Course Outline
This course is a combination of theory and project design
Throughout the course, students will:
Technologies that may be explored to develop images and media:
Potential topics to be covered include:
- It is intended to introduce students to the world of digital media, multi-media production, desktop publishing, web development, and graphic production and design.
Throughout the course, students will:
- Create an electronic portfolio that showcases their learning
- Be encouraged to take creative risks and use their imagination
- Explore a variety of different media technologies to produce media and to enhance, manipulate, alter, or shape the technical and visual elements of a project
- Use a variety of computer programs / applications that are dual platform (work on MAC and Windows), industry compliant, and / or are distributed through the Internet.
- Develop an understanding of how to use effectively use images and media to structure stories, to create points of view, and to achieve a specific emotional response
- Develop an appreciation of how to market their products and ideas to various target audience
- Explore the features and purposes of media artworks
- Explore technical, stylistic, symbolic , and cultural influences to target audiences
- Explore the influences of digital and non-digital media in documentation, communication, reporting, and self-expression
- Identify and apply sources of inspiration that may include: aesthetic experiences; cultural perspectives and knowledge; movements, time periods, the natural environment and places, including the land, its natural resources, and analogous settings; people, including users and experts
- Develop skills for personal interpretation or artwork - ability to respond to works with awareness of personal viewpoints; understanding how our personal views affect how we perceive and respond to works
- Understand that growth as an artist requires time, patience, and reflection
Technologies that may be explored to develop images and media:
- Web site development - Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Animate / Flash
- Drawing and painting - Illustrator and various graphic applications
- Digital Photography
- Parts and functions of a camera
- Photo composition
- Behaviours of light
- Reflection, refraction, absorption, transmission, scattering
- Images formed by lenses and mirrors
- Effects of translucent, transparent, and opaque objects
- Principles of light:
- Light travels in straight lines
- Subject receives less light as the distance is increased
- Photo editing and manipulation - PhotoShop
- Animation for web production purposes
- Desktop Publishing - InDesign
- Video production and editing - Adobe Premier and After Effects
- Sound production and design
Potential topics to be covered include:
- Design and production process: pre-production, production, post-production
- Principles of layout and design
- Elements of design: colour, form, line, shape, space, texture, tone, value, time (light, exposure, contrast)
- Principle of design: balance, contrast, emphasis, harmony, movement, pattern, repetition, rhythm, unity (also depth, proportion and scale, sequencing, synchronization)
- Principles of composition: balance, rule of thirds, point of view, leading lines, framing, emphasis, movement, pattern, rhythm, unity, simplicity, depth, focal point
- Colour theory
- Typography
- Image theory
- Resolution
- CMYK vs. RGB
- Vectors vs. bitmaps
- Image development strategies - for example, abstraction, compression, distortion, elaboration, exaggeration, gesture, figuration, fragmentation, free association, juxtaposition, magnification, metamorphosis, minification, multiplication, point of view, reversal, rotation, simplification, stylization, thumbnail sketch, storyboard
- Cropping, layering, colour manipulation (e.g., white balance, hue/saturation adjustment), rotation, multiplication, fragmentation, photomontage, digital manipulation
- Issues relating to publishing
- Copyright
- Manipulation and appropriation of imagery, sound, and video
- Careers in the industry
- Client / customer relationships
- Editing and proofing
- Targeting different audiences and media types
- Cultural appropriation - use of a cultural motif, theme, “voice”, image, knowledge, story, song, or drama, shared without permission or without appropriate context or in a way that may misrepresent the real experience of the people from whose culture it is drawn