Flagship program · The Art Institute
A sixteen-week Saturday studio in digital art, taught with the same tools and workflows working professionals use. Students build skill in drawing, light, color, and digital production, and finish with a page of their own in a published book.
Format
Saturday weekend studio
Length
16 weeks
Sessions
10:30 am – 1:30 pm
Tuition
$4,800
Why this exists
A lot of art instruction stops at technique. Students learn to render a sphere or copy a style, but never the full process that turns an idea into a finished, professional page.
The Art Institute teaches that whole process. Students work the way professionals do, in Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop, with layered files, non-destructive workflows, flatting, holds, and rendering. They apply it to real pages, from first sketch to finished art.
We don’t use AI prompts and we don’t teach shortcuts. We teach why every line and every color matters.
The curriculum
Each unit builds on the one before it. Here is what students study, what they practice, and what they can do by the end.
Read the full course syllabus →Gesture and construction, human and creature anatomy, shape language and silhouette reading, perspective, and how to stage a scene in space.
What you practice
By the end: Take an idea from rough construction to clean, confident lineart.
How light behaves: key, fill, rim, and ambient light; the shadow family of form, core, cast, and occlusion; falloff, material response, and color theory across value, saturation, and hue.
What you practice
By the end: Light a subject convincingly and hold a controlled value structure.
The professional pipeline in Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop: selections, masks, adjustment layers, layer modes, brush economy, file setup, and non-destructive workflows.
What you practice
By the end: Produce a clean, well-organized file that a professional could pick up and continue.
Storytelling with color: color scripting, atmosphere and mood, emotional keying, and continuity across a sequence, moving from coloring individual images to deliberate visual narrative.
What you practice
By the end: Build a short color-scripted sequence that carries emotion and reads clearly.
Finishing work to a professional standard: the inks, flats, holds, and rendering progression; page proofing; print prep; and assembling a body of work for college and art-school review.
What you practice
By the end: Leave with finished, high-resolution pieces ready for review.
Guest mentors
Each cohort includes feedback sessions and workshops with artists, colorists, and publishers who work in comics and illustration today. Students get their work critiqued by people who do this for a living.
Author / Illustrator / Publisher
Wrote and illustrated Sonic the Hedgehog comics from 1993–2006, including every issue of Knuckles the Echidna and the Princess Sally miniseries. Has worked on Star Trek, King of the Hill, and Zelda. Founder of Floating Island Productions.
Penciller / Animator / Writer
Award-winning artist with 50+ years experience. First artist on Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series (1992). Co-creator on The Simpsons comics and The Flintstones comics. Co-founded San Diego Comic-Con in 1970.
Professional Colorist
Working colorist since 2011, with credits at DC, Image, Vault, IDW, and Dark Horse. Teaches digital coloring online to thousands of students. Specializes in lighting, mood, and rendering workflow.
The capstone
Recent hardcovers from Floating Island Productions: Knuckles Omnibus Vol. 1, Scott Shaw’s Sonic Days, and The Shadow Files.
Floating Island Productions, founded by Ken Penders, releases hardcover editions of his original stories, restored, recolored, and re-lettered for a new generation of readers.
As a capstone, every student is invited to contribute a finished page to a real book, created with the professional mentors’ guidance. Each contributor is credited by name alongside the professionals on the team, and receives a copy of the hardcover when it prints.
The credit is a milestone, but the point of the program is everything students learn getting there.
What students need
A digital drawing tablet, typically an iPad with Apple Pencil or a Surface Pro with Surface Pen.
Clip Studio Paint, the industry-standard tool for comic, manga, and illustration production. PCI provides licenses for enrolled students.
None required. Students at every level start from the fundamentals and build up. Those with prior experience tend to move faster.
Cohorts are intentionally small. Reach out and we’ll walk you through the next start date, the curriculum, and what your student needs to begin.
