The eLearning Center for Gatlin Education Services

Looking to launch your career in multimedia art and design? This nationally recognized Multimedia Design Certificate program equips you with fundamental technical and conceptual skills for this challenging interdisciplinary environment.

As a student, you'll gain proficiency in the core tools for interactive development: Adobe Photoshop, Flash, and After Effects, and learn to shoot digital video and edit it in Avid or Final Cut Express. You'll learn how to create images, animations, interfaces, and motion graphics for Web-based multimedia.

Hands-on projects focus on essential skills and provide experience in working in a broad range of media. Class assignments include include digital image retouching and compositing, Flash animations and interfaces, scripted and documentary video-making, color and typography studies, Flash site development, and motion graphics.

Course Objectives

Students who complete the program can expect to learn to:

* Prepare bitmap images for print or digital media using basic Photoshop retouching and correction techniques, collage, and compositing.
* Design basic Flash page graphics, animations, ads, and promotional sites.
* Shoot and edit creative digital video content and perform basic pre- and post-video production tasks.
* Gain a basic understanding of creative and career options in the multimedia field (optional elective).
* Develop effective color schemes for different clients or projects using the principles of color harmony.
* Use typography effectively by following the basic principles of typography design, selection, and layout.
* Create a basic Flash Web site with consistent, attractive visuals, navigation, and typography.
* Apply basic editing techniques in digital video projects, organizing the material and editing it into a coherent sequence.
* Develop a working knowledge of how to create motion graphics in Adobe After Effects, using different kinds of interpolation and importing masks, layer masks, and backgrounds.

This program consists of eight required courses. An optional introductory theory course is available for beginner students. Course descriptions are as follows:

Photoshop Basics
Get a thorough grounding in Adobe Photoshop, the premiere digital imaging program for graphic and digital designers. Hands-on projects show how to select, enhance, distort, color, scale, and manipulate scanned images and artworks—or create them from scratch. Every designer must tame this creative powerhouse of a program.

Flash Basics
Develop a competence in basic drawing and animating tools in Flash. Students will master such critical interface elements as layers, scenes, nested symbols, and movie clips. Course projects including creating a logo animation, a cityscape, a splash screen, and a basic Flash site interface.

Digital Video Production
Learn how to control white balance, aperture, and shutter speed, to get high quality images from your digital video camera. You'll explore the different types of shots and camera motion techniques used by the pros and learn how to do location scouting, plan props, wardrobe, and sets, and work with talent. Course lectures challenge you to think about different storytelling conventions in narrative and documentary movie-making and address the fundamentals of sound recording. You’ll script and storyboard short movie sequences and develop an understanding of the various roles in the video post-production process.

Color Theory
Focus on developing appropriate color systems for graphic design projects. Projects explore the principles, terminology, and applications of color theory, with an emphasis on manipulating color. A working knowledge of the expression and perception of color, and color interaction, lends credibility and sophistication to a designer's work.

Flash and Typography
Learn how to use Flash to turn type into motion graphics, adding visual excitement to Web pages. Students learn Flash animation techniques to create moving type presentations for Web sites and ads. Hands-on projects focus on the expressive power of type in this medium.

Flash Web Site Design
Equip yourself to create Web sites with strong functionality, interactivity, and usability. Students learn to create compelling, well-designed Flash sites, avoiding common pitfalls and "Flash abuse." The emphasis is on learning a step-by-step approach to Flash site design that can be applied to a range of professional projects.

Digital Video Editing I
Learn the art and craft of editing videos from two award-winning filmmakers. This course explores techniques that can be applied in a range of non-linear editing programs, including Avid, Final Cut, and Premiere. Yet the main focus is not just on developing software skills—it’s on exploring the magic behind video editing. Challenging projects including editing a commercial, an interview, a narrative scene, a music video, a video diary, and a text title sequence.

After Effects I
Adobe After Effects is a powerful application used to create motion graphics and visual effects for film and video. Learn how to use After Effects to create sophisticated motion graphics—using text and object animations, compositing videos and images, and adding audio and effects. You’ll learn how to set keyframes on a timeline and work with transform properties, motion paths, masks, and effects, developing a solid foundation in this increasingly popular and versatile program.