April 2015

Oatley Academy and Schoolism

Dane Aleksander—graphic artist in Halifax, Canada.

Oatley Academy

I am excited to be enrolled in the pilot year of the Oatley Academy with its passionate community of visual storytellers. It has already been inspiring to listen to Chris Oatley communicate struggles and successes on his own creative journey, and up to the recent launch of Oatley Academy, online and on his podcasts – the Artcast and the Paper Wings show. The new program, OA Live, looks to supplement independent artists with interaction, feedback, and mentoring. It came as a welcome opportunity to support Chris' journey, and I'm excited to connect and collaborate with, and seek critique from, and accountability in a global community of visual storytellers. I'm looking to make my idea happen, and to encourage others to tell great stories. ^[1,2]

I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Oatley at CTN-X, back in 2013, along with a handful of engaging, enthusiastic pioneers of the OA community, and now, I am open to more connections through OA Live.

“Nothing works without a crowd,” Chris will remind me. “Whether you go mainstream, indie or both, attention is essential.” So a step in the direction of my selfless self-promotion is to extend an invitation to the OA community to join the journey at Animat Habitat—to change the way we look at wildlife.

Schoolism

I am also happy to have recently supported the efforts of Bobby Chiu, founder of Schoolism, to make access to the top artists affordable for all. It is “education evolved”—it is weekly lectures and assignments for both aspiring and professional artists to learn to paint and communicate their thoughts effectively. ^[3]

In addition to the self-taught courses, Schoolism has an advanced stream with critique sessions and, once you hand in your assignment, the instructor records a personalized video response with a draw over discussing the work. Both streams are able to view the response videos of current classmates as well as some past students. The critique videos give some of the best insight in these courses.

Great education begins with great mentors.

Here are a few of the Schoolism instructors I most anticipate learning from.

Having been introduced to the work of Nathan Fowkes again at CTN-X, I am especially looking forward to seeing him break down his personal process – Designing with Color and Light – developing an idea by taking it through the stages of thumbnail comp, tonal rough, color rough and final color. And a second course with Nathan – Pictorial Composition – studying composition in art history, learning from the masters of mood, environment and story through pictorial composition. ^[4,5]

Similarly, I am looking forward to two visual development courses by games industry veteran Sam Nielson: Fundamentals of Lighting and Lighting for Story and Concept Art. These cover techniques based on the physical properties of light and matter; the interaction of light with different materials, building up to learning how to use lighting, surface, and atmosphere to make your characters and environments more striking and evocative. ^[6,7]

Schoolism recently brought on Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo, creators of The Dam Keeper. This animated short was screened at the SIGGRAPH 2014 Computer Animation Festivel. I saw it at that time and absolutely loved the story and style. I wrote about the animation style in an article titled Parallelization. In their Schoolism course Painting with Light and Color, Dice and Robert draw from their experience of creating artwork for studios like Pixar and Blue Sky Studios to discuss the fundamentals of observing color and light, color-scripting and telling a story. ^[8]

While both Schoolism and Oatley Academy are not accredited at this time, the instructors are also not restricted by an accreditation board, and have full control over what they feel is relevant to the industry. It is an opportunity to learn from the best. I commend Bobby for his initiative in creating a space for artists to develop their design language under the influence of veteran visual storytellers. Likewise, I appreciate Oats for bringing together a truly inspiring community of creators and mentors.

See you in class!