Certificate in Art and Design Fundamental

at Centennial College - Story Arts Centre Campus Canada

Game Development & Design is a three-year advanced diploma program that aims to develop expert game designers who are able to create and develop their own titles. The program prepares students to become both technically literate and able to advance the conceptual and cultural potential of games.

The program concentrates on the practical applications of the game production process from the artistic, managerial, and technical sides. Students will be introduced to 2D and 3D design processes, foundations of computer programming, as well as how to communicate effectively with teams of artists and programmers to design, prototype and iterate their own fully playable 2D and 3D games. Students will also learn the professional and personal skills needed for success in the industry.

The Script to Screen – Advanced Television and Film program at Centennial College offers a comprehensive, in-depth and hands-on understanding of what goes into developing and producing quality feature films and TV shows.

This multidisciplinary two-semester post-graduate program — facilitated by the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design in the hub of Toronto's film and television district — will be especially beneficial for writers, directors, producers, editors, actors, and other film and television craftspeople who want to expand their industry knowledge.

The major focus of the first semester will be on creating, pitching, outlining, developing, drafting and polishing production-ready short film scripts. During the second semester, you'll have the opportunity to prepare, perform in, shoot and/or post a number of these productions.

Additionally, Script to Screen – Advanced Television and Film will see you deconstructing classic films, television shows and scripts of all genres. The program will also provide advanced instruction from industry professionals in your major and minor areas of craft interest, along with extensive employment information.

Program Highlights

• The Script to Screen – Advanced Television and Film program is unique among the few other post-graduate film and television offerings currently available in the Greater Toronto Area.
• Instead of immediately streaming you into master classes, the first semester will ensure you obtain a solid working knowledge of the various roles people have when working on a film or television production.
• The amount of included foundational lessons will allow you to better collaborate, improvise, problem-solve, and empathize with your fellow cast and crew members.
• The program will focus on dramatic filmmaking, comedy and several other genres. It will not, however, include documentary filmmaking.
• At a time when student films continue to be key to gaining a foothold in the business, the time and effort devoted to script development in Semester 1 and production and post-production in Semester 2 will result in higher quality student films than are customarily produced.

Centennial College's Game – Art ?program will allow you to gain the skills to launch a career in the dynamic, ever-expanding and intensely creative interactive game industry. In just 16 consecutive months, the offering will prepare you for a career of imagination, innovative design and storytelling. 

You'll receive intensive hands-on training in Game – Art? and learn to build traditional 3D art assets for games, develop game environments and characters, and express your one-of-a-kind creativity. Developed by industry professionals and School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design instructors with a forward-thinking approach towards the next wave of interactive games, this games diploma program is well-respected in the industry. 

The Lifestyle Media program is a one-of-a-kind graduate certificate offering designed to train specialized media professionals who are at the hub of lifestyle media.
In this media program's courses, you'll effectively collaborate with real-world industry partners, clients and audiences to produce quality content for web, social media and traditional media platforms. You'll also gain the skills necessary to work entrepreneurially using contemporary digital media platforms and technologies to market yourself as an independent brand.
Lifestyle communicators are subject-matter experts who are able to take their passion and depth of knowledge to reach behind-the-scenes and share these worlds with audiences that want to both learn and be entertained. Successful lifestyle communicators influence trends and tastes and can become trusted sources of reliable information.

Program Highlights

• The interdisciplinary Lifestyle Media curriculum will include writing, visual communications, social media and entrepreneurship.
• You'll gain the ability to develop sector-specific expertise in areas such as fashion, beauty, food and health.
• There will be a strong focus on social media and web production, including analytics and measurement.
• You'll participate in an industry field placement in an area of your interest.

The Digital Visual Effects program is the only two-year college diploma offering of its kind in Ontario. Facilitated at Centennial College's Story Arts Centre, it provides you with the opportunity to learn the industry-standard techniques required to produce the photo-realistic visual effects seen in films that would be impossible to capture with a live-action camera.

In this diploma program's courses, you learn to work with the various aspects of the film-making process and bring them together into a seamless final product, while also developing your skills in industry-standard software. The Digital Visual Effects program focuses on the core skills needed to make you employable in the VFX industry and gives you the ability to explain how visual effects contribute to the entire process of storytelling in motion pictures.

You channel your efforts into demonstrating these concepts and core skills through a unique final project, for which you produce a demo reel suitable for job application in the visual effects field.

Program Highlights

• You learn industry-standard techniques in image processing, editing, lighting, rendering, matte painting, set extension, compositing and post VFX that employers are looking for.
• During the program, you produce a marketable demo and self-promotional package suitable for the VFX industry.
• A field placement in the final semester provides a valuable opportunity to work in the visual effects industry.
• You attend Digital Visual Effects courses at Centennial College's Story Arts Centre, located close to Toronto's downtown core and the major VFX studios.
• During your time in the program, you study and work in labs that are equipped with the latest tools and industry-standard software.
• The program provides a practical, hands-on and entrepreneurial approach that prepares you for sustainable VFX-related careers.
• Opportunities exist to collaborate with students in the digital animation, game design, photography, broadcasting, music, art and theatre programs at the Story Arts Centre. This is a unique opportunity to network, learn and work with industry professionals.

The Animation - 3D program at Centennial College runs for 16 consecutive months and, in that time, prepares you to successfully launch a career in digital animation.

Created in 1996, this animation program takes place at the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design. Its intensive approach has become internationally recognized, on top of kick-starting the careers of hundreds of talented digital artists.

The 3D Animation program focuses on production-style training and offers a unique project-based learning experience that is applauded within the animation, visual effects and game industries. You'll develop skills for careers in animation, film, television, broadcast design and games.

Program Highlights

• The Animation - 3D program gives you 24-hour access to computer labs and workstations.
• Subjects covered also include life drawing, acting for animation and storyboard training.
• Class sizes are small, at a maximum of 21 students per class, giving you the opportunity to work closely alongside industry professionals who collectively have amassed more than 1,000 hours of instruction.
• Training is enhanced by industry-leading guest speakers, participatory workshops and company studio tours.
• You are assisted in producing demo reels that showcase your abilities to potential employers.
• This School of Communication, Media, Arts and Design program boasts an industry field placement. While this opportunity is unpaid, it lasts eight weeks and offers valuable on-the-job training and industry contacts. You will be provided with a list of Toronto studios accepting interns. When seeking industry field placement opportunities, you will be required to make direct contact with animation studios.
• An active alumni network allows you to build your own list of industry contacts.

In Centennial College's three-year Journalism program, you gain the skills you need to navigate and succeed in a changing industry. By going from the classroom to the newsroom, you come to understand the multifaceted and fast-paced journalism industry, which focuses on interesting people, places and things.

In this advanced diploma program you:

• Cover a variety of topics while developing the critical foundation skills you need for the industry.
• Apply your newsroom skills to an award-winning community newspaper, a news website and radio-television news, all of which makes you versatile and industry-ready as soon as you graduate.
• Develop new multiplatform skills for the evolving world of news reporting.
• From covering breaking news to exploring human interest stories, as a journalist you will be responsible for reporting events, interviewing newsmakers and examining the issues of our times.

Please note: This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware and software requirements. 

Program Highlights

• You experience one-on-one interaction with faculty members in an ultra-modern, professional newsroom.
• The Story Arts Centre campus, where the Journalism program is facilitated, offers you access to publishing, broadcast and Internet facilities.
• Hands-on, real-world experience is available through award-winning community media, including the East York Observer newspaper, Freshly Pressed magazine, the Toronto Observer news website, radio and television newscasts available online.
• With a stellar faculty, whose combined credits include NBC News, CBC News, CTV News, OMNI, The Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, National Post, Globe and Mail and more, your journalism training is relevant, demanding and highly effective.
• You connect with excellent faculty, mentors and guest speakers and get to partake in exclusive field trips.
• Through the field trips and your field placement, you have the opportunity to make exclusive news media connections.

Contemporary Journalism is a three-semester graduate certificate program that will explore new tools, trends and directions in journalism while maintaining an emphasis on sourced, credible and verifiable storytelling. You'll learn in an interactive environment with courses covering news reporting, writing, editing and visual storytelling while also exploring social media, mobile and emerging technologies (virtual reality), and delving into multimedia storytelling and data journalism. 

In a digital world, the smartphone is increasingly the newsroom for journalists and the living room for the audience. The Contemporary Journalism program will emphasize the use of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, to source, produce and share credible multimedia journalism.
The program will culminate with entrepreneurial and professional practice elements, including a seven-week field placement, during which you'll demonstrate and refine your skills in today’s rapidly evolving media environment. 

Program Highlights

• Develop new multiplatform, digital and social media skills for the evolving world of reporting and sharing;
• Learn to write, produce and share stories in an energetic, dynamic and hands-on environment, led by a faculty of seasoned professionals and educators drawn from all sectors of the industry;
• Gain entrepreneurial skills along with personal branding abilities to help you stand out in the industry;
• Collaborate with the other students enrolled in programs such as photography, public relations, film and television, music, art, theatre and interactive media management;
• Participate in client-focused projects.

The Advertising - Creative and Digital Strategy program addresses the high demand for creators in the digital field of advertising and marketing, which is growing faster than all other areas in the advertising industry.

This Advertising Graduate Certificate program takes place at the Story Arts Centre in Toronto and blends Centennial College's experience in digital media with our strengths in business and marketing. The program focuses on helping you create engaging digital experiences built on solid creative strategy. You become immersed in the digital field and learn how to develop breakthrough creative advertising campaigns.

Through your courses, you acquire the necessary skills in creative strategy, writing, developing creative concepts, art direction, collaboration, presentation and entrepreneurialism. During a field placement, which is part of the second semester, Creative and Digital Strategy students take part in team assignments, working in a collaborative environment in the real world.

You’ll also learn new technologies and platforms that keep you informed about recent innovations in the digital creative field.

The program focuses on five key areas:

• Creative strategy, to ensure advertising meets clients' business objectives.
• Digital storytelling, to build on the power of storytelling in developing impactful creative advertising.
• Brand engagement, to create strong connections with consumers.
• Entrepreneurship, to foster key business skills that encourage innovation and risk-taking.
• Emerging platforms, to ensure you are up-to-date on the latest in digital technology impacting the advertising industry.

In this program, you:

• Gain an understanding of the digital creation process from a creative director's point of view.
• Learn how to craft a creative digital strategy that delivers results.
• Develop a strong portfolio and case studies for prospective employers.
• Enhance presentation skills to help sell ideas.
• Understand the impact of technology on creative development.
• Foster digital storytelling skills to bring brands to life online.
• Analyze and solve business and marketing challenges for clients by applying innovative creative and digital techniques.
• Complement in-class education with a field placement that will provide the opportunity to work in the industry and hone your skills.

Please note:- This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device (i.e. laptop, tablet) that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware requirements. 

Program Highlights

• This Creative and Digital Strategy program gives you the opportunity to turn a degree or diploma into an exciting career in a growing field in the advertising industry.
• You learn how to create digitally-centric creative portfolio pieces using current industry design and writing standards.
• Faculty members have extensive industry experience and can help you connect to the industry by tapping into their personal networks.
• The program is offered at the Story Arts Centre, which is about 15 minutes from most advertising and digital marketing agencies in Toronto.
• At the Story Arts Centre, there are numerous opportunities to collaborate with students in a range of other marketing and communications-focused programs to enhance the learning experience.

The Communications and Media Fundamentals program at Centennial College is an intensive one-year preparation undertaking. If you're looking for a pathway to pursue further post-secondary education, consider this certificate program, which will help you to develop communication skills while offering an introduction to the communications and media industries.

With guidance from experienced Communications and Media Fundamentals faculty members and practical application of theory, you'll obtain competencies for short- and long-term success.

In this media program's courses, you'll:

• Partake in creative exploration and experimentation with contemporary digital and social media production tools;
• Create and maintain forums on social media networks using rich media applications;
• Apply theoretical principles to produce practical and focused written communications and media solutions;
• Research and describe media forms, audiences, platforms, and "traditional" and "non-traditional" communication methods;
• Use appropriate vocabulary, terminology, basic numeracy and communicative strategies necessary for the communications and media environment;
• Apply developed English language skills to a presentation portfolio;
• Write and present in basic narrative formats for a variety of media platforms;
• Examine roles and responsibilities of global citizenship in personal and professional contexts;
• Examine beliefs, values and behaviours that form individual and community identities and the basis for respectful relationships;
• Apply knowledge of communications and media workplaces, environments, and practices to develop job search strategies and early career success strategies.

Program Highlights
When you successfully complete Communications and Media Fundamentals, you'll receive an offer to these College's School of Communication, Media, Arts and Design three-year advanced diploma programs:

• Advertising and Marketing Communications Management
• Journalism
• Broadcasting and Film