BMClasses: Professional Development Workshops

Description: Blender is one of the fastest growing softwares available and competes with the biggest 3D modelling and animation programs in the industry. A huge advantage of Blender is that it's completely open-source and free to use. I've been using blender for several years and have seen it grow into the magnificent beast it is today. This BMClass will be an introductory crash course to get participants started and excited to use Blender. I'll go over the UI, some of the basics in modelling and texturing, and participants will end the session by creating some simple models.

Description: The dominance of Adobe Illustrator in the vector graphics market has not stopped little software Davids from emerging to take on Adobe’s Goliath. One worthy competitor is Affinity Designer, by Serif (Europe) Ltd. Competitively priced at $70 CDN (and it’s available at half price often throughout the year), Affinity Designer offers a suite of tools (with eerily identical keyboard shortcuts) that rival Illustrator’s, plus throws in a set of pixel editing and painting tools that, while not at the level of Photoshop, allows the user to create vector objects that serve as masks for pixel painting all within one file. Affinity can open most common (and Adobe based) file formats, and save to them as well. This BMClass will feature an overview of the program’s interface and tool set, with examples of artwork created as part of my undergraduate teaching during the recent “work from home or die” academic year. If participants are looking to lighten their monthly software budget, Affinity Designer might be the solution.

Description: Known for being the best app for colour-grading video, DaVinci Resolve by Blackmagic is an all-in-one video editing and development tool that also integrates audio editing and node based compositing. It's ridiculous that this software is free. Not only can you do all your video editing, audio editing and 3D compositing in one piece of software, but it renders out the final super fast. In this BMClass I’ll run through a demonstration of DaVinci and how it can be incorporated into participants' video editing workflow. 

Description:  Running workshop and acting as a facilitator are a useful skill to broaden your ability to creatively ideate on your own work, with teammates, or with clients. In this BMClass participants will learn the basics of how to structure a workshop, communication & facilitation techniques, what type of assets you should create to run the session, and how to plan for output afterwards. Participants will finish this BMclass with an interactive working session in a free software called Miro, that can be used for remote workshopping and facilitation. This BMClass would benefit those who want to improve their communication & facilitation, or aspire to work in strategic design, service design, or consulting. 

Description:  Molecules and Houdini are a beautiful marriage! In this BMClass participants will learn how to use Houdini to create a complex molecular structure using biological data. The model will be converted into a reusable tool with adjustable parameters. This session will provide just a taste of the strengths of Houdini, namely data manipulation, procedural model generation, and tool development. 

Description:  A relatively informal class on digital painting with an emphasis on colour palettes and layer styles. I will be going through how to pick pleasing, cohesive colour palettes, and how I use layer styles to adhere to the palette as the painting progresses. I will also facilitate a Q&A about my painting process and give impromptu demonstrations of specific techniques based on participants requests, as time allows.

Description:  

Blender’s rate of development has skyrocketed since the release of version 2.8, with a significant UI overhaul, and new, unique features continuously being added. Having used Blender since version 2.59, I’ve found that it excels as a jack-of-all trades concepting tool.

In this BMClass, I’ll show participants how to leverage its snappy, real-time Eevee rendering engine for faster iteration in final renders and lookdev. I’ll also introduce Blender’s new Houdini-esque Geometry Nodes, as well as its very comprehensive sculpting toolset. The session will go through how these features work through the creation of a sciviz scene, as well how they differ from traditional 3D workflows.