The Art Department

Created by Conceptart.org and the Illustration Academy, The Art Department (TAD) is an innovative, art school designed by industry leaders to develop artists into their greatest potential and prepare them for a successful career in today’s digital world.

As the next generation model for art education, TAD’s goal is to transform education from traditional classroom learning to real world training from some of the most successful artists practicing in the industry today. TAD faculty bring dedication, passion and understanding to teaching that is focused on doing whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to help students develop into the best artists they can be and create a portfolio that is going to land them jobs. Through TAD's online community and international workshops, students also have an opportunity to network with hundreds of potential employers while in school.

TAD offers a 30-month curriculum that provides in-depth traditional and digital art education in the fields of drawing and painting, illustration and entertainment design. Options are available to learn exclusively online, in-person or a hybrid of both, offering custom learning to artists in nearly every country of the world.

TAD also hosts various specialty programs and workshops throughout the year that are available to both TAD students and the public. Current programs include the Visual Literacy Program for Professionals, the Visual Literacy Program for High Schools and the Illustration Academy summer workshop. TAD students have free access to the Visual Literacy Continuing Education Program as part of their tuition.

Using cutting edge education software, the TAD curriculum will be delivered online by TAD faculty. TAD will have structured classroom times and will record those classes for on-demand viewing. TAD’s online classroom will include audio dialogue between faculty and students, live streaming demonstrations, lecture and studio style classes, assignments, streaming video, project reviews, text chatting, linking, and many other features. Unlike traditional education, TAD’s faculty has the facility and the technology to offer digital paintovers, so that students can watch instructors solve problems with their work too.

TAD offers two, three-week long workshops for students and professional artists each year. These workshops provide an immersive environment for hands-on learning, networking with both faculty and industry professionals and art creation. TAD students are offered the opportunity to attend one workshop for free as part of their tuition and can receive direct feedback in person. Workshops will typically be held at the beginning and end of the program and in-between semesters.

Workshops are designed with flexibility in mind, so that students are able to continue classroom work during that time. Online classes will be offered on-demand, so students in any time zone can access them 24 hours a day. Workshops will be held in alternate cities each year to make them more accessible to all students, whether they are learning solely online or at POD locations.

TAD workshops are optional for students. Travel expenses and accommodations are not the responsibility of The Art Department, although TAD will attempt to identify travel services at discounted rates.

TAD offers four PODS located in the United States where students come together to work, share ideas, develop a sense of community and receive in-person feedback from professional faculty. PODs are located in:

Richmond, VA
San Francisco, CA
Berkeley, CA
Kansas City, MO
Austin, TX

PODs are open to all majors - Illustration, Painting, and Entertainment Design. No POD is specific to a select discipline, although the faculty leading the PODs may be more versed in the field in which they have experience.

Students interested in participating in a POD should designate which POD location they are interested in attending on their application. Once the application is approved, students will need to contact the POD director at the POD location of their choice to secure a spot. Acceptance into TAD does not secure a spot in a POD. POD students pay a studio fee of $300 per month.

Living accommodations in these cities will not be facilitated or paid for by The Art Department and TAD will provide contact info with local realtors for assistance in housing location.

30 MONTH PROGRAM

Foundations
12 months total

• Foundations A
6 months 30 hours

• Foundations B
6 months 30 hours

Industry Specific
18 months total

• Industry Specific A
   6 months 30 hours

• Industry Specific B
   6 months 30 hours

• Industry Specific C
   6 months 30 hours

TAD is a comprehensive 30-month program - select students potentially can be admitted to advanced placement upon approval by faculty members.

Click for Full Curriculum

FoundationsCurriculum

The Art Department's Foundations program contains the core information required for artists to become visually literate. The Foundations courses are designed to prepare creative people for the path of their choosing in art. Topics such as composition, color theory, idea development, rendering, and figure drawing and painting are covered in-depth as the student prepares for their major of choice. The Art Department understands that with a proper foundation in art, a student can go on to success in any number of careers and educational opportunities. In this program, the student builds their skills while utilizing a full spectrum of traditional and digital media while learning the important basics necessary to create from life and imagination.

photography copyright & thanks to Phil Holland phfx.com

IllustrationCurriculum

The Art Department's Illustration program is focused on development of a students abilities to create pictures which communicate ideas and have rich visual impact on the viewers. The field of illustration is time honored. The Art Department Illustration major is led by leading illustrators from the past 40 years. It features instructors from the award winning Illustration Academy who are here to to teach students the art of visual communication and the business skills required to be an independent artist capable of success in a variety of fields including print, editorial, advertising, institutional and commercial arts. Illustration students are encouraged to develop their own personal point of view and skills with a full experience in traditional and digital media.

photography copyright & thanks to Phil Holland phfx.com

Drawing and PaintingCurriculum

The Art Department's Fine Art program is rooted in art history and traditional representational drawing and painting. Students in this major focus on learning to understand what they see in nature, both within and from the world around them. Traditional media such as graphite, charcoal, crayon, oils, watercolors and digital media like photoshop and painter are utilized as the tools in which artists begin to master the craft of image making. The Art Department's Fine Art faculty show in leading galleries around the world and are able to assist students as they prepare for a successful career in gallery Fine Art.

photography copyright & thanks to Phil Holland phfx.com

Intellectual Property DevelopmentCurriculum

Departments: Entertainment Design | Entertainment 3D

The Art Department's Entertainment Development program is rooted in illustration, drawing, painting, industrial design, 3D, and technology. Students choosing this major study nature, film, games, toys, comics and internet media in order to understand global pop-culture and create for new and licensed intellectual properties. Through understanding the world around them, and that of entertainment, students begin to understand the range of style and genre which are the heart of entertainment media worldwide. Students learn to create and develop characters, creatures, monsters, environments, and gain state of the art production knowledge. The Art Department's Entertainment Development program is one which prepares it's students to work in production, but more importantly, it gives them the ability to create for new worlds and imagined universes which never existed before.

Entertainment Design

Entertainment Design consists of the invention and creation of new and licensed worlds from the ground up. At TAD we are teaching students to not just get high paying jobs at companies both small and large, but also to have the option to follow the path of the greatest world builders like James Gurney, Mike Mignola and Frank Miller. Independent development practices are stressed at the same time that students learn the latest professional skills required to see success in the corporate entertainment career path. ED students focus on traditional an digital media including wet and dry tools like Photoshop, Corel Painter, Zbrush, and Sketch Up. Idea development and intellectual property creation are key components which enable TAD students to see success in a host of opportunities they create or are available to them at major studios around the world upon graduation. At TAD, our students build universes which enable success in the global markets and can see that work go into production in the 3D program.

Entertainment 3D

3D for Entertainment consists of students learning the language of 3d modeling and texturing as well as the key software applications required to build successful careers in this field. Students have the opportunity to work with high quality concept art created by the Entertainment Design students as well as learn to work from reality based reference material. Maya, 3ds Max, Mudbox, Zbrush, Modo, Photoshop, and other cutting edge applications are covered at length and become the tools of the trade for these students. 3D students are required to take TAD's highly refined traditional foundations program as TAD believes it is far easier to train an artist to use 3D tools than to see a student who knows the tools and teach them to be an artist. At TAD, 3D artists are creators and reach beyond being production technicians who know the latest software. 3D students will focus on modeling, uv mapping, texturing shaders, rigging, posing and setup as well as lighting, compositing, and image making for the entertainment market. TAD 3d instructors come from some of the most important entertainment companies in the industry today.

photography copyright & thanks to Phil Holland phfx.com

Richmond POD:	Sterling Hundley
Austin POD:	Jason Manley
Kansas City POD:	John English Brent Watkinson
San Francisco POD:	Carl Dobsky
Berkeley POD:	Andrew Jones

Tuition DISCOUNTS available for a limited time - register today.

33.33% ($15k) off full-time tuition if paid in full up-front. Contact: info@theartdepartment.org for details.

First tuition payment for all full-time students is due by July 12, 2010, with monthly payments (where applicable) due on the first of each month thereafter.

Sterling Hundley

Sterling Hundley’s work has appeared regularly in the pages of Communication Arts, American Illustration, Print Magazine, the Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, 3 x 3, Graphis, Step by Step Graphics, the Society of Publication Designers, and the New York Society of Illustrators. In addition to winning three gold, and two silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, New York, Sterling has been awarded gold and silver medals from the Illustrators Club in Washington, D.C. Feature articles on Sterling's work have appeared in Communication Arts Magazine, Print's "Young Visual Artist" issue, RVA magazine, Illustration Now, Step by Step Magazine, RVA magazine, and the blog: Illustration Art. For a three year period, from 2006- 2008, Sterling was the most highly awarded illustrator in the United States.

Several clients of note include: Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, Dellas Graphics, the Grammys, GQ, the New Yorker, the Progressive, Vibe, Utne Magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Red Bull, Harper Collins, Penguin/Putnam, Random House, Scholastic, Knopf, Sterling Publishing, Major League Baseball, Mullen Design, the Martin Agency, Spotco, the United States Postal Service, and Virginia Living Magazine.

Sterling illustrates in Richmond, Virginia and is currently represented by Richard Solomon Artist Representative in New York City. He is a Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is one of five core instructors at the Illustration Academy, which is held on the campus of Ringling College of Art and Design, in Sarasota, Florida.

www.sterlinghundley.com

Jason Manley

Jason is responsible for defining the company vision and successful business model of Massive Black Inc. which has now contributed to more than 150 AAA and Next-Generation video game titles and major feature film and television projects. Prior to leading Massive Black, Jason's work experience includes that of a Concept Artist, Lead Artist and Art Director. His artwork has helped clients like id software, Blizzard Entertainment, Activision, Troika Games, Interplay, Vivendi/Universal, Black Isle Studios, EA, Atari, Wizards of the Coast, Whitewolf, and more.

Jason is also President of our Non-Profit Organization, ConceptArt.org, which now has over 91,000 registered students and industry professionals sharing, creating and learning conceptual development for the entertainment industry. He created the ConceptArt.Org workshops as a way to bring Artists from around the world together for personal and artistic betterment. Jason will be helping artists understand how to reach goals, survive in the business world, and have a workable idea what it takes to strive for success in the field of entertainment while instructing at The Art Department.

www.conceptart.org

John English was influenced and inspired by his early experiences in Connecticut where he was raised in the company of New York's most talented illustrators. He studied illustration at the University of Kansas with John Collier and went on to apprentice for his father, attending the Illustrators Workshops in Paris, New York and Monterey. In 1984, he began his career, and has received numerous awards from organi- zations including New York Society of Illustrators, Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, Graphis and Print Magazine.

John's works have graced the cover of Newsweek, the pages of Esquire, Money, and Essence, and the publications of Penguin Books, Bantam Books, Atlantic Records, Boeing, Chrysler Corporation, Hitachi, 7-Up, NCAA, Sprint Corporation, and the Knoll Furniture Group. He lives in the Kansas City area with his wife Marcia, their daughter Rachel, and sons Austin and Matt.

www.johnenglishonline.com

Brent Watkinson

Brent Watkinson received his BA at Missouri Southern State College in 1982. After working as a photographer, he began interning with John and Mark English. In 1985 he began his career as a freelance illustrator. In 1992, he was invited to become a member of the NASA Arts Program, and has since completed two paintings for NASA's permanent collection. Brent's clients include: American Express, Cook's Illustrated Magazine, Geffen Records, NASA, Putnam Publishers, Science Magazine, Sony Music, U.S. Pentagon, Time/Warner, The Franklin Mint, Doubleday/Bantam Books, and Random House. His images have also appeared in the New York Society of Illustrators, Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, and Communication Arts. An article was written about his digital work in Step by Step Electronic Design Magazine.

Over the past few years, Brent has been a part-time instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute, and is a full-time faculty member of the Illustration Academy. Currently, Brent is concentrating on producing fine art paintings for galleries around the country, and is pursuing the European market as well. He lives with his wife, Jodi, in the Kansas City area.

www.brentwatkinson.com

Carl Dobsky

Carl Dobsky was born in Victoria, Texas in 1972. He came to the attention of the gallery while studying at Jacob Collin's Water Street Atelier in New York. Prior to that, he studied fine art in both the Ringling School of Art in Florida and in New York, obtaining an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art.

His palette consists primarily of earth tones, focusing on painting real objects that are a part of his everyday life. Much of his inspiration comes from his existence in urban scenes and the artistan's own milieu. There is an element of grittiness, masterfully composed, that lends to his subjects a poetic sense of beauty in their somberness. At other times, he uses dramatic colors to show the unique and sublime qualities of the city skyline at various moments of the day.

Dobsky is consistently striving to explore and widen the diversity of his subject matter. His figurative works play with notions of self-image and identity, a task that has fascinated many contemporary artists. His observation and executions are exemplary, using various vantage points to capture moods, attitudes, and personality traits -- one of the many ingenious techniques that are successfully rendered with great style in his creations.

John Pence Gallery

Andrew Jones

In the East, Andrew Jones has been heralded as "the apocalyptic art shaman." His work is a hybrid of academic training, emerging technology and the mystical experience, bringing together a mixture of archetypical mythology and contemporary magic. Beginning his career working with George Lucas at INDUSTRIAL LIGHT and MAGIC, He has served as Nintendo’s North American concept artist for 5 years where he envisioned the classic metroid franchise, he went on to start and serve as the Creative Director of MASSIVE BLACK.

In 2002, Andrew co-created the non-profit online art community CONCEPTART.org, which has attracted nearly 87,000 registered users and receives over 1,000,000 unique visitors / month. Andrew has used this internet portal to launch a series of highly acclaimed art workshops, and has traveled the world teaching art to students from Berlin, Romania, Amsterdam, Paris, Montreal, Texas, Florida, Seattle, San Francisco and beyond. With work featured on the box cover of Corel Painter X, he is a leader in the digital fine art community, and works closely with the developers of emerging digital technology to create software that gives artists new tools to create their dreams.

Andrew has now taken his art out of the studio and onto the stage performing live at festivals, from the high rises of Tokyo to the desserts of Burning man, his creative domain includes; forests, clubs and ample theaters, touring with the worlds top underground DJs and bands (such as Bassnectar, glitch mob, tipper, and bluetech).

In his pursuit to master of the digital art medium, Andrew continues to push the limits of what’s possible with the manipulation of light and energy and is on the front line of “innovation.”

www.androidjones.net