Graphic Design 201 - Advancing Your Photoshop Skills

Welcome to Graphic Design 201, the next step in your graphic design education! 

In this course we will build on the skills learned in 101 and learn how to create more advanced pieces. 

The main project for the course is to create a gif animation from scratch. You will develop and refine your own illustrative and creative style through each weeks' exercises, and will be encouraged to explore these further between lessons. 

As part of the course project you will learn how to master different brushes, use shading and colouring, and even design a set of your own brushes. We will then use these skills to create and animate a short 3-5 second gif. 

Here's a rundown of what to expect each week:

Week One - Using realistic art media to create "artwork"
Week Two - Creating realistic shading and highlighting
Week Three - Exploring new tools to enhance our work: the Pen Tool
Week Four - Creating a simple illustration
Week Five -Creating our own brush sets
Week Six - Animation #1: Understanding the timeline
Week Seven - Animation #2: Creating our animation elements
Week Eight - Animation #3: Completing our GIF

Learners wanting to take this class should have either completed Graphic Design 101, or be competent in the basics of Adobe Photoshop, since many of the basic skills will be used without explanation or instruction on how to use the tools involved.

We will use the desktop version of Photoshop in this class, however students are welcome to use an iPad in addition to desktop, when creating their illustrations. It is not possible to complete this course with only the iPad however, and so the desktop version is needed.