Brainstorm School Reviews

[Curtis Cassel]

Willie Jimenez takes us behind the scenes and reviews Brainstorm School and explains what it was like and whether he would actually recommend it to others looking to the digital illustration and concept art.

Brainstorm is an art & design school with a heavy concentration in Entertainment Design based in Glendale, Ca with a core focus on problem solving, story-telling, & design. Brainstorm has a catered curriculum of design fundamentals and process that are necessary to be a concept artist for video games and film industries. The founders, James Paick and John Park, both have extensive experience within art & design for games and film as well as over 10 years of teaching and art education experience. The school was ranked in The Top 5 Best Digital Illustration Schools for 2018, by The Rookies.

The idea is that your work will get better and it will reflect in your portfolio and that's what's going to get you hired. With 60 hours of homework, trust me you will grow and get better. At Brainstorm though it's not regular homework that needs to be done but weekly projects for ten weeks. No one warned me of the workload until after I was signed up for three classes - some students were struggling with only two courses at the same time.

Not having scores or a set bar for you to reach is actually a very interesting idea. It makes it so that both beginners, and advanced students can all work together in the same class. The critiques are very individualized and no matter how good you are your work can always be better. So the more work you put into the assignments the better the critiques will be. The critiques can be about anything and everything. At my old school if the assignment was about a certain subject then you were only graded on that subject. Where here are Brainstorm they will review and make notes on everything they see, even if it bleeds into another subject or a class outside of what was being taught - you hand in assignments on perspective and you get nailed for the anatomy, which is great, because it pushes you to spend more time and deliver more complete looking work.

They stay extra hours and they share their personal info so you can contact them. They pay for models to come in so you can do life drawing. Bring food some times. Share free access to their gum roads, and even share links to things they think you should read and watch. The instructors are very accessible.

There are many advantages to being able to pick and choose your classes and what you want to spend time on, rather than taking and sitting through filler classes at a 4 year diploma course elsewhere. The speed in which you learn at Brainstorm is very impressive.

There's no job placement or accreditation at Brainstorm, all you get is a kick ass portfolio. Which honestly is all you need. It's up to you how much work you want to put into your assignments. Some courses let the students pick the direction of the class or the subject of your next project. You can either spend days on it or you can get it done all in one night and hand it in the next day, but you get what you put into it. Theres only so much a school or teacher can do, you have learn to push yourself.

I grew up in a family passionate about the power of medicine. My parents have always encouraged learning about the sciences, so I eventually cultivated an interest in chemistry. But on the side, I took great happiness in reading fantasy book series, playing games on my Nintendo DS, and keeping up-to-date on the latest Batman/Justice League Rebirth comics. I loved imagining my own original character immersed in the rich storylines of these books and games. Eventually I began sketching these characters everywhere, even on Post-it notes and the backs of my homework assignments.

Coming into college, I ditched the doodles to focus on my education in engineering. But my sister gifted me a tablet, and my love for art resurfaced. I bought Procreate, taught myself how to use it, and began sketching during lectures instead of taking notes. I dedicated almost all my free time towards portrait photo studies and began posting daily art on Instagram. It was a constant and exhausting struggle to balance studying with art.

The turning point came when I was introduced to Riot games (Valorant and League), whose game art instantly magnified my desire to draw tenfold. It introduced me to the world of digital art under the gaming industry, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

I decided to complete my college education because I had invested so much time and effort into it already. But I graduated with a degree that felt empty and a collection of digital art that meant the world to me. So I finally decided to pursue art seriously.

I also had a major issue with my technique. My illustration process developed more as a trial-and-error method, where I would just continually paint over my drawings until they somewhat matched what I visualized in my head. I realized much later down the line that this was an ineffective way to make art, and I had to consciously reconstruct a more organized way of painting.

I signed up for a mentorship at CGVerse for two main reasons. I already knew I wanted to break into the 2D illustration field in the gaming industry. Since this goal was clear to me, I felt as if an art school with a broad range of art classes to explore various art directions may not be the most useful education. I was looking for an organized way of learning that was catered to the field I wanted to work in. Since I was most interested in splash art illustrations, I felt like the CGVerse mentorship from a League of Legends artist was directly in-line with what I wanted to learn and thus best suited for me. Getting to learn from an artist working for the company that inspired me to pursue art seriously was just an amazing opportunity I could not pass up.

I took the illustration mentorship with Augusto Quirino, where I was able to complete 3 splash art illustrations based on League of Legends characters. It was an amazing learning process from start to end because Augusto helped split the long and daunting illustration process into smaller, more manageable stages. He explained the theory behind composition and thumbnailing, including his creative process on brainstorming rich, story-telling ideas. He also went into depth on the technical aspects of his process, including how to use adjustment layers and tools in Photoshop to help experiment with mood/color. Finally, I really appreciated how he shared his optimized method of detailed rendering using methods such as photobashing because it really helped make the polishing stage easier.

One of the most helpful things I learned from Augusto was his solutions for combating the burnout that can occur with working on a splash art illustration. He was always giving the most helpful suggestions to help troubleshoot my mental obstacles. For instance, I often wasted time doing multiple paintovers when something in my illustration appeared unrealistic. Augusto reminded me to separate myself from my art when frustrated and return to photos for reference rather than try to fix everything on my own.

In between each illustration completion, I was also given smaller assignments to practice the areas that I struggled with the most. For me, it was material rendering, so Augusto recommended I practice rendering various materials on a character and really focus on following a structured method (such as blocking out shadows first and moving onto highlight) rather than just painting everything from left to right. This assignment was so insightful because it revealed how unorganized and inefficient my rendering had been prior, and I was able to render much faster in my final splash art illustration.

There were definitely a good amount of challenges I ran into, with troubleshooting my painting process and maintaining stamina to polish off each splash art illustration. Augusto helped keep me grounded and reminded me of the important goals and vision I had in mind at the start of the illustrations.

For now, I plan to improve my online presence by updating my portfolio, creating a personal website, and making a LinkedIn profile. I also hope to expand on more social media platforms (beyond Instagram) to extend my connections to other artists across the art community and industry.

Brainstorm school is a concept art and design focused learning center focused in the entertainment industry of Games, film, animation and more. We prepare artists of all ages with foundation, digital techniques and design theory to develop a portfolio for a career in the design field.

Registration is based on a first come first serve system. A Student is considered registered when full payment is received. A registration fee will be applied to each class, workshops and Uninstructed Mentorships purchased.

*It is highly recommended to all new students to start with foundation in order to transition to the intermediate and advanced course with a solid footing. Please refer to section C1 for curriculum details.

To qualify requests need to be made in writing and according to the schedule below. Eligible Refunds, Transfers, and Credits will be granted with specified fees applied, if the request is made appropriate within the specified time frame. (Fees and schedule are listed below) ***Please note- No refunds, only transfers or credits will be allowed after the cut off which is 7 days prior to the registered term.

Credits Code- A credit code to use for future terms will be allowed with $50.00 fee deduction per class. ***Any request that is made within 7 days prior to the start of the term will not qualify for a refund, only credit code, or transfers.

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