Drawing for Animation: This course will take students through the essential skills for animation, such as the principles of perspective, breaking down your environment into basic shapes, light and shadow, and composition. Designed for all skill sets, Drawing for Animation accommodates all students with the skills needed to develop commitment and skill for long term professional drawing.
Life Drawing 1: Basics of Anatomy In order to understand how to distort and exaggerate the human form, first one must understand the form and the underlying structure as it is in reality. In this introduction course, students are introduced to the human form, conceptualizing, and simplifying its structure through gestural study, while focusing on the traditional tough spots; proportions, heads, hands, and feet. 
Life Drawing 2: Structure and Drapery After the basics of life drawing we can add structure to the drawings and give them clothing. There will be in depth studies of the skeleton, underlying muscles/masses, the physics behind a fold and drapery. Along with these studies we will build even further on depicting volume of both fabric and the figure, techniques of tone are introduced, and integrated into the study.
Life Drawing 3: In Motion and Refined Studies Building on the previous classes, students will study the human body in motion and begin more refined studies. The quicker gestural drawings of a body in motion will help build the artist’s visual shorthand, helping them create a full human shape with a minimum of lines. The more refined work will allow students to illustrate what they have learned in the course overall. 
Life Drawing 4: Animal Anatomy With human anatomy and structure thoroughly studied, students now take those principles and apply them to the study of animal anatomy. Certainly no two structures are the same, especially in the animal kingdom, but the same basic rules can, and must apply(such as center of gravity, muscles wrapping around the skeletal structure, rationalizing basic masses, proportional measurement, etc.). Students will draw, simplify, and study the underlying structure of many different animal types to gain an understanding of how animals are built compared to humans, and how to make animated animals move with convincing life.
Life Drawing 5: Portfolio Assembly With the basic principles covered, students now begin preparation for their life drawing portfolio. Life drawing becomes a critical component of an animation portfolio, as it is one of the first areas many employers look in the portfolio. Strong examples of proportion, structure, and tone on human and animal figures must be demonstrated and included in the final portfolio submission.
Photoshop 1: Editing and Altering Images Adobe Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool with a lot of flexibility with both existing images and with blank canvasses. Students will first begin by learning Photoshop’s powerful editing tools to manipulate, change, and even add to existing images to create single, unified pieces. 
Photoshop 2: Custom Brushes and Digital Paint Adobe Photoshop can also be used to create powerful artwork from scratch. Building on skills taught in Photoshop 1, this course takes students through the process of using Photoshop as a tool to create artwork. From cleaning up rough pencil work, and drawing in Photoshop to create finished pieces. 
Flash 1: Basics,  Assets, Artistry and Illusion Adobe Flash is a versatile tool, with a lot of flexibility.  Students will explore the basics. The tools, their uses, shortcuts, the user interface setup, asset libraries/folders, and how to use all of them to create strong vector-based artwork for illustrations, animation and layout elements.
Flash 2: Basic Animation Building on skills acquired in Flash 1, students take their illustrative skills and apply them to the basic principles of Flash animation. Character setup, layout setup, layer setup must all be considered as well as the method of animation. Different animation will be explored by students, including all forms of tweening (shape, motion and classic), Symbol based animation, key frame based animation, and animation involving bones and kinematics.
Advanced Flash Animation: Building on the techniques learned in Flash 1 and 2, students move their focus away from design and towards animation and technique. Students will practice and hone their technique by being given various industry tests and scene packages in various states of completion, and lead through how to read, and complete scenes with given sets of directions to prepare them for both studio and freelance levels of the industry.
Animation 1: Basics Students are introduced and immersed in the tools and basic principles of classical animation. While building upon and expanding their drawing skills, students will learn the principles of squash and stretch, external forces, anticipation, timing, key frames, inbetweening, secondary action, overlapping action, the successive breaking of joints, weight and force. Students will be using 2D animation capture software to compile as well as play back their animations, and finally exporting them to video.
Animation 2: Digital Traditional Crossover Building on basic character movement, students will explore the principles of character acting. Students will learn how to bring a whole new level of believability to their animations through understanding the setting and the character’s motivations for performing. Students will then take their newly refined skills into the digital realm combining both classical and digital work to create strong animation pieces.
Animation 3: Special Effects Animating character masses are traditionally consistent while leaving some room for manipulation for squash and stretch. There are some instances however where inconsistency and slight ‘randomness’ might be required such as when animating fire. This falls under special effects animation. While the animator has some rules they can bend a bit farther, they still have rules to abide by. For instance, when animating a liquid special effect. If the intended animation is water, and the timing is too slow then it is no longer seen as water, but perhaps glue or molasses. The same applies when animating smoke. If timed to quickly it looks more akin to steam, giving the wrong impression. All elements react differently to physics and external forces, and even characters. These principles will be explored through several types of special effects including liquids, fire, smoke and changing light.
Short Film Project: With so many principles and mediums covered, explored and tested, the time comes now for the student to test their mettle using everything they know from the ground up. Students will produce an animated short film, with audio, all of their own design under the watchful eye (with constant feedback) of their instructor as it would be in a typical industry setting. Students will be responsible for all facets, including (and not limited to) storyboarding, layout design, character design, script, keyframing, inbetweening, audio tracking and other topics needed, depending on student aspirations. This short will serve as the backbone of their animation demo reel.
Pre- Production: Games and cartoons aren’t just animation and coding. From plotting out an animated sequence with storyboards to designing characters and backgrounds, we’ll be covering the heavy lifting that goes on behind the scenes. What do you need to know before you start to conceptualize?; What is a “style”?; How do you direct your audience’s attention without even using animation?; We’ll answer all that and more in Pre-Production.
Professional Development: This course will cover the basics of workplace etiquette, job hunting skills and interview preparedness as well as discussions on how contracts work. Group dynamics and team building will also be covered as the industry is built on individuals working together. 
Game Development: Building from pre-written codes in Unity, students will make fully playable complex games, playable on cutting edge user platforms to showcase their work. Students will be taken through an industry-based production line for a fully executed platform based game from concept to beta testing, all the way to completion and ultimately making their game available for the public to play.
Understanding Video Games: The objective of this course is to give students insight into the history of gaming and the gaming industry as well as an understanding of the elements of good game design. By seeing how the development of games has changed over time, students will have access to a greater breadth of knowledge when planning out their own designs as well as a better understanding of the industry overall. 
Demo Reel and Portfolio Production: From planning and rough cut through to the final version of a demo reel and portfolio. This class will cover the current industry trends and expectations for both video and static image examples of the students work. A demo reel and portfolio are the student’s most important tools for finding a job and are the strongest ways to show the student’s abilities.
eMentors: This course serves as a guide and mentor for the students during the work on their demo reel. eMentors are industry professionals working at leading game and animation companies that will hold  workshops with the students. The eMentors will offer critical opinions and professional advice to improve the quality of the students’ demo reel.