Gnomon School of Visual Effects Introduces Full-time, Three-year Program in Entertainment Design, Digital Production
March 12, 2010

Gnomon School of Visual Effects Introduces Full-time, Three-year Program in Entertainment Design, Digital Production

Hollywood, Calif. - Gnomon School of Visual Effects, provider of professional training for artists in the entertainment and design field, announced its first, full-time, three-year curriculum for aspiring artists wanting to work in production for movies, games, and television.
Beginning in summer 2010, the Entertainment Design and Digital Production Program blends one year of foundation art and design classes with two years of digital production to prepare students for a career as a digital artist in the film, video game, or broadcast industries. As with all of Gnomon's programs, the goal of the new comprehensive curriculum is to develop the digital entertainment industry's most well-rounded and production-ready artists.

Gnomon's Entertainment Design and Digital Production Program is blended to provide both a core foundation of tool sets and specialized tracks that prepare students to work in the field of their choice. Gnomon's curriculum is geared toward the development of artistic and cutting-edge technical skills to ensure that students' skills can be applicable to all industries of entertainment, including games, broadcast, or film. In addition, Gnomon provides an advanced learning experience with classes taught by leading visual effects artists that specialize in each field of study.

Entertainment Design and Digital Production Program Curriculum
Through Gnomon's Entertainment Design and Digital Production Program, students will build foundational artistic skills in the first five terms, and then go on to choose an area of concentration for the remainder of the program. The three-year program offers several specialized tracks for students to choose, including Modeling and Texturing, Character Animation, Visual Effects Animation, and 3D Generalist.

Modeling and Texturing
Modeling and texture artists have skills rooted in a strong understanding of form, texture, and detail, and this track focuses on the design and creation of digital assets for games, broadcast or film. Assets may vary from a simple building for a live action shot or a more complex creation of many elements for a 3D feature or game. This track focuses on creation, modeling, and look development through final rendering and delivery of content. Supporting these concepts are fundamental classes on anatomy, sculpture, painting and design.

Character Animation
Focusing on the creation of animated assets that demonstrate proficiency as an animator, this track provides animation-based classes that cover CG and traditional animation, stop motion animation and technical character rigging. Animators are the actors of the visual effect industries and need to demonstrate their ability to deliver believable emotion to a character.

Visual Effects Animation
The Visual Effects Animation track focuses on the various processes in which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the live action shot. Most work as a visual effects artist is to create realistic elements that are integrated into a shot that would otherwise be too costly, dangerous or impossible to capture on film. This track is ideal for the artist who wishes to work with all the elements that comprise a visual effects shot, including blending of background plates or matte paintings with 3D architectural, character or elemental assets. Classes concentrate on lighting and filming techniques, creation, tracking and compositing of elements, and the creation of both particle and dynamic effects.

3D Generalist
The 3D Generalist track is track is an outgrowth of Gnomon's longstanding program "High-End CG Certificate Program" and is ideal for exploring all aspects of 3D production along with a strong visual art foundation. This program has allowances to choose elected specialty classes when further focus is desired.