Animation

Animation students explore image, motion, character, and narrative storytelling through traditional and 2D digital techniques with an introduction to stop motion. Students will be challenged to create work from their personal experiences and will work both independently and collaboratively. Portfolios will include concept drawings, storyboards, and completed short animations.

Architectural Design

This course introduces design principles and representation conventions of architecture. Students learn techniques in model-making and drafting with an emphasis on physical models and hand-drawn plans. Projects allow students to address proportion, scale, materials, and other important factors in the design process. The course also focuses on prototyping conventions while actively examining and experimenting with the behavior of basic architectural materials. Final projects explore students personal design aesthetic while solving and designing challenges related to building architectural structures. Final portfolios include drawings, fully realized models and exercises related to architectural prototyping.

Ceramics: Form, Surface & Space

This course explores the use of ceramics and a range of hand-building techniques towards the development of sculptural form. Today, the versatility of ceramics is even more potently being explored in contemporary sculptural possibilities. Exercises exploring the mediums potential for figurative exploration, abstract, architectural and vessel based forms, students will utilize the wide range of facilities available in MICA’s Ceramics department. A number of finish techniques including glaze and mixed media surfaces will be explored. Students will engage in new techniques and ideas that are influencing the direction of ceramic sculptural art today.

Figure Drawing

In this course, students work from live nude models to investigate the technical challenges and expressive potential of a range of drawing media and approaches. In addition to investigating the technical challenges of the human form, students work through a progression of drawings that investigate how different approaches to the figure can address mood, spirit, intensity, social/political views, and emotion. Students produce a portfolio of figure drawings that range in style from the traditional to more contemporary and conceptual approaches that embody a student's personal artistic vision.

Figure Painting in Oil

This course focuses on building proficiency for painting the human figure. Working from a live nude model, students learn proportion and anatomy as well as paints formal/expressive elements such as paint form, texture, movement, color, composition and their application to the execution of student's personal artistic vision. Students produce a portfolio that includes ambitious artwork that confronts the demands of large-scale format painting, portraiture, narrative painting, and the intensity with which paint expresses ideas.

Fiber: Wearable Art 

This course explores fiber, fabric, and color. Students will engage in practices of color extraction with natural dyes, mark making with renewable resources, rehabilitating found fibers, and minimal waste garment construction. Students in this course will use a range of well-established textile and fiber techniques, including sewing, surface manipulation, and embellishment to respond to social and environmental challenges while creating sculptural objects or lightweight, flexible wearables. Working in MICA's well-equipped Fiber Arts Center, students establish goals for final projects that combine their environmental conscience and vision for the future of fiber.

Film and Video

This class explores the fundamentals of making a movie. Students work in MICA's state-of-the-art production facilities, located in the former Centre Theatre, an old Art Deco theatre that now houses sound studios and a sound stage, screening rooms, editing labs, and many other resources for filmmaking. Our film centre is also located directly across the street from the historic Parkway Theatre, home of the Maryland Film Festival where students have access to a variety of cinematic inspirations. Students in this course learn how to use a variety of professional cameras and lighting equipment as well as audio recording techniques, video editing, and post-production. Students can work in groups or go solo as they create a final portfolio that may include a short film, narrative film, or documentary.

Game Design 

Students will explore games from a unique perspective that can only be found at an art and design college.  Students will question how games are used to entertain, educate and create meaning, as well as focus on building the fundamental technical skills needed to become a game designer.  Through this course students will learn how to visualize, plan, and begin developing their own interactive projects.  Final portfolios feature a finished digital game. Although programming is explored in this course students do not need any previous programming experience.

Graphic Design

Students learn the elements of effective design as they focus on the meaning and impact of books, magazines, websites, posters, advertisements, logos, and countless other media. Students complete assignments that emphasize the use of symbols, sequential design, the integration of imagery and typography, and conceptual thinking. Students deploy their creativity, while they gain new technological and intellectual skills to envision novel design solutions that shape the form and content of their projects. Final portfolios contain fully realized and beautifully executed designs that combine innovative solutions with their personal voice as a designer.

Illustration 

Illustration tells a visual story, provides visual interpretation, or creates a visual explanation of a narrative, concept, or process. Illustrators create images for posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video games, and films. Students in Illustration apply approaches to contemporary illustration as a means for creating or supporting a narrative/story. Students consider issues of character development, sequential imagery, storytelling genres, and the relationship between text and image. Final portfolios include a range of work incorporating several different drawing and painting media.

Interdisciplinary Art

This course focuses on combining various media and the intersection of visual art, creative writing, movement, and music/sound. Students explore a variety of art-making formats and concepts that can incorporate, drawing, painting, book arts, photo, video, sculpture, collage, performance and more. Emphasis is on personal expression through visual art and narrative approaches. Students have access to a variety of art-making and fabrication tools. Final portfolios emphasize projects that engage a variety of media approaches, innovation, and finished work with strong conceptual components.

Photography: Black and White Darkroom 

Students in Black-and-White Photography explore the camera as a filter that observes and interprets reality. Participants exploit photography's unique expressive potential to stop and isolate time and space; capturing and warping reality simultaneously. Students learn principles of exposure, film development, and darkroom techniques, combined with observational skills, knowledge of light and shadow, point of view, and composition to explore photography's capacity to create poetic narratives, express editorial perspectives, or explore abstract form. Student portfolios include singular images, montages, and image series.

Printmaking: Illustrative Print 

Printmaking and Illustration are intrinsically linked media with a long and rich history. At the heart of this relationship is visual storytelling and the ability to communicate themes or ideas through images. Using poems, stories and news articles as prompts, students will create illustrations through various printmaking methods including relief and intaglio. The end result will be a portfolio of works on paper that have both personal and universal meanings.  Class will be held in MICA's new printmaking facility which feature the latest printmaking technologies, equipment and safety standards. 

Product Design

Have you ever thought of developing your own marketable products and wonder how design professionals develop and scale-up their ideas? Maybe you want to try new materials and fabrication processes, or you need to expand your skills to include 3-D making. Bring your imagination and your 2-D skills and we will show you how to transform them into 3-D forms. Push your creativity by an encounter with the rigor of design thinking and explore the intersection of the maker movement and the field of product design. Class is held in MICA's newest fabrication lab – the Dolphin Design Center. Explore traditional as well as 21st century materials and processes, exciting demonstrations, learn transferable skills and enjoy plenty of hands-on, making-time. This is the perfect class to expand your 3D portfolio for applying to art and design programs throughout the world.