Review: Aaron Blaise’s Creature Art Teacher Courses (Annual Membership Plan)
Review: Aaron Blaise's Fauna Art Teacher Courses (Annual Membership Plan)
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In this review I'll be taking a deep dive into the Creature Art Teacher website.
Judging past the name, I expect to see lots of brilliant concept art and creatures on here.
The Brute Art Instructor brand is the animation and (mainly) digital painting course website run by American animator Aaron Blaise.
A renowned figure in the blitheness industry having worked on Disney movies for over two decades, his well-nigh prominent menses was in the early nineties when he worked non only as an animator but likewise as an animative supervisor on such animated Disney classics equally Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The King of beasts King (1994).
These days he tin can be seen running fine art courses dorsum home in his state of Florida, making online educational content, and indulging in his passion for creating art. Whether that's painting wildlife on canvas or animating characters on his reckoner screen.
Creature Fine art Teacher gives prospective students the selection to individually purchase one-off video tutorial courses and Photoshop brush sets, or bring together an all-inclusive annual premium membership plan which gives you lot access to everything on the site including all time to come updates.
The courses generally cover everything from digital painting to traditional animation, storyboarding, and a whole lot more.
With all this in heed let's cheque out the annual membership plan and see if it's worth the investment!
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Breakdown of the Website
Since I am reviewing an entire website's worth of content I volition endeavor to cover all of the content that annual premium members have access to.
Which includes admission to all current courses, custom brushes, as well as discounts on new merchandise.
From the website'south main menu page we can see a listing of the contents which are broken down into a number of groupings.
In that location are three split groups for tutorial courses:
- Tutorials & Lessons (with a total of 43 courses and 21 custom brush sets)
- Animation Tutorials (11 courses)
- Photoshop Tutorials (23 courses and around 20 castor sets)
All courses are in HD video format and can either be downloaded in mp4 or streamed.
In my case I was viewing on my iPhone and then I had to stream.
I will say, make sure you lot have a decent wifi connection if you go this route because the videos can only be streamed in HD!
I was expecting class content to be unique to each group and initially felt completely overwhelmed by the sheer book of content available in the annual membership plan.
Nonetheless I soon began to notice that there is actually a lot of overlap between the three tutorial groups.
Equally information technology turns out, the Tutorials & Lessons department contains a lot of the main courses and brushes, including contents from the other sections of the website.
We tin find some unique content hither such as a grade on traditional cartooning presented by fellow Disney animator Tim Hodge.
All of these lessons look proficient for beginners just getting into animation, right up to more experienced cartoonists. Using the example course above, I can easily tell how detailed this content is.
He explains the basics of which pencils and cartoon tools to use while running through how he draws diverse cartoon style animals, superheroes, and more.
I institute this information extremely useful and interesting despite not being a cartoonist.
This one runs for over 10 hours so y'all tin can strap yourself in and make a day of it if y'all like! Non to mention this is just one of dozens of courses in hither.
There are also a host of painting courses run by experienced painter and animator Ronnie Williford (Lilo and Run up, Mulan) that tin can just be found in this department.
Another thing I noticed well-nigh the membership programme is that you go a disbelieve on the live drawing and painting workshop where you bring together Aaron Blaise in Sarasota for iv days and 4 nights of drawing and painting on the Gulf of Mexico.
The private cost for this workshop is over $thou. So the price of the annual membership gets you lot all the digital video courses and gets you a dainty disbelieve on real in-person grooming.
Please note: this takes identify in March of this year (as of this writing) so it's worth checking the website to see if this date has updated.
For those who are interested, it'due south also possible to buy access to this live training too. But at that indicate I remember it's worth paying the membership subscription to go access to the courses, and so also buying the live class with the discount.
Elsewhere on the site there's as well a News and Posts section which provides links to all of Aaron's livestreams.
All are shot in slap-up detail and show the creative person at work in various mediums such as in Photoshop or on sail with oil paints or charcoals.
The presentation & organization of the videos is also very impressive as you would expect actually from someone who has overseen big budget Disney features.
There is as well an extensive gallery of the artist's own published works including fauna and concept art that has been used in movies and computer games as well as links to his fine art renderings.
But permit's motion across all this so we tin can get to the good stuff: the premium tutorials and downloadable resources. I'll break it down past checking out each section of the site's premium content.
Blitheness Tutorials
Blitheness is the surface area that Aaron Blaise is mainly associated with. Especially given his background spanning two decades in animation on Disney movies, so he knows a thing or ii nearly it.
With the corporeality of content available it'due south easy to see that for anyone interested in learning this brand of animation, Animal Fine art Teacher is a potential goldmine for useful knowledge.
By sorting the tutorials in social club of popularity, I found that top of the listing is a 16+ hour Graphic symbol Design course.
The course starts with a minor talk on the theme of character design and proceeds to guide through the artist'southward approach as nosotros lookout man him design a character on his screen from first to stop.
It'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to follow along and would be suitable for beginners as he teaches the basics of preparation, digital drawing, and then gradually gets more specific throughout the course.
More advanced students would also learn a lot simply by watching the man at work and keeping upwards with his tips on how to piece of work.
Towards the conclusion of each course you are also given hi-res images of the finished piece of work to download and scrutinize.
After glancing at a few other courses on the site I discovered this to be the full general style of each one—which is pretty overnice!
Although almost of the videos in this section are taught past Blaise himself, he occasionally enlists the help of industry peers such as Lyndon Reddish to present a class on storyboarding, and Chuck Williams to requite us the rundown on storytelling.
The topics covered in this section:
- Character design
- Scene approach
- Fundamentals of animation
- A detailed "How To" series on animating the movement of animals with four legs
- Storyboards
- Storytelling
- Acting for animation
Some courses contain every bit many as 20 full-length videos like the Complete Animation Class.
Others run for as little as an hr, but there is enough content here to keep you busy for months.
Only as an example, the storyboarding course which is by no ways the longest on the site runs for over 14 hours. So in that location is an awful lot of data to take on, and a lot of content may crave multiple viewings for newer artists to grasp some of the effectively points.
Photoshop Tutorials
In this section you tin can find 22 courses running anywhere from 45 minutes upwards to a whopping 40 hours!
The courses hither are wide-ranging, covering drawing and animating human figures as well every bit various different animals.
Once completed, you'll be equipped with the necessary skills to create both Beauties and Beasts!
The bulk of the topics covered here include:
- Drawing human anatomy
- Character pattern
- How to draw diverse animals
- Digital painting
- Animal drawing
- Photorealistic painting
- Wild animals painting
- Creating fantasy creatures
The most pop course here is the Man Anatomy course which runs for 9.5 hours in total.
As well as the actual class content on how to describe humans anatomically, y'all also receive some original animated videos also as the usual hullo-res copies of the images + created and layered Photoshop files of his animation.
This way you can pause downward each pose on your own.
This class has a unique animation-influenced take on anatomy rather than the classical arroyo to the body.
I criticism I have of the layout is that scattered throughout this department are custom brushes and texture packages that Blaise uses in his ain work.
Which are groovy, but there is a separate group that contains all of them and information technology'd be easier to find them right away. I'd rather they were not lumped in with the courses. Information technology just makes things messy and more than difficult to find in my opinion.
Also it should be noted that for some reason, in this section nosotros tin can find a five.five hour course on traditional charcoal drawing as well as a course on how to paint digitally using the Procreate app.
They don't vest here equally they bare no relation to Photoshop, but categorization bated I think those courses still provide a lot of value for anyone interested.
Castor and Texture Sets
At that place are over 20 custom brush sets that you become with the premium membership. And they cover a lot of multifariousness:
- Various animal skin and hair textures
- Water, liquids
- Canvas texture
- Clouds & nature brushes
- Diverse natural elements such as pelting and snow
The list goes on and on. There are a lot!
With many of these you also go examples of the art created with the brushes, forth with communication and video demos on how to utilize them.
Very comprehensive stuff!
Teaching Style
Aaron Blaise and his Disney buddies are very good teachers.
Aaron runs virtually of the courses and he has vast experience and conveys his points clearly, cocky assuredly, and with passion.
Despite beingness an expert in his field, the content he delivers is inclusive so beginners can happily follow along with lessons.
And I personally feel he is quite engaging so the lessons never get boring.
I consider myself an artist and I'm not a big fan of Disney animation. But I have a lot of for respect someone who has been at the tiptop of their profession and I establish his videos to be extremely worthwhile and informative.
Technical Aspects & Site Performance
The videos are very pleasing to look at.
All are captured in high resolution and the sound came through crystal clear on my iPhone.
Those Disney production standards have been clearly ingrained by at present!
Going dorsum to my one major gripe, the layout and backend of this course feel quite difficult to navigate compared to larger scale learning platforms.
Non impossible, simply definitely not the easiest backend to use for finding dozens of courses. I hope he may consider hiring a good developer to give it some kind of makeover shortly.
I was unable to detect a way to rail my progress and I could only identify which class I was taking by the club number and non the title itself.
This is fine if you lot are merely taking i form. Merely if you are a premium member it is a little disruptive.
My guess is that maybe the site was initially congenital with but one-off purchases in heed and that information technology will improve every bit the site evolves.
Pricing
The annual premium membership costs $249 per year. Only at the time of writing this review it's on sale for $174/year.
If yous are a voracious student of digital art in full general, or a fan of Aaron Blaise'south techniques, information technology is certainly worth dropping for this package.
Especially since the annual membership includes all futurity courses likewise. So information technology'due south really a library of digital art & animation courses, all designed & guided by Disney professionals.
If you are mainly interested in traditional non-digital mediums, there are courses elsewhere that may exist better suited to that kind of work(Vitruvian Studio is 1 instance).
Merely for digital art, especially animation, information technology'south tough to beat Creature Art Teacher. The site besides offers access to all the courses on a monthly basis also.
The caveat is that yous are unable to download courses and the custom brushes are not provided.
One-off courses vary in price depending on the length of each; the cheapest is $fifteen and the nearly expensive sits at $175, but these are non-recurring costs.
All of these courses are available in the annual membership programme, as well equally access to his live workshop and future events which cost far more than the annual membership.
Overall I remember if you're serious nearly animation then Creature Fine art Teacher is past far the all-time value for your money.
Final Thoughts
For anyone who is already interested in these courses to brainstorm with, I can safely recommend condign a premium member.
The amount of learning fabric you get for the cost is well worth it. I recollect these courses are also suited to a wide range of learners from aggressive beginners right through to mid-level and experienced artists.
To say that the content in these courses will provide plenty knowledge to take you overseeing future Disney projects may be a stretch.
Simply if you can detect any website better-suited to putting yous on that path, I'd exist surprised.
All of the teachers on the site are continued through their all-encompassing feel on Disney animated films & TV shows.
These people have received some of the best tutelage in the unabridged blitheness manufacture and they're set to laissez passer that data on to you.
Nosotros are the beneficiaries of living in a time when someone like myself living in Tokyo can sit in on these lessons while being on the other side of the earth, without fifty-fifty having to leave my tatami floored room!
I'd highly recommend a Creature Art Instructor subscription for anyone who seriously wants to make a career out of blitheness. Or even someone who just wants to exist really good as a hobbyist.
If you aren't ready to commit to the annual membership and then you can as well try buying a 1-off course, or endeavor the monthly membership. That should requite yous plenty of material to estimate the quality of these courses for yourself.
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Author: John Battalgazi
John is a freelance illustrator/creative person and educator. He used to fiddle in photorealistic portraiture while these days yous're more likely to find him honing his digital illustration techniques. Check out his work at https://www.behance.cyberspace/Johnkun
Source: https://conceptartempire.com/aaron-blaise-creature-art-teacher-review/
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