This is a legacy course, a new and improved version with added material is available titled Creative Composition 2.0

Creative Composition (Legacy)

This class is the medicine you need whether you know it or not. This is the prescription that will make you better, the exercise that will make you faster, the vegetables, the antioxidants of art. Most beginning artists don’t know they need it or find it difficult and skip it to the detriment of their art.

Making a great illustration requires good drawing and rendering skills, BUT, many don’t realize that there’s a preliminary process that MUST take place first. Composing the image is essential to creating a beautiful painting, illustration, graphic novel image, comic panel, or book cover image. Drawing characters, objects and environments accurately and in proportion is a good foundation to making a great image but it’s only part of what you need. Putting everything together to create a complete image with effective eye movements, balance, focal points, legibility, and communication requires good design skills.

In this class you will learn:

  • The 4 principles of design

  • How to apply these principles in planning your image

  • How to make your images more legible

  • How to make complex images look simple

  • How to create a hierarchy of focal points

  • Methods of working up from a thumbnail sketch to finished drawing

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About the Instructor

Illustrator Will Terry

Will Terry has been a freelance illustrator for 26 years. He got his start working for magazines and newspapers in the Washington D.C. area. His early clients include publications such as Time, Money, WSJ and ads for Sprint, Pizza Hut, Fed Ex, and Master Card. He has illustrated about 30 children’s books for a number of publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, and Penguin. When he's not mountain biking, hiking, or snowboarding he works out of the svslearn.com office in Provo Utah. 

Course curriculum

    1. What this class is about

    2. Intro

    3. Design principles

    4. Thumbnails, Thirds, and Lines

    5. Negative Space, Implied Lines

    6. Emphasis

    7. Unity

    8. Balance

    9. Critiques

    10. Critiques part 2

    11. Night 4 with guy

    12. Supplemental Materials

About this course

  • $150.00
  • 12 lessons
  • 12.5 hours of video content
  • 11

    Videos

  • 12

    Hours

  • 1

    PDF

Reviews

5 star rating

Great start to my subscription!

Shawn Turek

This is the first course I watched (and finished) after subscribing about a month ago, and I really liked it. The checklist and workbook are great resources ...

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This is the first course I watched (and finished) after subscribing about a month ago, and I really liked it. The checklist and workbook are great resources and I'm putting them to use. Watching Will, Jake, and Guy work and talk through their process was very insightful. The critiques were also really valuable. Looking forward to watching more videos.

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5 star rating

Very good!

Alex Diaz

This is a must-watch for anyone who wants to really understand what composition is all about. It has been of tremendous help for me and I have watched it twi...

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This is a must-watch for anyone who wants to really understand what composition is all about. It has been of tremendous help for me and I have watched it twice to get the most of it. I think I'll watch it again for better retention. Totally recommendable.

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5 star rating

Excellent!

Carol Kohn

As soon as you said you need a process, you had my complete trust and admiration. I'm a writer who believes in process. But tell that to other writers (some,...

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As soon as you said you need a process, you had my complete trust and admiration. I'm a writer who believes in process. But tell that to other writers (some, anyway) and they will call you a hack. In fact, a process is a professional's most important productivity tool. I loved everything about this class. It reinforced some of what I already knew and opened my eyes to new ideas. Thank you!!!

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5 star rating

Inspiring

Sarah Glazer

This course really helped me become super aware of composition and value. I will probably go back and re-watch parts of it for reminders. I learned more from...

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This course really helped me become super aware of composition and value. I will probably go back and re-watch parts of it for reminders. I learned more from this class than I did in my college classes from years ago.

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5 star rating

Excellent Course

Anthony Keyes

Thoroughly enjoyed viewing this course, and working through many of the exercises in the workbook. While some of it was refresher information to me, most of...

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Thoroughly enjoyed viewing this course, and working through many of the exercises in the workbook. While some of it was refresher information to me, most of it was not, and watching and listening carefully to Will, Guy, and Jake work their way through to solutions, and solving problems could have been it's own course altogether.

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5 star rating

Fantastic

Ernest Muračiov

Absolutely awesome course, covering the composition in a fun and relaxing way.

Absolutely awesome course, covering the composition in a fun and relaxing way.

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5 star rating

Theory and practical working process, for the win.

Tessa Wrathall

Loved this course. Loved it. I really liked how there was a main instructor with guest instructors. I think that dynamic helps flesh out the content and hel...

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Loved this course. Loved it. I really liked how there was a main instructor with guest instructors. I think that dynamic helps flesh out the content and helps cover questions and problems that might not otherwise arise with a single instructor. I think sometimes instructors are so used to the subject matter they are teaching that they leave out things that might be confusing to a beginner, but I was very impressed to find that Will Terry is very sensitive to what might be confusing for a less advanced artist. It's an amazing quality to have in a teacher. It was also so useful to have a "working process" built in to this course. This is not just a theory course, but it has a lot of practical working examples and advice that I think is so much more helpful than theory itself. The workbook and exercises they have you do during the video portion are extremely helpful in solidifying the concepts. I've always struggled to implement a helpful working process with thumbnails, and this made it so much more clear and approachable. I highly recommend this course. Take it, and do the exercises!

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5 star rating

My first video from SVS

John Marcotte

This class is so amazing. For artist who don't know much and want to just improve the way they create art. This creative composition helps. I've learned so m...

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This class is so amazing. For artist who don't know much and want to just improve the way they create art. This creative composition helps. I've learned so many new things to help me. I struggled with composition and I feel like this class helped me understand the basics; probably more.

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5 star rating

Really helpful

Joakim Dyngeland

Great course. I learned so much! Thank you

Great course. I learned so much! Thank you

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Our videos are custom made to show you how to get the skills necessary to break into the dynamic field of illustration.