Each of us are walking, talking, living stories. From the time we wake up in the morning to tell ourselves what our day will be like to the moment we remember who we've been and who we want to be, we are telling ourselves the stories of our life. Storytelling is a fundamental human act that crosses cultures, ages, ethnicities and genders. Artists often think in pictures, so this course will explore the act of storytelling through the exploration of the visuals in concert with the creation of the words. This course will start with an exercise in multiple iteration of character ideas, story development from the visual, and an investigation of additional characters who provide the foundation for environments and a series of illustrations for a story concept. Ideation, composition, color, discussion of media, style, format, expression of narrative and materials will be reviewed through lecture, guest lecturers in the field, and discussion-both individual and group centered. The format of the course will explore research, mood boards, character development, facial expressions, turn arounds, character interactions, asset creation, thumbnails, color studies and finished illustrations. The focus of the course will be a deep dive into stories that resonate and reflect idiosyncratic and personal interests expressed in any medium that best suits the storytelling.

Elective

The purpose of this class is to train students in the process of creating a longform work of comics, including the ideation process, note-taking techniques, research, story construction, planning and execution, and markets/pitching for this kind of work. The course will cover memoir, reportage, personal storytelling, autofiction, and literary fiction, in comics form. 

In Semester 1 (Fall), we will cover the basics of conceiving and planning this longform work. In Semester 2 (Spring), students will complete the work that they began in the first semester. Exercises throughout both semesters will help students through all stages of this process and provide an orientation to publishing longform works.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $150.00

Elective

Color key artists must have the ability to take an audience on a thrilling roller coaster ride that they came for. This course is for artists interested in the intersection between story and color for cinema. The most critical skill a color key artist needs is taking a story and quickly roughing out emotional story beats. Students will explore the fundamentals of color and light and how they are used in filmmaking to tell a compelling narrative. Assignments will address visual storytelling principles to craft colorscripts, color keys, and emotional story beat paintings, all of which are needed in a 2D or 3D animation production. The class will go through the processes of using color theory and lighting techniques to create powerful and emotional statements for film. Though this course is focused on animation, these lessons can apply for any story-driven project including live-action, video games, children's books, graphic novels, etc.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $50.00

Elective

In this course students explore the fundamentals of animated movement, timing, and materials through various animation techniques, including working directly on film, drawing on paper, pixilation, cut-out animation, and modified-base processes. Over the course of the semester, students will create six short animations and a wide range of animated films will be studied to augment the student's understanding of the field.

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register. Preference is given to FAV and Illustration Students.

Elective

A one month basic introduction to Maya for 3D image-making. The class will introduce polygonal modeling, UV-mapping and normal-map generation, texturing, lighting, and advanced shader options, the Mental Ray renderer, and some particle, fluid and atmospheric simulators. Animation will not be taught beyond basics required for particle and other effects.

Students must register for workshops during the registration period and add/drop regardless of start date of class.

Elective

This one-month workshop will explore the creative potential of ZBrush, the 3-D sculpting application from Pixologic. With so many uses, it's difficult to cover ZBrush completely, but by the end of the class you will have a solid understanding of the program, all its component tools and how to customize them and use them in your workflow, whether it's sculpting for game detail, animation, visualization, or rapid-prototyping. This workshop is a one-credit course that emphasizes skills and techniques. This class is part of a group of offerings by the departments of Illustration, Industrial Design and Graphic Design that are offered on Friday afternoons and are open to all students to facilitate cross-departmental enrollment.

Students must register for workshops during the registration period and add/drop regardless of start date of class.

Elective

This course is a short introduction to the use of game engines for the production of realistic interactive environments-- whether for architecture, industrial design, VR, or animation. The class is intended for people who are already comfortable with 3D modeling and texturing and will cover the basics of scene creation, modeling, the particular requirements of PBR texturing, animation, and simple interactivity through the use of blueprints. Topics will include basic setup; import of 3D assets, including materials, animations, polygonal models, and custom hit-detection meshes; setup of input methods, lighting, sky-boxes, and atmospherics; and output to various devices. Professional workflow considerations and naming conventions will be covered, as well as an overview of useful third-party software for modeling and texturing.

Students must register for workshops during the registration period and add/drop regardless of start date of class.

Elective

The first core studio in the program is centered on an investigation of the mechanics of articulating meaning in an image. Through a variety of projects, students will investigate the efficacy of various strategies in traditional and new media, and engage in perceptual experiments in order to study the intersection of art and visual psychology.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00 - $150.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

This seminar addresses key critical theory and socio-political aspects of illustration practices from a historical perspective. Reading, discussion, and meaningful integration of ideas into studio writing and activity are goals of the course. Class will meet two times per week including supported research times in various special collections and the library. Faculty determine the content of the seminar each term, balancing attention to issues defined by the expertise and interests of the graduate cohort and subjects of relevance to the field and professional practice. Theorists of special concern to contemporary illustration practice will be highlighted; statistics and technical information about communication media will illuminate how art objects have circulated in their own eras. Critical reading, writing, and presentation will be assessed.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $75.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

This studio elective - open to all RISD graduate students regardless of departmental affiliation-will address rotating topics and modes of making, thinking and discourse every semester. The structure and content of this course is designed to shift, enabling different topical investigations and a variety of expert faculty teaching special content in fall and spring of each year. This enables the flexibility for studio consideration of an ever-changing range of both topics and studio engagement. This course may be repeated for elective credit with permission of a student's graduate program director (GPD).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $150.00

Elective

This course is predicated on deep student focus on social engagement and the societal benefits attached to their studio work. Students will investigate and critique methodologies of contemporary, socially engaged artists to develop their own progressive work in order to question and shift traditionally narrow and restrictive paradigms in Illustration that preference and reward the hegemonic at the expense of the progressive, dissident, and critical work needed to advocate for the historically underrepresented. Collaborative projects with local artists, individuals and community organizations will be encouraged and supported to directly connect students with local communities. Students will be required to present self-driven work periodically in response to selected topics, readings, and community discussion.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $150.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

This course emphasizes the mining and contextualization of one's own work as a nexus for growth through the active, ongoing and evolving consideration of your own studio practice as a topic of study in itself. This work will spring from and shed light on your creative intuition, processes and outcomes in a way that will helps you to communicate your work to others through language. In turn, it is hoped this voicing of essential components of your work will help streamline your practice and expedite your artistic production.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $25.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

The course focuses on understanding the origin of museums and recognizing the influence that certain dominant design aesthetics, approaches, and narratives had on exhibitions. The museum architectural space and its interior exhibition design are never 'neutral' and the study of its history, codification, and exploitation are essential to rebalance and subvert the structural inequalities between Trouillot's agents (museums/institution), actors (curators/exhibit designers), and subject of museum narratives (artifacts/art/belongings). Through lectures, readings, and class debate, students will be encouraged to question how aesthetics impregnate exhibition environments through materials, light, colors, forms, and meanings; to acknowledge that architecture and exhibition design aesthetics are always politicized and that in the tiniest details of their morphology and their organization, museums have the power to validate, the power to corroborate, the power to include, and the deliberate power to silence. 

Major Elective: MDes ENE

Topics in Exhibition and Narrative Environments I is the first part in a year-long exploration of a fluid field in which exhibition occurs in museums as well as other environments. This seminar offers various approaches for that exploration and will provide the student insight into different aspects of exhibition: curatorial matters, experience design, narrative creation, graphic design, new media, user participation, installation, site specificity, production, etc. The content may change from year to year to include special projects. The content may change from year to year and may include theory, hands-on installation, curatorial matters, research, design planning, materials, new technology, time based interactions, and, of course, design of the narrative environment.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Exhibition and Narrative Environments

This studio is both a research-based and design-focused course that explores the emergent futures of hybrid art spaces and cultural consumption practices, with a particular emphasis on their application within contemporary art museums.

As part of a collaborative research initiative between RISD and Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, the course brings together students, faculty, and museum professionals to investigate how changing cultural behaviors and global trends are reshaping the way we understand and engage with art spaces, both from a physical and digital perspective.

The course is open to students from all departments within the Division of Architecture and Design and approached through a multidisciplinary lens, recognizing that the experience of an art space is shaped by multiple intersecting layers—from architecture and exhibition design (space), to user experience (experience), to graphic design (information).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $100.00

Elective

This course, the first in a sequence, explores design principles through design problems involving the unique fundamental framework for the reuse of existing structures. The semester is arranged around several projects, providing access to the discipline from as many related perspectives. The project assignments require the student to visually and verbally convey clear design intent, think visually in two and three dimensions, formulate and develop abstract design concepts, discern relationships between design interventions and their physical and contextual setting and develop presentation skills to effectively communicate propositions and positions.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This lecture course is designed to familiarize students with structural principles and systems as they relate to the study of interior architecture and adaptive reuse. The course will examine the performance and composition of various structural systems, including wood, lightweight metal, steel, masonry, and concrete structures. Local examples in the built environment will be explored to gain an understanding of structures, their materials and components in adaptive reuse. Course work will be complimented by visits to local examples in the built environment.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Adaptive Reuse

This class introduces the student to different building materials, their properties and characteristics as they relate to the design of interior, sustainable structures. This will include interior finish materials as well as the understanding of wood, metal, masonry and concrete for projects of reuse. The student will visit sites of material production as part of this course. The course structure includes sketch assignments, a midterm, a final exam.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

While introducing students to the principal concepts of structural design and mechanical systems, the course will attempt to provide a direct link to the built environment with focus on the rehabilitation, preservation and adaptive reuse of existing structures, both historical and contemporary. The presentation of case studies, focus on the structural and mechanical aspects of students' individual studio projects and the excursion to a construction site will bridge the gap between class room and the world of building.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This class will introduce the fundamentals of orthographic drawing through the investigation of an existing object. Working with the object, the student will study and implement the use of plan, section, axonometric and perspective to expose the spatial qualities of the structure. Basic drawing conventions and model making techniques will be introduced. The concept of architectural scale will be explored.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies