Sign-ups open now! Let’s learn about painting memorable characters for the splash art, trading card game, and animation industry! Every week will include a combination of lectures, demos, and live paintovers and feedback catered to your goals and area of focus. We will cover everything that Victor Maury learned in his time in the animation industry creating characters for Arcane, League of Legends, and Dungeons & Dragons, including illustration fundamentals, designing characters, creating a fun and sustainable art practice, and finishing and rendering your work. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it is like to design and paint characters for splash, this class is for you! Date & Time: Saturdays at 10AM ET starting January 31, 2026 Skill level: All skill levels welcome Tiers: Receive feedback or spectate without homework feedback Format: 5 hour live class each week with combination of lectures, demos, and feedback. Recordings are generally provided within a couple days of each live session. Materials: Any digital or traditional mediums. Paintovers will be done digitally. All weeks will be a combination of lecture, demos and feedback. Week 1 – Intro: the Artist’s Toolkit A brief look at my own art journey, introducing the critique tier, and running through our tools for telling stories. Week 2 – Brief, Pillars, & Thumbnails An in-depth dive into how to interpret a brief or craft one from scratch, using style guides, pillars, and word maps. Week 3 – Recognizing Archetypes How to wield the timeless power of myth, and adapt symbols for the modern age. Week 4 – Demystifying Values Notan vs. Form. Patterns, design, grouping, and gradients. Week 5 – Conveying Power earning to recognize the many forms of power, both explicit and implicit, and how to put our characters at the center of it all. Week 6 – Drawing from your own Experience Making use of the ingredients inherent to you to make a unique and delicious dish. Week 7 – On Rendering From the mechanical to the lyrical. Microcompositions, hypnosis, & spotlight moments. Week 8 – the Final 1% How to push beyond your current limits, time and time again.
