture at least one sphere, and create an open-faced plaster mold for casting a glass tile.

Instruction time will be split between demonstrations, hands-on individual attention, and discussion of glass history and the properties of glass. Students will leave with a firm grasp of how to use glass and what it means to be a craft artist and entrepreneur in the contemporary craft world.

This course is designed to help students find their creative voice, execute advanced-level artwork, and discover the diverse field of illustration. You will explore the full creative process of illustration, from brainstorming and concept art to a finished piece ready for display. Students will discover dynamic composition, storyboarding, fundamental rendering techniques, and basic pre-press print production, while also sampling many different avenues of illustration and developing core skills and design principles that will be applied to finished artwork.

Topics that will be explored include composition and value, aesthetic and comprehensive design, brand identity, visual communication of an idea or story, character development, poster and book-jacket design, and storyboarding.

This course will provide students with an introduction to the field of jewelry and metals. Over the course of two weeks, students will be introduced to an overview of techniques, skills, and safe studio practices necessary to building jewelry and metalworking into their studio practice. Students will have the opportunity to apply a range of introductory-level skills, including but not limited to: sawing and piercing, hammering and stamping, acid etching, soldering, and chain making.

Class time will be split between demonstrations, hands-on project instruction and assistance, and discussions on the field of contemporary art jewelry through a historical and contemporary lens.

This class combines traditional drawing with digital drawing techniques to illustrate figurative anatomy and other scientific renderings. Students will explore human anatomy fundamentals as they relate to the development of artistic skills in figurative proportion and visual expression. There will be emphasis on how the skeleton and muscles form the figure, what structures enable motion, and specific methods for improving observational figure drawing.

This class will utilize a variety of techniques and materials to visually reveal various anatomical layers of the human form, including colored pencil, charcoal, graphite, and ultimately digital rendering in Photoshop.

This course will focus on figure painting using oil paints, with an emphasis on the craft and techniques of observational painting. We will study figure painting through history as well as the techniques used by artists in the past. 

This course focuses on creating work through the exploration of color theory and application of materials using acrylic paints. Students will begin their painting exploration through the practice of building up the surface of a painting while experimenting with layering and composition. As confidence in the use of materials grows, students will draw inspiration from their sketchbooks and the work of professional artists to begin crafting their own unique vision.

Combining materials and imagery, students will investigate how to express their feelings, beliefs, and voice to convey a strong message in their art. We will discuss successes and challenges as a group to build confidence and create a sense of community.

This course introduces students to the creative and technical processes behind toy and product design. Through a blend of concept development, hands-on fabrication, and brand-building exercises, students will learn how to transform original ideas into cohesive toy brands and finished prototypes. Topics include world-building, character design, visual identity, brand strategy, and user experience.

This course focuses on character design for each student to develop their own original character doll or action figure line. Students will gain experience with fabrication methods such as 3D printing, mold making, pattern design, and plastic casting. Final projects may be a fashion doll, a posable action figure, a series of small dolls or figures, a figurine and playset, or another type of character toy.

Course description coming soon!