Westchester Community College, State University of New York

The Center for the Digital Arts at SUNY Westchester Peekskill is an artist’s space and a friendly environment in which to work. The Center hosts five Apple post-production studios including two video labs, an animation studio including ZBrush, and facilities for other digital projects. The studio also offers large format printing, 3D MakerBot printers for use by artists enrolled in this program. This package is for the professional or aspiring artist with competent computer skills who wants to continue to develop a portfolio and use the Center’s resources. Note: Interview with Technical Support Manager required; choose daily access or package fee. To register, email peekskill@sunywcc.edu or call 914-606-7300.

In-Person
Package rate: CE-DGART 2003PE
Daily rate: CE-DGART 2050PE

In this four-hour class, students will learn about the basics of Chat GPT, a trending, artificial intelligence tool, and its capabilities. Students will also get to experience it in action with live demonstrations and interactive activities. The course will also instruct on how to fine-tune Chat GPT to adapt to specific tasks and contexts for business. Students will interact with the tool to perform text generations, question answering, prompt engineering, and simulated conversations with the model.

Prerequisite: Must have a computer with high-speed Internet and browser access.
Optional: Have a personal Chat GPT account already created https://chat.openai.com/chat.
CE-COMP 2264PE, Remote

Learn to use this industry-standard vector image creation program for digital illustration for print and web. Includes drawing tools, Bezier curves, fonts, and use of Illustrator in graphic design. No previous experience with Illustrator necessary, previous computer experience required.

CE-DGART 2040PE, Remote

Learn to use the latest version of Photoshop with time management features and enhancements for digital painting/drawing and web and video creation. This training package will include imaging formats, use of Photoshop in computer imaging, and output for the web. No previous experience with Photoshop necessary, previous computer experience required.

CE-DGART 2042PERemote

Explore the technology that enables rapid design of everything from car parts to jewelry. Use a free software package, TinkerCAD, to create 3D forms that you can realize through 3D printing. Learn block coding to animate your 3D models. Our MakerBot studio is equipped with multiple 3D printers, and an array of filament colors.

CE-DGART 2069PE, In-Person

In this 6-week course, the student will gain a solid understanding of the art of animation, which can be used in any kind of moving art such as 2D animation, 3D animation, stop-motion, and motion graphics. The course will be focused on traditional animation since it provides a hands-on understanding of the basic techniques of animation. Students will learn how to determine timing and spacing of a drawing and how it affects the outcome of an animation by studying different kinds of subjects such as a bouncing ball, falling leaves, and walk-cycles. Animation 1 is for those who want to start a career in animation but is not limited to those who want to sharpen their skills or further their experience. By the end of the course, students will have created a short animation 15 to 30 seconds long.

CE-DGART 2107PE, In-Person

In this 6-week advanced session, students will dive deeper into what brings animation to life adding to what they have learned from Animation 1. This course will have students look into pre-production animation techniques such as layouts and backgrounds, character design and acting, sound and special effects. As the course progresses, students will move from pre-production to post-production including editing, color and visual effects, and rendering final projects for presentation. Using the tools given to them, students will create their own short animation 15 to 30 seconds long. Prerequisite: Animation 1.

CE-DGART 2108PE, In-Person

This course will take students interested in digital painting and animation from understanding the Procreate interface to advanced techniques. Students will explore the basics of drawing such as designing sketches and painting with different brushes and textures. This class will cover various aspects such as canvas properties, brushes, alpha lock, clipping masks, animation, and other topics. Whether you are looking to learn the basics or find a new way to create digital art students will build their portfolio in an exciting new way.

CE-DGART 2146PE, In-Person

This course will cover HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Front end code is the code that builds the web pages that people see. The power of these languages together can make you a very powerful designer/front end programmer and put you in demand in the work force. For ages 14 & up.

CE-COMP 2172PE, In-Person 

Students will focus on outdoor landscape painting. Various locations throughout the local area will be selected. Rain dates TBA. Focus will be on color mixing, light and shadow, and composition. Students will be informed of the great plein air traditions of the Impressionists and the Hudson River School painters. Various approaches to landscape painting will be introduced, including water-mixable techniques in oil painting.

This class will be offsite.
CE-ART 2020PE, In-Person
Offsite Locations: To be determined and communicated to students by instructor

Get your ideas out of your sketchbook! Students will enjoy painting in the studio in class and outdoors in an interactive environment. In this class, students will learn from discussion, group critique, examples of art while honing art skills of observation, gesture, composition, value, color mixing, and brushstroke, etc. The teaching artist demonstrates painting and drawing techniques for portraiture, representing the human form, and landscape, abstraction.

CE-ART 2146PE, In-Person

Discover innovative ways to make handmade prints in addition to how technology such as computers and jet printers make printing contemporary. Make a portrait print based on a photograph, drawing from observation, and imagination. The instructor will introduce soft linocut, monotype, stenciling, and how to marbleize paper, to create prints on rice paper and other printmaking papers.

CE-ART 2334PE, In-Person

Get real world gallery experience working directly with museum staff. Students will have the opportunity to speak directly with curators, museum educators, art handlers, graphic designers, and the founder of KinoSaito art center. The focus of this course is getting hands-on experience working in a non-profit gallery setting. On completion of the course students will have a fuller understanding of everything it takes to make an exhibition come to life.

This class will be offsite at the KinoSaito Museum at 115 7th St. in Verplanck, NY.
CE-ART 2358PE, In-Person
Offsite Location: KinoSaito Museum, 115 7th St, Verplanck, NY 10596

This class focuses on the fundamentals of sequential storytelling in comics and graphic. Students will develop short stories, create character sheets, environments, scripts, and professional comic pages. In our journey industry-standard software will be used as well as traditional tools to design content across multiple mediums. The objective is for students to produce a portfolio piece at the professional level that can be used to secure freelance or industry-based opportunities. This class will have bi-weekly critiques.

CE-ART 2360PE, In-Person

This course will take students interested in digital painting and animation from understanding the Procreate interface to advanced techniques. Students will explore the basics of drawing such as designing sketches and painting with different brushes and textures. This class will cover various aspects such as canvas properties, brushes, alpha lock, clipping masks, animation, and other topics. Whether you are looking to learn the basics or find a new way to create digital art students will build their portfolio in an exciting new way.

CE-DGART 2146PE, In-Person

Enable your student to make robots that move, make sounds, display lights, etc. Using the latest technology students will create their own mechanized robot of their own design. Students will learn the latest in electronics, coding, and 3D printing technology. For ages 9-15.

CE-DGART 2139PE, In-Person

This class focuses on the fundamentals of sequential storytelling in comics and graphic novels. Discover how to move stories forward using the power of compositional flow. Students will develop short stories, create character sheets, environments, scripts, and professional comic pages.  In our journey industry-standard software will be used as well as traditional tools to design content across multiple mediums. The objective is for students to produce a portfolio piece at the professional level that can be used to secure freelance or industry-based opportunities. This class will have bi-weekly critiques. For ages 11-17.

CE-ART 2354PE, In-Person

Give your child the edge and have them engage in coding sequences of instructions that empower them to control robots and gaming interfaces. Students need to be able to write commands in the right sequences in order to communicate their instructions to others. Computer coding is what makes this possible and is a key 21st century competency for children today. Students will code stories, animations, and games. For ages 7-11.

CE-COMP 2127PE, In-Person

TinkerCAD is a free web-based software that allows students to create 3D forms. These forms may be extruded, replicated, and combined to created elaborate shapes and works of art. Students will build in TinkerCAD and then output their artworks in our Makerspace as 3D prints. For ages 7-11.

CE-DGART 2112PE, In-Person

You play games on Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and your mobile devices but did you ever wonder how to build an interactive game? The gaming industry is an exciting, burgeoning field that requires both technical ability and creativity. Students will work with a game designer to construct board games, design characters, build terrains, and interactive user experiences. For ages 11-17.

CE-DGART 2111PE, Remote