What is Creative Media?

Creative Media combines traditional and digital art skills with the business knowledge needed to succeed in today's creator economy. You’ll deepen your skill set and hone your creative process, while becoming familiar with branding, entrepreneurship, and curatorial practices. . You'll learn to create work that stands out in the marketplace while developing the business skills to turn your creativity into a sustainable career.

Why study Creative Media at Champlain?

At Champlain, you'll start taking creative media courses in your first semester, not waiting until junior year like at most colleges. Our program offers advantages you won't find elsewhere: Customize your education by choosing two concentrations from six options: Creative Writing, Game Media, Interaction Design, Moving Image, Visual Art & Design, or Sonic Arts Learn both the creative and business sides of the industry from faculty with real-world experience Build a professional portfolio of work that showcases your unique voice and technical skills Develop connections with creative industry professionals through internships and projects

What skills and techniques will I learn studying Creative Media?

By the time you graduate, you will: Master multiple media tools – Combine digital and traditional approaches to create professional-quality work Develop business skills – Learn branding, entrepreneurship, and marketing strategies specific to creative fields Build a professional portfolio – Create work that showcases your unique style and technical abilities Think strategically – Connect your creative work to real-world applications and market demands Adapt to industry changes – Develop the flexibility to work across different media as technology evolve

Curriculum for Creative Media Degree

Your career in creative media begins now with Champlain’s Upside-Down Curriculum. Discover the difference that doing on day one has on your success.

Our Upside-Down Curriculum is designed to prepare creative media students like you with a comprehensive understanding of fine arts. You’ll gain a strong set of skills in multiple media forms while tackling big-picture ideas. You’ll explore your artistic process by evaluating, deconstructing, and revising your work in innovative production classes and seminars.

The Creative Media curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including your role as a creative practitioner within your local community. You’ll consider topics such as how to market yourself and identify exhibition or publication opportunities. You’ll gain a rich artistic skill set, develop your own ideas about artistic expression, and push creative boundaries in unprecedented ways. Plus, it emphasizes a hands-on approach, giving you opportunities to engage in portfolio-building applications of media techniques, tools, and concepts.

As a Creative Media student, you will choose two focus areas — a primary focus area and a complementary focus area.

Learning Outcomes for Creative Media

This curriculum is an example of possible courses in this major. Always check the college catalog for the exact requirements.

Formative Knowledge

CRE 180 Making Culture: Seminar in Art & Popular

This course introduces students to the notion of creative work as knowledge work-unique ways of understanding the world through the arts, design, humanities, and media. Drawing on diverse and historical creative work, including their own, students will explore the potential for varied creative practices and tools to make meaning and how systems-political, economic, cultural-influence what people can make and whether it holds value. Students will also learn to apply critical frameworks in examining the world of creative expression and cultural production. This course fulfills the requirement for FRM-118 Knowledge Making in the Creative Arts, Media and Humanities.

Prerequisites	Creative Media BFA majors. Open to all students as an FRM GenEd course.
Credits	3

ART 120 Art History: Survey of Western and Non-Western Art

In this course, students will examine how historical forces have influenced the emergence of creative technologies and cultural production. Through the study of various artists, art works, and artistic movements, along with theories and philosophies of art, they will develop research questions, analyze, and apply critical frameworks to discussions of artistic practice. Students will consider how global power structures have affected and continue to affect the work of artists and scholars. Being the most theory-based course in the FRM block, ART 120 will bolster students' analytical understanding of activities in the cultural sphere, advancing their critical capacities that complement technical skills, artistic practice, and creative development. This course fulfills the requirement for FRM-128 Global Contexts in the Creative Arts, Media and Humanities.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

FRM 138 Engaging With Complexity: Arts & Hum.

The course provides students with opportunities to develop specialized projects in art, humanities, and media production. Students will apply critical frameworks, including theories, and use interdisciplinary methods to explore how culture is shaped by popular appeal, innovation, and mechanisms of power. Students will work individually and collaboratively to bring creative work-narratives, images, multimedia forms-and rigorous scholarship to complex challenges in varied contexts.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

Artistic Process

CRE 100 Making Art

This foundational course for Creative Media program students will explore areas necessary for artistic exploration and achievement. These areas include: inspiration, mimesis, essence, abstraction, mixed media, execution and audience. We will draw upon several artistic disciplines in this class, namely visual art, creative writing, interactive design, filmmaking and videography, games, music and sound, and performance.

Prerequisites	Must be enrolled in CREM.BFA, or by permission of Dean.
Credits	3

CRE 250 Creative Media Projects

Combine the skills and ideas you've acquired in multiple media to begin producing a body of work that is thoughtfully executed and has conceptual integrity. Through a combination of class critique and studio sessions, you will strive to realize work that reflects a creative vision.

Prerequisites	Creative Media Students: CRE 100 & CRE 125. Non-Creative Media majors may enroll after completing six credits of art/media production (ART, CRE, FLM, INN, GDV, CRE, GAA).
Credits	3

CRE 400 Creative Media Professional Practices II

This course examines issues of self-branding, marketing, networking, professional presentation, and other key career-oriented topics for emerging artists/creative professionals. Students will consider multiple paths and the step toward pursuing them. This will lead to students developing a plan for how to position themselves upon graduation.

Prerequisites	Creative Media students with 87 completed credits. Other majors by permission.
Credits	3

Creative Media Foundations

GDV 110 Image Technology

Students are introduced to the basic concepts of digital image-making through projects that balance the learning of creative development, technique, and design tools as they pertain to the Graphic Design field.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

—OR— ART 110 Drawing, Introductory

A studio course emphasizing a creative discovery of two-dimensional forms. Students will consider the nature and importance of light, values and graphic composition in selectively seeing and recording a visual world.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

—OR— ART 111 Digital Photography

With the advent of digital technology, the pleasure of taking and viewing digital photographs and video clips is now commonplace. The professional designer, however, must be able to control this technology to a much greater degree than does the layperson, and to that end this course introduces you to the finer points of planning, capturing, transferring, modifying, and formatting your still and video imagery for use in successful graphic design projects. While students may borrow both digital still- and video-cameras from the College free of charge, owning a good SLR digital camera would be very helpful; ask the instructor for recommendations.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

GDV 203 Form in Motion

Form in Motion introduces the principles of motion graphic design through applied practice. The focus will be on the relationship between typographic principles and animation fundamentals. Students synthesize the language of motion with elements of narrative structure to realize kinetic solutions. In addition to exploring systems and the synthesis of text and image, the course also provides knowledge and skills in creative ideation in motion.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

—OR— ANM 175 Intro to Animation

Students learn the fundamentals of 3D animation while applying the 12 principles of animation to 3D character locomotion and object animations.

Prerequisites	Animation and Game Art students have priority
Credits	3

—OR— FLM 110 Filmmaking, Introduction to

In this course students are introduced to the language of film. Through a combination of lectures, screenings, readings, discussions, and film exercises, students will investigate the fundamentals of screenwriting, producing, directing, composition, sound design, and editing. Students will be exposed to documentary, narrative feature, short and web series, and experimental films from around the world representing different perspectives and experiences. They will explore the evolving landscape of production and the social impact of filmmaking.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

SON 120 Fundamentals of Digital Music

This course will teach students the basics of music, and how to create music on the computer. Topics include rhythm, phrasing, harmony, melody, and song construction. This is an exciting opportunity, given the virtually unlimited power of today?s Digital Audio Workstations. Music can be assembled from pre-composed elements, played live into the computer, written as notes on an electronic score, or keyed in using a midi piano keyboard. Students will use these digital tools to capture their ideas or inspiration and turn them into music. Several projects will be required, in various styles, for a number of different purposes.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

—OR— UXD 100 Intro to User Experience & Interaction Design

This course explores how interface design shapes user experiences across digital platforms. Students learn fundamental UX and interaction design principles by examining how interfaces enable or constrain navigation, storytelling, and user engagement. Through hands-on projects using industry-standard tools-from websites and mobile apps to games and digital installations-students develop skills in user-centered design thinking, prototyping, and critique while understanding how thoughtful interaction design creates meaningful, accessible, and engaging experiences.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

—OR— WRT 120 Creative Writing 1

This course introduces students to the work of writing creatively, encouraging them to become more attentive readers, as preparation for their own growth as writers. We'll survey a range of literary texts, developing a deeper understanding of how creative genres work, what parameters structure them, and how they might be deployed in our own writing. Students will experiment within their own fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writing. The bedrock of our class will be peer review, so students can read and learn from each others' work.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

Artistic Inquiry

CRE 125 Integrated Studio Foundations

This course introduces students to a variety of tools, processes and campus labs and to the production of creative works that incorporate tangible objects, text, audio and video. The emphasis is on collaboration, skillbuilding and the creative integration of multiple media.

Prerequisites
Credits	3

CRE 310 Art and Global Perspectives

In this course students undertake an exploration of themselves as creative practitioners within a changing global context. Through a combination of readings, lectures, activities, and production of creative work, students will engage with the following questions: How does the flow of ideas, information and people across borders impact aesthetic forms? How do artists represent or negotiate cultural identity in a globalizing world? How do artists respond to issues (social, political, cultural, environmental) of global significance?

Prerequisites	The following majors and completion of 57 credits: CRE, FLM, GDV, IXD, WRT, SON, INN or 57 credits and permission of the program administrator.
Credits	3

CRE 350 Creative Media Advanced Projects

What is artistic practice? What is meant by a body of work? Through a combination of exploration, research, sustained studio practice, and class critique you will complete a major project or build a portfolio of smaller works that embody your artistic intentions.

Prerequisites	Creative Media Students: 57+ credits and CRE 250. Non-Creative Media majors may enroll with 57+ credits and after completing twelve credits of art/media production (ART, CRE, FLM, INN, GDV, CRE, GAA).
Credits	3

Medium-Specific Proficiency

Students choose a skill pack from various disciplines like Film, Art, Graphic Design, Animation, Writing, Sonic Arts, or User Experience Design to develop deeper expertise.

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