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.

Book Arts

This course provides an opportunity to combine various media and written ideas into artwork. Students explore a variety of book formats, concepts, and binding techniques while designing unique book forms that incorporates their own creative writing and images using drawing, collage, photographic, and printmaking processes. Emphasis is on personal expression through book style and content.

Fiber: Experimental Fashion

Trends in clothing design are influenced by many factors including politics, economics, fashion, and technological. Fashion and clothing reflect and influence culture. This course addresses the influences, affinities, and relationships of fashion, the visual arts, and culture. Students explore various methods and processes in fiber media. In addition to material experimentation, they will use a range well-established textile and fiber techniques, including sewing, surface manipulation, and embellishment to respond to the challenge of creating lightweight, flexible works placed on the body. Working in MICA's well equipped Fiber Arts Center students establish goals for final projects that combine their vision for how clothing can engage an understanding of societal and cultural trends.

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.

Figure Sculpture

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

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 short films, narrative films, documentaries, or even experimental video installations.

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 

 In this course, students are challenged with the types of assignments that professional illustrators may encounter, through various digital and traditional media. Illustrations can be created by hand using drawing and painting media as well as collage and assemblage, can also be created using digital media, and increasingly a combination of both hand and digital approaches. Students are encouraged to create a final portfolio that is reflective of their personal artistic inspiration, dedication to their craft, and capacity for innovation and risk-taking through illustrations that reflect a range of stylistic and media approaches.

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. 

Sculpture 

Students in Sculpture make objects that explore innovative artistic ideas while gaining skills for sculpture techniques including, mold-making and casting, basic woodworking, and fabrication techniques using found objects. Contemporary approaches to sculpture like installation, performance, site-work, time-based art, and digital forms are investigated in conjunction with the development of practical, hands-on knowledge of materials and fabrication techniques. Portfolios include work produced with a special emphasis on a student's personal vision and current trends in the art world.