Figure Drawing Workshop (2 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

This is an intensive 2 week course. The Workshop runs for two weeks. 5 days a week. You will recieve lectures for each of the 10 days. For each day there is approximately 2+ hours of instruction. Students should watch the lectures and then do the homework that very same day. This will ensure that they are ready to build upon this learning experiance on the following day.

As a result, these workshops are considered to be very focused. You can expect to learn a lot in a very short time. This should please those of you who are in a hurry to get better.

The course is an intensive introduction to drawing the figure with volume. We will study solutions for the full figure, from head to toe and including a bit of gesture logic. We start with the basics and build from there. One of the key goals is to teach the student how to invent the figure from their head, reducing the need to have the model in front of them. This course is also a solid step towards the skills required for animators in the Animation Industry. Beyond being a course on the figure, it is also a drawing course.In this way, even if you are not ultimately interested in drawing the figure for a living, you will still stand to learn much about how to draw better.

The course will address:
Basic Approaches, Mass Conceptions, Rigid vs. Soft Forms, Anatomy vs. Construction, Gestural Logic, Line Logic, Construction Logic, Figure Invention and more.

Students will do lots of figure drawing in this course, so grab your pencils or your Wacom tablet.

Note: you will be expected to provide your own figurative photography to work from. The instructor will give you suggestions for how to go about it. Don't panic, good reference is easy to find. There are good websites and books that are available.

This 2 week online course is available for $199.00

Digital Sculpting (14 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

An intensive 14 week introduction to organic modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering and animating for film and video games. We will touch on a number of different packages, but mainly Zbrush, Maya, Photoshop and hopefully Mudbox.

The course will address:
Multi-Resolution Mesh Editing, Zpheres, Morph Targets, Character Posing, BoxModelling, Displacement Maps, 2.5d painting, ImportExport, Blendshape, rigging techniques, Alpha Modelling, Set Driven Key, and more.

These days, if you want to be a competant 3d modeller / designer, you need to become comfortable moving between different packages. We will touch on pipeline issues as this is an important part of the modellers workflow.

Zbrush is much praised as a character and creature modelling package, but it also can be used to render images. It has 2d, 3d and even 2.5d tools. We will discuss the differences in the course.

Maya is an industry standard animation package. It will allow us to connect multiple facial expressions to each other so that our meshes can come alive with motion.

Photoshop will allow us to make and modify texture maps. Texture mapping is a definite skill and there are professionals in the industry that specialize on this aspect of digital production..

Note: This course is broad rather than deep. We will not dig too deeply into any one topic. This will allow us to look at the larger picture. To get a sense of many of the facets of digital character production.

This course is appropriate for character designers, character modellers, texture artists, illustrators, fine artists and prop designers, modellers and animators.

Important: You will need to provide your own access to the programs under discussion. We do not provide the software, only the instruction. If you are a student, you may have access to the 'topic software' through your school labs. Professionals often have these programs on their work computers. As well, you often can get 'learning' versions of many of these packages through each software companies main website. Lastly, we will attempt to touch on some 'open source' alternatives, as time allows.

This 14 week online course is available for $99.00

Volumetric Figure Drawing (14 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

An intensive introduction to drawing the figure with volume. We will study solutions for the full figure, from head to toe and including a bit of gesture logic. We start with the basics and build from there. One of the key goals is to teach the student how to invent the figure from their head, reducing the need to have the model in front of them. This course is also a solid step towards the skills required for animators in the Animation Industry.

The course will address:
Basic Approaches, Mass Conceptions, Rigid vs. Soft Forms, Anatomy vs. Construction, Gestural Logic, Line Logic, Construction Logic, Figure Invention and more.

Students will do lots of figure drawing in this course, so grab your pencils or your Wacom tablet.

This 14 week online course is available for $99.00

Style and Composition (14 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

This is a Visual Development course. An intensive introduction to Composition and Design Methodology. This course is appropriate for Entertainment Designers, Film Directors, Graphic, Transportation, and Product Designers, Architects, Illustrators, Fine Artists and more.

We will be exploring and developing Style Guides, learning how to analyze the visual world, discovering the connections between visuals and meanings(emotions), designing lots of cool stuff, learning how to structure themes, and more (gotta have the 'and more'). As well, The skills learned in this course are extremely valueable for those who are, or eventually want to be, quality art directors | production designers.

The course will address:
Visual Structure, Form Language, Theming, Continuity, Your Personal Style, Visual Meaning, Composition, Emotion based designing,
and more:)

This 14 week online course is available for $99.00

Intro to Head and Hands (7 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

An intensive introduction to drawing the Head and Hands. Tonal approaches may also be discussed. This is a stand-alone mini-course with a focus on Volumetric Drawing. As such, it dovetails nicely with our Volumetric Figure Drawing Class.

All of the major features will be addressed and discussed from a construction standpoint. Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Ears, Fingers and Thumbs, and the bigger stuff, like the Head, Face, Neck, Shoulders, Hands and Wrists.

The intent of this course is to give you a better understanding of how to invent the Head and Hands from 'your head', reducing the need to have a model or reference material in front of you. The volumetric approach will also help you know how to invent the lighting that will fall upon your heads and hands.

This 7 week online course is available for $59.00

Development of Form (7 weeks)
Featured Instructor: Dallas Good

An intensive introduction to Form Language. Students will learn what a form language is, how to start using it, how to develop their own and more.

Students will look at lots of cool visuals, start learning how to analyze, build a visual toolbox, stucture themes and design cool stuff.

The Goal of the course is to give the student enough of an introduction to 'form language', that they will be able to develop their own, on their own, should they so wish. That said, a language is a large idea, and as such, it takes a few years to become good at it. So best get started.

Important thought: All strong designers, down through history and up to the present have had a strong form language. Many of them used it on an intuitive level. But this course focuses on bringing the knowledge up to the conscious level, which allows ones consistency of quality to be greater.

Note: This course was originally designed for industrial designers, but you will find that it is just as relevant for illustrators, entertainment designers and fine artist.

Also Note: Currently, a lot of the resources that you may find in the members-only sections are geared towards this course and it's focus.

DevForm dovetails nicely with the 'Style and Composition' course.

This 7 week online course is available for $59.00