Great work starts with great Design.
We’ve all been there. You open up After Effects to create something mind-blowing and… nothing happens.
Ideas are nowhere to be found, you start picking colors and making shapes, hoping something jumps out at you
and looks cool enough to constitute a “direction.” It’s obvious that this strategy isn’t very effective.
The solution is to approach your projects from the DESIGN end first… to think through the idea fully, to
flesh out an Art Direction, and to then compose beautiful design boards that can act as the blueprint
for your work. This process removes the uncertainty of jumping right into production, but it’s also very hard.
Learn to solve problems visually.
Design Bootcamp is an accelerated program that gets you up to speed with the principles and practices of modern Designers working in the field of Motion Design. After an 8-week ass kicking, you’ll learn:
- • How to approach client briefs from concept to final Design Boards.
- • The art of composing beautiful images, and using color properly.
- • How to create sets of boards that work together as a unit, not just as individual frames.
- • How to pitch Ideas and Art Directions to a client.
- • A million and one Photoshop and Illustrator tricks.
- • Most importantly, how to think like a Designer.
Your Instructor: Mike Frederick
Your fearless leader on this journey is Mike Frederick, Emmy-Award winning Designer & Art Director who has been working in the field of Motion Design for over 20 years. His roster of advertising and broadcast clients is massive. Below are just a few.
Join a vibrant Design Community
Going through a School of Motion Bootcamp is a one-of-a-kind experience. You’ll be hanging out (virtually, of course) with dozen of other aspiring Designers in a private Facebook Group. You’ll be inspired, encouraged, and even critiqued by your fellow students and TA’s.
You’ll have support and a large group of new friends to commiserate with, but you’ll also benefit from looking at tons of work. As a Designer, you’re paid to have good taste, and being exposed to hundreds of ideas and boards from your colleagues will get your Design-Eye sharpened in record time.
Laser-Focused Critiques
You’ll be assigned a Teaching Assistant who will provide critique on every single project you turn in during Bootcamp. These critiques are on-point, personalized, and ACTIONABLE. Our amazing staff of TA’s will kick your butt, encourage you, and help you see the areas of your designs that need a little love.
You receive extremely thorough feedback, with drawings directly on top of the images and comments about exactly what you need to work on.
Good critique can accelerate your growth IMMENSELY.
Access to hundreds of Project Files
With every student completing the same assignments, you’ll see a TON of different takes on the same exercise. If you see something you like (or don’t know how to pull off) you can download any student’s project file to crack it open and dissect what you’re seeing.
This is an opportunity that you won’t get in any other setting, take full advantage of it!
Shutterstock hooks you up!
We want you to have the experience of exploring, choosing, and utilizing professional stock images in your boards, so our buddies at Shutterstock have stepped up to give every Design Bootcamp student an amazing gift:
Every student receives image credits to use on your Bootcamp exercises. You are allowed to show off your work post-bootcamp (with proper credits) , so your portfolio can showcase work that features the same high-quality images that the pros use.
Weekly Woodshed Critiques
Each Wednesday, a one-hour episode of “The Woodshed” airs. You’ll get to see featured work critiqued by your TA’s, as well as deep-dives into the topics you’ve been learning about. Mike opens up Photoshop and Illustrator files and shows you how to fix common issues, tweak frames to get a better result, and other workflow tips.
Go even deeper into Design every Wednesday at 2pm EST!
Real-World Design lessons and content.
You receive some heavy doses of Design knowledge in this course.
Our biggest Bootcamp yet contains:
- • Over 30 hours of video instruction
- • Custom client briefs and assets created just for Design Bootcamp
- • Exercises & Project Files for every lesson and assignment in the course
- • Interviews with Designers like Erica Gorochow, Kevin Dart, Gretel, and more…
- • Private class Podcasts dealing with many Design-related topics
- • In-depth PDFs to support your learning and design-growth.
- • Personalized critiques on your work from our amazing TA‘s available for 12 weeks!
- • A private Facebook Group for Bootcamp students ONLY
- • Weekly episodes of The Woodshed
- • 100’s of your fellow students’ Project Files to dig through
What will you learn?
This course is designed to be PRACTICAL. Each lesson covers basic design principles in the context of real-world jobs. You’ll learn the fundamentals of design and you’ll also see how those fundamentals get used in real projects.
You’ll sit over Michael’s shoulder as he creates stunning Designs from scratch while giving you insights into his thought process as he works. You’ll not only learn what Hierarchy means, but you’ll see it used right before your eyes in the creation of amazing and well-though out imagery from a master.
Orientation Week
Learn your way around Design Bootcamp, meet your fellow students, then jump right in and work on an evaluation exercise to see what skills you’ve brought into Bootcamp.
Week 1
Get a crash course in Typography, start working with Hierarchy, and then get pushed into the deep end with your first set of boards using some simple composition and color rules.
Week 2
Learn to handle your Value Structure, use those Hierarchy skills to construct techie looking elements, and explore the world of Style Frames and Design Boards for a very spacy client.
Catchup Week
By now you’re feeling the burn. Take a week to catch up on your work, and take a dip into the world of Art History. What, did you think this would all be fun and games?
Week 3
This week you’ll dig into Ideation, Branding, Art Direction, and then glue that stuff together to create Mood Boards and Design Boards for two very different Brands.
Week 4
Texture, Mood, and Grunge get dissected for a creepy movie trailer. Then, you dive into Visual Language and Metaphor as you tackle an illustrative explainer piece.
Catchup Week
Your final catchup week gives you a chance to finish any outstanding lessons or assignments, plus get some career advice to help you start using your new skills after Bootcamp.
Week 5
You’ll enter the third dimension this week when you learn how to incorporate 3D into your Design work. You’ll also start on a doozy of a project, one that pairs you with a world-class illustrator.
Week 6
Use every skill you’ve learned so far to complete a massive set of boards. You’ll need to dig deep to get through this concept-driven explainer spot for a major brand.
And once you’ve reached the end?
At the end of Bootcamp you are inducted into the Alumni Facebook Group where you can post your final projects, meet students from previous sessions, and continue to keep in touch with your new compadres. The networking that takes place in this group is priceless, and many students have gotten work from the connections they’ve made in this group.
Design Bootcamp Alumni Testimonials
Mike’s lessons had an immediate effect. Even after the first couple of weeks, my designs were hugely improved. The simple act of watching Mike work in real-time, explaining the fundamentals as he went along really changed the way I looked at Motion Design. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Six weeks of Design Bootcamp accomplished more than the last six years of trial and error on my own.
As a student who went through a design program, Design Bootcamp reinvigorates your mind and inspires you to just create better work. It takes the main parts of the first 2 years of any design college program, and simulates real-world assignments, so you actually have something to show in your portfolio at the end, not just a bunch of figure-ground studies.
This course really pushed me to think harder and better, to organise my thoughts and ideas, and not just in terms of composition and colours but also in trying to infuse another layer of understanding in to my work. Not just pretty frames right? After a few weeks I felt it started to get easier to organize my thoughts and ideas, put them on paper, sketch things to see if it could work, then jump into Photoshop.
When I first started, I was more concerned with making “good looking” boards. By the end, I really paid attention to composition and whether or not I was getting the “story” across to the viewer. There is so much great info and it has really made me a better designer.
The post Design Bootcamp appeared first on School Of Motion.