Syllabus - Illustration Concepts
Instructor: Craig Kunce
Credits: 3
Address: 400 N 7th ST, La Crosse, WI 54601
Office: C109E (Coleman Building)
Office phone: (608) 785-9164
Fax: (608) 785-9473
E-mail: kuncec@westerntc.edu
Web site: craigkunce.com
Teaching Schedule: (also posted outside my office)
Western's Student Handbook
Western Calendar
Textbooks
There is no textbook required for this course.
Resource Websites
www.craigkunce.com will be used in this class.
Course description and objectives
Students will gain experience with communicating messages, ideas and content through the use of illustration. Projects will be based on various real-life industry assignments and commissions and will be created using popular mediums such as color pencil, watercolor, ink, and a combination of these mediums. Students will also research and study contemporary illustrators to gain a more in-depth knowledge of a working professional, study current industry illustration samples, and begin to learn the value of mentors.
Course Goal
To teach students how to successfully design and illustrate industry-quality marketing materials for a variety of products, services, and target-markets.
Projects
- Colored Pencil Skills (20 pts)
- Colored Pencil Skills (20 pts)
- Marker and Ink Skills(20 pts)
- Marker and Ink Skills (20 pts)
- Watercolor Skills (20 pts)
- Watercolor Skills (20 pts)
- Transportation Vehicle - Progress Critique (20 pts)
- Transportation Vehicle - Final Illustration (100 pts)
- Greeting Card - Group Work (20 pts)
- Greeting Card - B/W Rough & Class Critique (20 pts)
- Greeting Card - Progress Critique (20 pts)
- Greeting Card - Final Illustration (100 pts)
- Final Illustration - Group Work (20 pts)
- Final Illustration - B/W Rough & Class Critique (20 pts)
- Final Illustration - Progress Critique (20 pts)
- Final Illustration (100 pts)
Total Points Possible: 560
Final Grade
A 560–504, B 503–448, C 447–392, D 391–336, F 335–0
Attendance
You must come to class. You will be graded on your ability to complete quality assignments on time. Meet the project and group work deadlines, and put a lot of effort and quality into your projects, and you will do well.
Back Up Your Work - And Keep It
Keep all of your work and/or computer files. You will need them for your graphic design portfolio. You will need an external hard drive to back up your work. Be sure to always have at least three copies of your computer files—at all times! Investing a little time now to back up your work will pay off when you loose a file or if you disk goes bad—like they tend to do—when you least expect it.
Western Student E-mail
Use your Western e-mail at least once each semeter or it will automatially deactivate. You can reactivate it through MyWestern, but it is easier to just use it each semester.
Special Needs
Please let me know within the first week if you have any special needs. We will do our best to accommodate you. If you are in need of support services or accommodations for a disability, please see me and/or the Disability Services staff, located in ARC 154, phone (608) 785-9875.
Academic Success Center and Online Writing Center
The Academic Success Center (ASC) and the Online Writing Center provide assistance with all stages of the writing process. The ASC is located in Coleman 227, and the OWC can be found at http://learn.westerntc.edu/writing center. Visit these centers to see what they have to offer.
Course Materials
Bring your art kit to class. You will need these materials to work in class—especially note taking materials, pencils, erasers, etc.
C or Better Grade Policy
You must earn a C or better grade in all classes in the graphic design degree in order to graduate. Classes with a D or F must be repeated and a C or better earned.
Project Grading
A = 100% - 90%, B = 89% - 80%, C = 79% - 70%, D = 69% - 60%, F = 59% - 0%
Cheating and Plagiarism
Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Your work must be original and not taken or borrowed from another source. You may be "influenced" by another designer/artist's work, but yours should look considerably different. If a student is caught cheating or plagiarizing the teacher reserves the right to drop them from the class, and pursue a program drop.
Late Projects/Assignments Policy
• Late 1–7 days = lose 20% (2 letter grades)
• After 7 days = zero points
• Missed in-class group work, projects and presentations cannot be made up = zero points
Drop Policy
I do not drop students from my class.
You will receive the grade you earned in the class at the end of the semester. If you need to drop the course, for whatever reason, you must do it yourself within the appropriate timeframe.
Mutual Respect
I expect all of you to conduct yourself in a professional, courteous, and respectful manner. Please be respectful of your fellow classmates--it makes for a positive learning environment. My goal is to create and maintain and safe creative environment where all student, not matter their skill level, feel comfortable showing their work and receiving feedback and constructive criticism.
Speak To Me About Issues
Please talk to me if you have a situation or issue that may affect your progress in class. I am reasonable, we can usually work these issues out before they affect your grade and success in the class.
Liquid Library (photo reference website)
Be sure to use liquidlibrary.com for professional photo reference—it is an invaluable resource and will be useful when you are researching and designing your projects.
- Go to www.liquidlibrary.com
- Click on Log In
- E-mail is: student#@westerntc.edu
- Password: (I will give this in class)
- Search for photos, then click on a photo you want to download
- Choose the desired file format and click: Download. The photo will appear on your desktop
- Click on: Log Off , to end
Open photos in Photoshop and prepare them for use in your projects. Be sure photos files are 300ppi. You may not use any references found on www.liquidlibrary.com for any type of personal project, or commercial/freelance projects. Our subscription to www.liquidlibrary.com is for educational use only.
Finding Art Reference - Guidelines
Once you decide on your layout and which elements you want in it, find reference for each element you are going to draw.
- Reference can be a photograph, printed photographs in a book or magazine, digital photographs that you take, from www.jiunlimited.com, or real-life items such as your hand, shoe, trees, a sunset, house, etc.
- Reference CANNOT be someone else’s art, drawing, cartoons or painting.
- Be sure you have permission to use someone’s likeness or photograph before you use it. You should get in the habit of drawing your own art and only using the photos for reference (to look at). This will open up your drawings to new ideas and options, and will lift the limitations of a photo.
- Reference is valuable to the illustrator because it provides us with what an object really looks like. Don’t guess, and don’t draw from memory.
- Find reference for everything you will need to illustrate. The more reference you gather, the more professional your art will become and look. Even cartoonists use reference to draw from. There is no way to know what something should look like unless you look at the real thing.
- Good reference photos must be:
- Clear and in tight focus
- Detailed, not blurry, or fuzzy
- In full color
- Large enough to see everything you want to look at
- Available for you to use
- NOT someone else’s art, drawing or painting
- All reference used for the same illustration must have the same light source and the same lighting technique (hard, soft, natural sunlight, studio light, etc.).
- Reference CANNOT be low-resolution images from the internet. I will not accept these, and neither should you, because they do not offer enough detail and clarity to draw from.
