Pablo Enrique Monterrubio-Benet

Bring artwork to life using traditional and digital media to create one-of-a-kind animations. In this exciting camp, students learn principles of animation while exploring various techniques, including stop-motion, frame-by-frame methods, digitally modified video, and computer-aided techniques. Students will use digital tools such as laptops, still cameras, video cameras, sound recorders, iPads, sketchbook work, and other traditional processes to express contemporary artistic hybrid methods.

Bring artwork to life using traditional and digital media to create one-of-a-kind animations. In this exciting camp, students learn principles of animation while exploring various techniques, including stop-motion, frame-by-frame methods, digitally modified video, and computer-aided techniques. Students will use digital tools such as laptops, still cameras, video cameras, sound recorders, iPads, sketchbook work, and other traditional processes to express contemporary artistic hybrid methods.

Discover the powerful language and history behind visual storytelling through engaging demonstrations and hands-on exercises to spark your imagination and inspire your creativity. You'll have the opportunity to research and discuss the works of groundbreaking artists, culminating in a final project that reflects your unique vision. Throughout the course, you'll blend traditional techniques¿like sketching in your journal¿with digital tools such as Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. Inspiring field trips to the Art Institute of Chicago and SAIC's extensive video resources deepen your understanding of the art form. Lively discussions about influential time-based artists like Tony Oursler, Shirin Neshat, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jennifer Steinkamp will enrich your creative journey. No prior experience is necessary, but being comfortable with computers will give you a helpful edge.

Discover the exciting world of animation as you bring your drawings and ideas to life. In this course, you'll explore traditional and digital animation techniques, such as frame-by-frame and stop-motion. Get ready to work on various cool projects that let you express your imagination through motion studies, character and environment design, and captivating storytelling. You'll learn cinematic techniques, including composition, set design, and prop creation, while developing a final project that reflects your unique goals and interests. To enhance your experience, enjoy artist presentations, take inspiring trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, and engage in dynamic group discussions.

Discover the exciting world of animation as you bring your drawings and ideas to life. In this course, you'll explore traditional and digital animation techniques, such as frame-by-frame and stop-motion. Get ready to work on various cool projects that let you express your imagination through motion studies, character and environment design, and captivating storytelling. You'll learn cinematic techniques, including composition, set design, and prop creation, while developing a final project that reflects your unique goals and interests. To enhance your experience, enjoy artist presentations, take inspiring trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, and engage in dynamic group discussions.

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

The course Research Studio II builds on the learning outcomes from Research Studio I, asking students to continue to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities.

This spring the entire Contemporary Practice department will have a shared umbrella topic for our RSII courses: Contemporary Now. All RSII classes will engage with the present and what is happening right now. With the world moving so fast - a pandemic, fires burning across the US west, people marching in the streets across the globe, and the storms that seem to keep coming, it is critical we ask questions of ourselves as artists, designers, educators and cultural producers: What responsibility do we have at any moment in history? How can the diversity of our practices: research, study, making and actions, address the present and design the future we want to see?

In RSII courses students will investigate this shared departmental thematic through the intersection of their own practice and the pedagogical practices of their faculty. All RSII classes are interdisciplinary, faculty have provided a subtitle, and a short description to describe the lens through which their class will explore the theme of Contemporary Now.

This class focuses on the study of film language, shot composition and idea development for time based media. Through the creation of storyboards, animatics, mood boards, character designs, and concept development students gain a thorough understanding of how to develop their ideas in the pre-preproduction process. Students who work in film, video, performance, and animation will learn narrative and experimental methods. Practical, conceptual and artistic topics will be addressed.

A variety of short films and excerpts from live action films or animations will be shown in class, like work by Brad Bird or independent filmmakers like Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels. Reading excerpts on composition, editing and storyboarding will be assigned.

Coursework may vary but typically includes drawing character designs and storyboards, making animatics and some reading through weekly or bi-weeklt assignments. The final project involves concept development and a presentation, followed by a final animatic with sound.