Visual Arts Academy

Second Annual Apophysis Holiday Bash!

2011-10-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone loves the holiday season. Giving gifts, getting together, eating lots of ridiculously awesome food. The holidays are one of those perfect times every year to show loved ones how much they mean to you.

Well, at Visual Arts Academy, I wanna show you how much you really mean to me with the gift of knowledge. I will be holding what I like to call "The Holiday Apophysis Bash" from the first of November all the way up to 3 days right before Christmas! It's 8 lessons of pure unadulterated Apophysis knowledge and fun and you get the same perks as you would if you attended either of my courses. You get access to the VAA forums for my support, 8 full lessons of apophysis material, a certificate and a full set of parameters upon completion, and access to any of my params as a student.

You'll be learning all of this:
-How to download the program
-How to use the main, editor, and adjustment windows
-How to manipulate transforms
-How to run scripts
-How to save, open, copy, paste, and render parameters
-How the coloring algorithm works and how to color your work
-How to use Post Transforms
-How to make flame fractals in several popular styles including:tiles, wire and tubes, grand julians, stained glass, and more.
-Working with the Xaos tab
-Understanding Travis's "Shape and Detail Transform" philosophy
-How to download and use Plugins for more variation in your work
-Simple compositional and adjustment tips and tricks
-How to make flame fractals in several popular styles including:splits and bipolar/elliptic, lazy susan/loonie/oscilloscope gaskets and more.

And, just for the holidays, I'm teaching this Holiday course for only $40. That's $5 per lesson and it's a 20% discount from what I normally charge! The certificate and params are thrown in as my gift to you.

Worried about time this season? Well don't be! Lessons go up every week and you can do them at your leisure! You have two whole months to do any of the work you wish to do, so, your lessons won't interfere with baking that pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and gift wrapping for your favorite grandchildren in December.

I've been teaching these courses for four years now. They've been fully updated to include some of the hottest techniques and apo gadgets and they just keep getting better.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

So, come join me for my Holiday Apophysis Bash and enjoy your holidays :D

You can register here: VAA Registration

Happy fractaling!
Travii

~ Travis Williams

May Semester is Open!

2011-04-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

Visual Arts Academy News

Would taking a class about a cool graphics software be just the ticket for getting your creative juices flowing? Check out the listings below! If you're the proud owner of a seldom-used video camera, dust it off and scroll down to Eric's video class.

Get all the buzz here: http://visual-arts-academy.com/courses.html

Bryce: Beginners +++ Sharren Grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Bryce: Advanced +++ Sharren Graham
DazStudio: Beginner +++ Sharren Graham
DazStudio: Advanced +++ Sharren Graham
Poser: Beginner +++ Sharren Graham
Poser: Advanced +++ Sharren Graham
Poser 8: Beginner +++ Sharren Graham
Poser 8: Advanced +++ Sharren Graham

Apophysis Explorations +++ Travis Williams
Apophysis: Beyond the Basics +++ Travis Williams
XenoDream +++ Joseph Presley

CSS for Beginners +++ JC Sullivan
Introduction to FrontPage +++ JC Sullivan
Introduction to MS Excel +++ JC Sullivan
Introduction to MS Excel 2007+++ JC Sullivan
Introduction to MS Word +++ JC Sullivan
Introduction to MS Word 2007+++ JC Sullivan
Dynamic Presentations with PowerPoint +++ Cornelia Yoder
MS Access: An Introduction +++ Paul Houston
PC Basics +++ Virginia Miller

Gif Animator 5: Introduction +++Maggie Lombardi
Painter Basics: Tools Course +++Lin McBee
PaintShop Pro: Beginners +++ Cammy Cochrane/Alene Robinson
PaintShop Pro: Intermediate +++ Cammy Cochrane/Alene Robinson
PaintShop Pro: Advanced +++ Cammy Cochrane/Alene Robinson
PhotoImpact: Photo Editing +++ JC Sullivan
PhotoImpact: Fun with Paths +++ Virginia Miller & Sharon Cataldo
PhotoImpact: Filter Fun +++ Mandy Olszewski
Digital Scrapbooking with PhotoImpact +++ Cindy Piper
Pixel Painting +++ Virginia Price & Sheryl Redden
Photoshop 7 Basics +++Judy Gardner
Photoshop 7 Photo Editing +++Judy Gardner
Photoshop CS 3 & 4 Basics +++Judy Gardner

Camera Basics and Beyond +++ Judy Gardner
New! Movie Making: The Basics +++ Eric Kenning

Thank you, MaryLou!

2011-04-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Our HTML guru/instructor, MaryLou White, has retired from this particular stint of teaching. I know that she'll still be helping people out, in all sorts of ways, even though she's not in the structured format anyway. She's just that kind of girl.

MaryLou has been with VAA since its inception. Her basic HTML class proved so popular, and students refused to just leave, that she expanded it into two classes and then to a series of three. She set many folks on their way to having a web presence.

VAA extends its well-wishes and heartfelt thanks to ML! Happy Retirement!

Apophysis Holiday Bash!

2010-10-04T23:06:00.001-07:00

Almost everyone loves the holiday season. Giving gifts, getting together, eating lots of ridiculously awesome food. The holidays are one of those perfect times every year to show loved ones how much they mean to you.

Well, this year, at Visual Arts Academy, I wanna show you how much you really mean to me with the gift of knowledge. I will be holding what I like to call "The Holiday Apophysis Bash" from the first of november all the way up to 3 days right before christmas! It's 8 lessons of pure unadulterated Apophysis knowledge and fun and you get the same perks as you would if you attended anyone of my courses. You get access to the VAA forums for my support, 8 full lessons of apophysis material, a certificate and a full set of parameters upon completion, and access to any of my params as a student.

You'll be learning all of this:
-How to download the program
-How to use the main, editor, and adjustment windows
-How to manipulate transforms
-How to run scripts
-How to save, open, copy, paste, and render parameters
-How the coloring algorithm works and how to color your work
-How to use Post Transforms
-How to make flame fractals in several popular styles including:tiles, wire and tubes, grand julians, stained glass, and more.
-Working with the Xaos tab
-Understanding Travis's "Shape and Detail Transform" philosophy
-How to download and use Plugins for more variation in your work
-Simple compositional and adjustment tips and tricks
-How to make flame fractals in several popular styles including:splits and bipolar/elliptic, lazy susan/loonie/oscilloscope gaskets and more.

And, just for the holidays, I'm teaching this Holiday course for only $40. That's $5 per lesson and it's a 20% discount from what I normally charge! The certificate and params are thrown in as my gift to you.

Worried about time this season? Well don't be! Lessons go up every week and you can do them at your leisure! You have two whole months to do any of the work you wish to do, so, your lessons won't interfere with baking that pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and gift wrapping for your favorite grandchildren in december.

Registration opens the last two weeks of OCTOBER, but why wait? Buy yourself or a loved one a gift card now and get in while it's still warm out :D It's really the perfect gift for any Apophysis user this holiday season!

Here are a few testimonials from my section of the Visual Arts page :D

Travis is a first-rate teacher and the course was excellent. I no longer feel I am stumbling around in Apophysis. I would recommend this course to anyone.
-Laurence

This course was quite appropriate for it's intended audience and very enjoyable. Our instructor was also quite encouraging, friendly and knowledgeable.
- Brenda McK

This course was wonderful and I learned an incredible amount of stuff while having great fun. Who can ask for more?
-*Eklektiktuk

I've been teaching these courses for three years now. They've been fully updated to include some of the hottest techniques and apo gadgets and they just keep getting better.

So, come join me for my Holiday Apophysis Bash and enjoy your holidays :D

Happy fractaling!
Travii

~ Travis Williams

How to Scrapbook and Not Become Glued to the Wall

2010-08-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Tired of the constant cleanup while scrapping? Dislike the glue on your fingers, clothes? Going broke from buying supplies?

I have the most wonderful news for you. DIGITAL scrapping! YEAH!

With digital scrapping I can make my embellishments and I can use them over and over again, instead of just once and buy more. Same with the papers. And digital scrapbooks are just as lovely as their paper counterparts when printed out. Less expensive, also!

Hi! I'm Cindy and I started digital scrapping before I knew it WAS digital scrapping. I started using two programs, Print Artist® and PhotoImpact®. At the time I didn't know I could do it all in PI. When I discovered all I could do in PI, I used PI only. Print Artist is still a great little program, but it doesn't do the things PI does. I love digital scrapping and I'd love to help you get started if you've a mind to learn. You may already paper scrap and want to get into digital or you may have no clue to either. It can be addicting, mind you! :)

~ Cindy Piper

Visual Arts Academy

September/October Semester

2010-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Registration is now open. Classes start September 1, 2010 and go through mid-October.

Please see the current list of classes at our bulletin board:

Visual Arts Academy

We look forward to seeing you there!

Spotlight on: Movie Making—the Basics

2010-08-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Would you like to learn how to make a movie? If so have a look at my Movie Making Courses at Visual Arts Academy.

Movie Making—the Basics is an entry-level course for those who want to move on from simply shooting random video shots to making a movie that tells a story.

Today’s camcorders, still cameras and even phones can create video at a higher quality then ever before. With the increasing number of outlets for showing video such as YouTube, anyone can now upload their images for a world wide audience to enjoy.

Newcomers to movie making eventually find that producing a video is not just a matter of pointing their camcorder and recording images that move. They soon learn that turning the raw footage into something interesting and outputting it into a format that can be viewed on a home television or on the Internet is a challenging task.

Each lesson in this course is divided into two parts, The Camera Workshop and The Cutting Room.

The Camera Workshop will guide you step-by-step through a series of exercises designed to show you how to shoot video that can be edited into a story. In The Cutting Room you’ll learn how to edit your shots and add sound, transitions and effects.

Each lesson has exercises for you to carry out so you can gain experience in the art of movie making and this will increase your enjoyment of the finished movie. The editing work will be carried out on Windows Movie Maker, which comes free with Microsoft Windows®, so there’ll be no additional cost to you for editing software.

~Eric Kenning

Visual Arts Academy

Registration is Closed

2010-07-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Please check back in August for the September / October semester. We'll remind you, if you like, by sending you one of our infrequent newsletters. We dislike unnecessary e-mails as much as the next guy, so we promise a maximum of two newsletters per semester!

Sign up for the newsletter.

New Semester about to Start!

2010-06-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Please check out our classes below.

One of this semester's new and exciting classes is Movie Making - The Basics. If you're here in the northern hemisphere you're in the throes of summer and maybe you'd like to get out the camera and record some video of your vacation or the flowers blooming in your yard. Eric's class will teach you how to make a vibrant video to share, guaranteed not to bore your neighbors! If you don't have videos to work with just yet, he has some you may borrow to learn the techniques.

Visual Arts Academy

Student Galleries

2010-06-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

Are you wondering what you might do in a class at Visual Arts Academy? Wonder no more, at least for the graphics- and camera-based classes. There is a great gallery showcasing the work of class participants. Check it out!

Galleries

An example, from the Xenodream gallery:

July / August Semester

2010-06-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Classes available for the upcoming semester are:

ANIMATION

Introduction to Animation with Gif Animator 5

FRACTALS

Apophysis Exploration

Apophysis: Beyond the Basics

XenoDream

PC BASICS AND NET SAFETY

PC Basics and Net Safety - half-semester class

3D SOFTWARE

Bryce for Beginners

Bryce Advanced

Poser for Beginners

Poser Advanced

Poser 8 Beginners

Poser 8 Advanced

Daz Studio for Beginners

Daz Studio Advanced

DIGITAL PAINTING with PhotoImpact /Painter /Traditional

Landscape Painting

PainterX: Paint Tools Proficiency (2-semester course)

Creative Painting PhotoImpact: Paint Tool Proficiency

Advanced Creative Painting with PhotoImpact

Pixel Painting

OFFICE

Introduction to MS Excel

Introduction to MS Word

Introduction to Front Page

Dynamic Presentations with PowerPoint

Introduction to MS Access

PAINT SHOP PRO

Beginner PaintShop Pro

Intermediate PaintShop Pro

Advanced PaintShop Pro

PHOTOGRAPHY & CAMERAS

Camera Basics and Beyond (2-semester course)

Movie Making: The Basics

PHOTOIMPACT

Photo Editing with PhotoImpact

PhotoImpact: Filter Fun

PhotoImpact: Fun with Paths

PhotoImpact: Digital Scrapbooking

PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop 7 Basics

Photoshop 7 Photo Editing

Photoshop CS3 & 4 Basics

WEBPAGE - WEBSITE CREATION

Introduction to Front Page

Introduction to CSS

For more information on classes, visit our Curriculum page.

Welcome to our new blog!

2010-06-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

Visual Arts Academy would like to welcome you to our latest foray into the great wide Internet! Our latest course offerings will be here, along with news and notes. We'll post shining examples from the previous semester's exercises, too. That's a great way to see what you can learn with us.