TEACHING MATERIALS
Below you will find examples of my course materials and work created by my students. The student work is broken down into sections. Please click a section header below to be taken directly to that part of the page:
Video | Animation | Performance | Photography | Graphic Design | Digital Illustration
Course Materials
SAMPLE COURSE MATERIALS
1 - GRPH201 Software for Design: In Class Exercises
2 - GRPH201 Software for Design: Sample Graded Assignment
3 - ART360 Digital Illustration: Project Assignment Sheets
4 - ART343 Video & Animation: Time-Based Artist Assignment
5 - ART240 Basic Photo Arts: Hockney Joiners Assignment
6 - ART240 Basic Photo Arts: Sample Graded Assignment
7 - ART343 Video & Animation: Animated Morphs in PS Tutorial
CLICK ON THE TEXT ABOVE TO OPEN SAMPLE MATERIALS
SAMPLE SYLLABI
GRPH201: Software for Design - Click the title to open the syllabus in a new window. This course is an introductory graphic design course focused on teaching proficiency with the Adobe programs: Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
ART360: Digital Illustration - Click the title to open the syllabus in a new window. This advanced elective course is for art and graphic design majors interested in developing stronger illustration skills and exploring digital techniques.
ART240: Basic Photographic Arts - Click the title to open the syllabus in a new window. This intro level course is for art majors and non-majors interested in learning the basics of digital photography and visual literacy.
Assignment: 1-Minute Self Portrait - Students were asked to create a non-standard self portrait video in 1 minute or less. All edits had to be made in the camera, without the use of post editing software. This student shot is video through a wet piece of plexiglass, and played audio directly into his camera.
Assignment: Cultural Critique - Students screen early and modern video art and appropriation art, and then are asked to select a topic in modern culture or that they feel passionately about. After choosing their topic, students collect appropriated footage, sound, and images and are asked to remix these sources to create a comment about their chosen subject through key principles of 4D media. They work with Abode Premiere.
Assignment: media reMIX. Students were asked to create a short video piece using only appropriated footage in the style of Dara Birnbuam's Technology/Transformation piece. This student decided to tackle how media markets towards men and toxic notions of masculinity. Editing done with Adobe Premiere.
Assignment: Text + Art - Students were asked to choose one of the readings from the course to use as a springboard for their final assignment. This student decided to make a short video work inspired by Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema.
Assignment: Experimental Narratives with Found Footage - Students were asked to use editing techniques like match edits and rhythm edits to create an experimental narrative. For this assignment, the student used music and appropriated footage coupled with self-shot video to create this piece.
Assignment: I taught a 2 week filmmaking workshop in Beijing China. Students were asked to choose a genre to create a short narrative. Working in small groups, students had a week to learn about using the cameras and genre tropes, then they had 2 days to film and 3 to edit using Final Cut Pro.
Assignment: Shot for Shot Remake - Students were asked to re-create a scene from a major motion picture shot for shot. This assignment follows a brief introduction to shot types and filmic language, and is designed to help students learn pacing, camera movement, and camera control.
Assignment: Create a short narrative film with post effects created in Adobe After Effects.
Assignment: Self-Directed Senior Exhibition Project - Short film written, shot and directed by the student.
Assignment: Media Critique Video - Students had to tackle a subject or theme in their video that is current. This student chose to work with the issue of plastic waste in the oceans.
Assignment: Documentary - This assignment requires students to create a short form documentary or interview style video piece.
Assignment: Making Headlines - For this assignment students had to choose a news headline from the year of their birth as the springboard for a cut paper stop motion animation. This student was born the year of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Using watercolor illustrations, hinged paper characters, clay, and multi-plane animation layers, this student was able to capture the narrative of the event.
Assignment: Animation + MEME - For this assignment students had to select a popular meme to use as inspiration for an animation. Students were able to choose any meme, and any approach to animation we covered in class (traditional, digital, experimental, or tradigital). This student used this meme as his starting point. Working in the animation and video window in Photoshop, the student created this frame by frame digital animation and then recorded sound and edited it together using Premiere.
Assignment: Under the Camera - This animation technique is destructive. Each new frame requires that you destroy the frame before it. After screening charcoal animations by William Kentridge, students are asked to create their own "under the camera" animation using charcoal, sand on glass, or paint on glass. For this piece, the student chose paint on glass.
Assignment: Stop Motion - For the final projects, students had to create a piece using an experimental technique of their choosing. This student used the strata-stencil technique, which involves cut paper, telescoped frames similar to a shadowbox. As each new frame is shot, the previous has to be moved backwards or forwards in space, adding a sense of depth to the work.
Assignment - Digital Animation - Using Animate or After Effects, students are asked to create a short narrative animation.
Assignment: Basic movement test with Maya
Assignment: Stop Motion Puppet Animation - Students are asked to build their own wire armature stop motion puppets and sets, then shoot their short animated pieces using studio lighting.
Assignment: Character Design & Pitch Bible - Students are asked to come up with an original pitch for an animated show. The pitch bible must include two characters with model sheets, expressions, and action sheets as well as a story synopsis and log line. Please click the link to see the full pitch bible here:
Assignment: Lip Sync. Students had to record their own audio and create a traditional or digital animation focused on lip syncing to the recorded audio. This student worked in a “tra-digital” style using hand drawn characters and Toon Boom.
Assignment: Group Pixelation - Pixelation is the art of animating human figures like stop motion puppets. For this small group exercises, students are asked to play with the way animation can control movement in much different ways than video.
Assignment: This short experimental animation was made using After Effects.
Assignment: Final - For the final assignment students we asked to combine at least two skills previously learned in the course for their final project. This student combined animation and video editing skills to create this piece using stop motion and Premiere.
Assignment: Performance + Documentation - Students had to create a performance piece that was either live, or recorded and shown along with documentation. This student created a piece called "Emotional Labor" where he stacked blocks while reciting statements about the gender roles often ascribed to young men.
Assignment: Performance + Documentation - Students are asked to create a performance work. This student decided to do an endurance work where she plucked the hairs from her legs one at a time until all were removed. She wanted to make a comment about the painful lengths many women go to in order to conform to gender norms.
Assignment: For this course, students submit proposals for a body of work that center around a theme, subject, or idea that relates to their senior exhibition. This student’s work was inspired by the early performance pieces of Matthew Barney, including his “drawing restraint” series. In an effort to illustrate the dedication, repetition, and effort required to be a successful student athlete.
Assignment: Performance/Installation - For this work, the student decided to create an installation and performance piece. As a former army service member, the student decided to project the faces of fallen soldiers onto the face of a skeleton. He recited the names of the fellow soldiers that died while he was in the service.
Assignment: Performance/Installation - For this project students built a cardboard playhouse in the studio, and created a 2-channel video installation. One side showed toys that involved violence or war, and the other showed a slow motion explosion of the atomic bomb. Green army men were inside the space, and viewers had to crawl into the space to see the videos.
Assignment: Performance + Documentation - Students had to create a performance piece that was either live, or recorded and shown along with documentation. This student created a piece where she subverted the use of fake eyelashes and instead used them to create facial hair. She then applied mascara to emphasize the “mustache”.
Assignment: Body Object - In this project students are shown the works of Man Ray and Edward Wrum, then asked to think about how they can use their bodies and found spaces to create temporary sculptures. They go out in teams and document the process.
Assignment: Senior Show - For this temporary installation, the student was exploring color and light. He built a false room in the gallery with the walls painted black white and gray. Inside, there were remotes that allowed you to change the color of the lights inside the room, thereby changing the mood or tone of the piece. However, when the remotes were used, it triggered a recording device which projected a live feed of the tiny room in another part of the gallery for viewers to see.
Assignment: Architecture - High Dynamic Range style. Students learn to shoot bracketed images using exposure bracketing. Then, they merge those images together to create the popular HDR effect.
Assignment: Studio Portraiture - For the studio portrait assignment students must work with a model, and with gel color lights in order to create an image that evokes a mood or tone with color and contrast.
Assignment: Motion Diptychs - Students are asked to learn to use the Tv (time variable) mode on their cameras to freeze a fast action, and shoot an action over a long exposure, creating a motion blur. The two images have to be related in some way. For this assignment, the student used color as a way to connect her images.
Assignment: Senior Portfolio - This student created a double exposure style self-portrait by digitally combing painted developer and a digital portrait.
Assignment: Staged Composites - For this projects students must shoot a series of photographs from a tripod, and use Photoshop to stitch the images together. This student photographed himself running track in all the various uniforms he has worn over his career running.
Assignment: Hockney Style Joiners - Based on the work of David Hockney, students must shoot a series of images of the same object and create a "joiner".
Assignment: Senior Portfolio - This student worked with macro style photography from unexpected angles to show the time, energy, and focus it takes to be a student athlete.
Assignment: Double Exposure - Students were asked to create a series of digital “double exposures” that explored portraits while revealing something interesting about the subject. Here, the student chose to create portraits of their peers and “double expose” those portraits with the subject’s favorite natural space.
Assignment: Forced Perspective. For this assignment, the students are asked to create a sort of optical illusion by using the lens to flatten 3D space. Here, the student chose to use a more serious theme for the assignment.
Assignment: Studio Lighting - For this assignment, students are introduced to using the photo studio and controlling the lighting of their images. Here the student is using unconventional studio lights by incorporating string lights in their shoot.
Assignment: Portraits - Students are asked to shoot studio portraits of their models using continuous studio lighting. Post editing work included learning to use digital dodge and burn techniques to adjust levels and contrast.
Assignment: Joiners - Inspired by David Hockney’s “joiner” images, students are asked to take a series of photographs and digitally stitch them together to create a “photoshop” joiner.
Assignment: Modern WPA Poster - After researching the designs used in the mid-1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the formation of the Works Progress Administration, students create a poster influenced by the design styles of the WPA for one or more of the following categories: Health and Safety, Cultural Programs, Travel and Tourism, Educational Programs and Community Activities. While the final posters may not necessarily mimic the tone of the WPA the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of vector shapes, limited color and the use of space in composition.
Assignment: Modern WPA Poster - After researching the designs used in the mid-1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the formation of the Works Progress Administration, students create a poster influenced by the design styles of the WPA for one or more of the following categories: Health and Safety, Cultural Programs, Travel and Tourism, Educational Programs and Community Activities. While the final posters may not necessarily mimic the tone of the WPA the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of vector shapes, limited color and the use of space in composition.
Assignment: Illustrated Idiom - For this assignment, students use Adobe Photoshop to create a visual representation of an English language idiom of their choice. Using a variety of tools in the program, students create a visual idiom that represents the phrase in a literal way, even though its accepted meaning may be figurative. Viewers should be able to see the image and guess the idiom.
Assignment: Illustrated Idiom - For this assignment, students use Adobe Photoshop to create a visual representation of an English language idiom of their choice. Using a variety of tools in the program, students create a visual idiom that represents the phrase in a literal way, even though its accepted meaning may be figurative. Viewers should be able to see the image and guess the idiom.
Assignment: Avatar Assemblage - For this project, student are asked to create an “avatar” or an alter-ego that represents some part of themselves or their personality they do not often share. The students were asked to used compositing techniques in photoshop to create their final images.
Assignment: Abstract Letter Forms - For this exercise, the students are introduced to text as letter forms and shapes in Illustrator. Using any font of their choice, the students are asked to create an image that does not resemble a word using only letters.
Assignment: BioBook - In this project students design and produce a biography booklet that highlights key facts about themselves, while also showcasing some of their developing design style. Students create this multipage document using Adobe InDesign and can incorporate elements created in Illustrator or Photoshop.
To see this student’s full project click here.
Assignment: Editorial Illustration - For this project the students are asked to pick an article, news headline, or magazine piece and create an illustration to accompany it. This student was working with Illustrator to create the graphics and layout for this piece.
Assignment: Editorial + Spot Illustration - Students must select an article to create an editorial illustration. They are asked to create a 4 page spread, 2 pages for the main illustration and 2 pages for text including one spot illustration.
Assignment: Non-Local Color Self-Portrait - Playing with the various color schemes and working in non-local color, students are asked to created a self-portrait in any medium or style. This student created the piece using Photoshop and a wacom tablet.
Assignment: 50 Items - For this project students are asked to undertake a complicated illustration consisting of a minimum of 50 identifiable different items. Students have to strategically plan their illustration for layout, readability, and develop a clear visual hierarchy in the image. The challenge is based on Will Terry’s “Draw 50 Things” project.
Assignment: Celebrity Portrait - This assignment asks students to select a famous person (living or deceased) and research a little known or interesting fact about them. Then the student must create an illustrated portrait which incorporates the fact in some way. This student illustrated the artist Hozier using a single line illustration style.
Assignment: Cover Art “The Three Little Pigs” - For this final assignment in Illustration, the students are assigned a book and asked to reimagine the cover art. Working with themes in the narrative, the students can choose any medium for their illustration. This student is working with Photoshop and a wacom tablet to create this piece.