Hey All...are any of you doing online art classes with your school?

[Jason Manley]

Hi,

CA is preparing to do online art classes with a group of the top professionals from the fields of Fine Art, Illustration, Entertainment, and the like. We have a full program laid out but I am hoping to see if anyone here has been taking classes...what school...how you have felt that experience to be..what was right and what was not right...that kind of thing.

Lemme know if you get a sec! I would appreciate it entirely.


Jason Manley

[Matte_Art]

I've taken a few online classes at my local community college, and I can say without a doubt, the biggest problem of all had to be lack of communication. I believe that to get the best out of any education, you need to keep in touch with your teacher, fellow students, etc. That made me feel as though the classes to not even be worth it at all. Namely because we would sometimes go for a week without any contact at all...

The next issue of course was criticism. Both for the program itself, and the teacher->student crits. It gets hard understandbly to crit 30 students on a regular basis, but I believe it's very important for the teacher and students to interact in this way on a regular basis.

Just quick thoughts, will think more and post more later.

[saintsinner]

hello
i haven't take any online classes yet
but if it from CA guys then
definiately i would like to learn oil painting & entertainment designs.

plz let me know whenever u'll plan it
thnks in advance

[Steven1991]

I like the online class style from schoolism.
You first see a video by the instructor and afterwards you're given an assignment to complete. After you finished the assignment you send it to your instructor and then he gives criticism on it. And you can also watch the crit vids from other students aswell.

One suggestion though, i see a lot of online classes that teach: introduction to digital painting or intro to creature/character design. But i hardly ever see a online class that teaches the fundamentals, explaining perspective in depth, anatomy and how you should learn it or drawing the head from imagination. Stuff like that. I know there are books and instructional dvd's on that topic but you can say the same over character design yet character design has online classes that teach it. But no one seems to care about a good solid foundation. Perhaps you could give a class on that topic ?

other quick thoughts: - a seperate thread/blog where students can see each other work is always cool

- a thread where you can ask questions to the instructor is also handy ( questions over the subject but maybe also over motivation and the industry)

I wish you all the best with the classes and chances are high i might follow a few classes that you give.

[fattkid]

Hey Jason,

I've taken a few online classes over the last year, and I'm pretty pleased with my experiences. Here's my take on them....

Last Summer I took a CG Society class, "Digital Character Creation Using ZBrush" with Cesar Dacol Jr. The cost was $500.00. I found that price to be a great value for what I got out of the class.

The class was well done. Cesar was an excellent instructor. He covered not only the software, but the fundamentals of anatomy, design, working in the industry, and general artistic/personal success strategies as well. He also provided many links to artists, resources and additional info along the way which was very helpful. I've found over the years, that just because someone is a good artist, doesn't mean they make good teachers, so I was quite happy with Cesar.

Also, there was a suggested reading list given to the students prior to the commencement of class, which was a good idea. I thought it was a good way to get the students "wheels in motion" so to speak, so they could hit the ground running and more or less on the same page when the class started.

Another great feature was the classroom forums. In it, each student had their own threads where they posted their weekly progress and updates (as well as some general discussion/introduction forums). It is always educational and inspirational to see other students works as they progress and learn along with you. As well, the students could offer critiques, feedback and share resources with each other which added to the learning experience. I felt the interactive forums were a great learning environment that helped make the class even better.

Another interesting side note was that of the 35 students registered to the class, less than 20 students really actively participated and posted their work for the duration of the class. So perhaps, theoretically, that if you offered more spaces in the class, you could keep the costs lower for the students, and sort of expect a portion of the class to not really get too involved, and still maintain quality instruction for the core group. This isn't really a suggestion, as I don't have a lot of experience with online classes or whatever, just an observation and food for thought as you guys get things figured out.

I'm currently taking "The Art Of Caricature" with Jason Seiler through Schoolism.com. The lowdown....

I'm pretty happy with this class as well. The biggest difference is the price. This class costs about $900, and I would guess the higher cost is partly due to the classes being limited to 15 students ( I think, something like that). I still consider the price fair, as Jason is very talented and the info is great, but it makes the CG Society class seem like a "better deal" so to speak.

In this class, we don't have the forums to interact with our fellow students, which I found to be very valuable in my previous class. Really, the forums can be a great way to meet folks and network as well, which indirectly increases the value of the class, so I think I would recommend that.

Instead, Jason does a prerecorded video critique, in which he paints over, answers questions submitted with the assignment, and gives feedback on your weeks work. I find seeing my work reworked and improved on in real time, with commentary, to be really helpful. He then posts everyone's critiques online for everyone to watch. What is great about posting the critiques for everyone to watch is that previous classes critiques are available to watch as well. So when each assignment is posted, you can watch the students critiques from previous attempts at the same assignment and get a good idea of what to watch out for, how to more effectively approach the assignment, and sort of learn "what not to do", along with Jason's videos describing what to do. I find this to be a great learning tool.

One thing Schoolism does, is it allows folks to sign up for an unmentored class, in which a student has access to everything, but doesn't get the interactive feedback from the instructor. This costs about half the price of the regular class. I plan on taking more classes through Schoolism, and I may do this approach next time around. Since I'm basically just getting started with illustration and digital painting, whatever mistakes I'm going to make, someone else has most likely already made them and it is covered in one of the the video critiques. Jason's personal feedback and critiques are great, but I could take 2 unmentored classes for the price of one mentored class, which I think might be more cost effective.

So that's my long winded take on my experiences. Hope that helps. CA online classes would be awesome, so I hope something like that eventually comes together.

[Beavotron]

I did the first semester of animation mentor and I loved it.

As far as receiving attention and crits from your teacher, I felt I got more from that professor than I did from any others in a real school setting because instead of having to crit every student in the class in the 80 minute or so time frame that a professor in a real class setting has (unless you were willing to go to his/her office during office hours which sometimes conflicted with your schedule...) each student handed in their work, and then the professor took the week to do a detailed video crit for each individual student.
mine would do redlines etc, take our videos, slow them down, speed them up, crop stuff into them. it was very interactive and VERY useful
we then had the chance to resubmit, and he would again crit whatever we sent.
Classes were small as they have quite a few profs
and due to the nature of their online school system, other students in your class or at your level could and more importantly DID crit your work.
Each new student was also assigned to a peer tutor who was in the higher classes who would crit your work during the week.
It had a great community.

The major con I saw was that if you missed the Q&A it wasn't taped anywhere so you couldn't see the prof/student Q&A which was basically where each student took turns asking questions about the week's task. It was usually far more useful than the lectures, so if you had to miss it, you ended up missing a LOT...but really, that's the same as real school so eh!

I also did Sessions.edu. the main problem there was that classes had no limit, they also weren't structured. when you signed up, you started the course whenever you started, the prof would crit your work when they got to it (though i found they weren't hard enough at times) and then you moved on to the next task. People in the classes were not all at the same level in the course material, so there was very little inter-student communication going on which I feel is important to any school.

so if you can get the same interactive elements of animation mentor, you're golden. It really is a great school, I only didn't continue because I realized 3D animation is not my bag. If CA manages to do what animation mentor has done for concept art and more importantly keep it AFFORDABLE the way animation mentor has, then holy poo, where do I sign up?

[jhofferle]

I have taken a handful of online classes, although they weren't art classes.

An online class really needs a student AND instructor that are self-motivated. I've found that a lot of emphasis is placed on the student putting the effort in, but in my experience the instructor can also easily become complacent and "go through the motions" when they don't have a tight schedule to adhere to. The lack of decent technical support is another thing that killed one of my online classes. It seemed like half the time the teacher was dealing with technical problems and training the students how to use the software instead of teaching the material.

I doubt these will be issues in this community, but I wanted to mention it because the experience really tainted my opinion of online instruction in general.

[Eva K]

Because of my country's economy plummeting, I had the choice of either quitting school (Academy of Art University, SF), or study online. I chose online.

I never intended to take more than 1 semester, but ended up taking 2 because the economy hasn't gotten better (the currency has gotten worse actually). After this experience, I want to learn more, but I never want to take a whole semester full-time online, except if the classes are strictly formulaic, such as Perspective etc. where you don't need live models, references or have to learn to use another medium.

My experience has been both good and bad. The best online classes (and my favorite) were the ones that did not require visual references. Those are Perspective, Creative Writing, English Composition, Digital Painting. I wouldn't recommend a soul to take classes such as Figure Drawing, Clothed Figure Drawing, Anatomy etc online.


On to the teaching itself; the teacher owned a large factor of making or breaking the class atmosphere for me. I have had teachers who seemed to log in a few times a day, actually interacted with the students, were always extremely helpful and even shared their stories and experiences with us. Then there were teachers who logged in only once a week, basically to grade our work, gave a basic review, and when asked for advice or help I never got any answer.
(I only got one teacher like this, and he/she totally ruined the class I had been looking forward for such a long time to take. After this semester, and seeing oncampus student work from this same class, I feel very below-average and actually dread taking the advanced class when I finally get oncampus again).

For traditional painting.. I am on the fence. I took Color&Design this semester and while the color theory was easy to learn and understand, I would've liked to be able to be in class (or at least a workshop) where someone could help me with the gouache paints. I feel I'm getting better with them, but I wished someone could've been there to guide me as in how to apply the paint so it'd appear smooth etc. Because of this, there was a lot of self-teaching involved, which caused frustration.

I felt the video demos were the best. If I missed something or wanted to know something again, I simply played the file again. I'm a very visual person so I learn a lot by watching. Video/audio reviews are a great aspect, because you feel more involved and the experience feels more 'real' to you.

Ok this is getting long. In the end, it's the communication that makes or breaks the online experience. If your instructor logs on only once a week to grade you, you feel ignored, just like he/she would pass by you in class and only hand you the grade and critique after you've turned in your project. It's a great frustration and the student doesn't learn to revise or get better. It is also very isolating, especially if you don't have any friends that draw or have the same interests as you do (which is my situation). I kind of feel that I've been in a cave since last fall.

Also, I'm looking forward to see what you're going to offer. My future is looking pretty bleak at this moment, and I most likely have to take a year break from school to work and save up money so I can get back to San Francisco. Taking a CA.org class in the meanwhile sounds very exciting :)

If you have any specific questions just ask ^^