COURSE OUTLINE

Hello everyone,


This is the updated Winter 2018 Course Outline for Environment Design.


Week 1

Course outline presentation

Interface.

Posture and ergonomics.

Making brushes.

Square vs round brush.

The differences between interior and exterior scenes.

Image construction

How to build a scenario ; research ; making a plan for your image.

Painting at 100 % opacity and pressure.

Painting with selections and gradients.

Looking - seeing images. Analyzing images.

Assignment 1

Black and white thumbnails on the “Stranded” theme ; 3 using only

the brush and 4 tonal values. ; 3 using only selections and the curves or

levels adjustment tool.  

Week 2

Notions of perspective : vanishing point, field of view, horizon,…

Some more notions of perspective :

Cast shadows in perspective.

High angle vs low angle shots.

Architectural vs organic and landscape perspective.

Interior perspective.

Perspective within textures.

Assignment 2

Students, using provided photos, dissect and analyse the perspective - reverse

engineering, locating vanishing points, horizons etc…  

Without tracing, using a photo as reference, create a line drawing of the perspective.

Week 3

Notions of perspective and point of view

Keeping scale coherent in a drawing

How to find and define scale.

Assignment 3

In black and white, make three value sketches of a given interior

environment using three different points of view (high angle, low angle and eye level)

with characters for reference of scale.

Create simpler version.

Week 4

Gain experience with, textures, shapes and important Photoshop layer adjustments.

(multiply, colour dodge)

Applying colour to value sketches.

Balancing masses before painting using curves and levels and hues.

Assignment 4
Choose one of the sketches you made in week one and expand it giving it colour and texture.

Week 5

Colour.

How colour varies with distance and depth.

Colours of foliage ; geological formations ; colours of clouds and colours in shadows.

Palettes.

Painting rocks.

Organic patterns in the landscape ; notion of rythmes in the landscape

Assignments 5

Paint the same landscape 3 times using 3 different colour and light schemes.

Draw your own landscape or work from the provided compositions.

Making a reference board finding colour schemes that you like either from paintings

or from photos.

Week 6

Working with Sketchup.

3D underlays.

We look at the main tools in Sketchup to quickly create volumes as a basis for painting.

How to quickly apply textures to 3D underlays.

Assignment 6
Create a simple interior environment and do a paint over using a

reduced palette.

Week 7

Interior environments

Artificial light and cast shadows from artificial lights.

Neons, tungsten, coloured lights….

Diffuse vs direct or point light.

Assignment 7
Elaborate your week 6 work adding natural and artificial light sources.

Week 8

First week of last block and final project.

Design considerations and research.

Short and quick overview of the evolution of architecture through the ages.

Architectural vocabulary.

Architectural styles - gothic, roman, bauhaus, brutalism,…

Assignment 8

2 possibilities :

You either work from your sketches created in week 1 or week 5 that you will expand

and push to a high level of detail and finish.

or

Use the Montreal in 100 years theme where, choosing one of the provided

photos to work from, you will make 3 different compositional sketches to determine

the direction of your work.

You will also set up a reference library for your work - moodboard.

Week 9

Notions of depth.

Atmospheric perspective : fog, humidity,…


Assignment 9

Continuation of your final project.

Week 10

Add final polish to your works 


Assignment 10

Finishing the final project.