The Tools You Need
Regardless of your field of interest in the visual arts, you'll always find the tools you need at AIB to realize your vision.
Location
Fine Arts Facilities
Photography Lab
Animation Studio
Computer Studios
Exhibition Space
Location
AIB studios and classrooms are located in two buildings in Kenmore Square in the heart of Boston and in newly renovated space in the lower-level of the University Hall building in Porter Square, Cambridge, giving students direct access to a vibrant professional arts community, world-class museums, and contemporary galleries.
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Fine Arts Facilities
The Fine Arts Department has an extensive printmaking studio with etching and lithography presses, a wood shop, and a clay lab with several kilns. Senior fine arts students have their own semi-private studios, while all fine arts classrooms and facilities are available for students to work in when a class is not in session.
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Photography Laboratory
The college provides photography students with professionally equipped black and white darkrooms, 15 individual color darkrooms, and studios for setting up photo shoots. A dedicated alternative process darkroom enables students to explore alternative processes such as platinum / palladium, albumen, salt, kallitype, gum bichromate and wet collodion. Students have easy access to 8x10, 4x5, and 2 1/4 format cameras, for film and digital, a wide range of professional lenses, strobe and tungsten lighting, video equipment, studio equipment, print processors, and all chemistry required for darkroom and alternative process work. Students provide their own 35mm camera equipment, film, paper, and specialty chemicals. Learn more about our photography facilities.
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Animation Studio
Our Animation Studio has distinct spaces for its own animation computer stations, and for its down-shoot animation stations; both of these allow video projector screenings. The Studio also has an open studio space for drawing, screenings, and various stop-motion or live-shoot projects.
The Animation Studio provides students with a facility that is equipped with: twelve G5 Macintosh computer stations with a full set of animation, graphics, and digital video and sound software (viz., AfterEffects, Maya, Final Cut, Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Premiere, Painter, Frame Thief, Toon Boom, Illustrator, and other graphics programs), with flat screen monitors, Superdrive CD-DVD burners, and Wacom graphics tablets; four video imaging camera animation stands with both G4 Macintosh computer frame capture stations (Frame Thief) and Lunchbox digital frame grabbers with DV decks; a DVD Recorder station with DV, DVCPRO, DVD, SVHS, VHS decks; sixteen backlit animation drawing disk stations (dual sliding peg bars); Dell graphic workstations with 3D Studio Max; a computer station with Ricoh wide-bed batch scanner (for larger 16-field punched paper); a 16mm EIKE motion picture projector; twenty-four digital video camcorders to borrow, as well as portable FireWire hard drives, CD-DVD burners, still digital cameras, video projectors, NTSC monitors, portable printer, tripods, lighting sets, blue screen, animation punch, microphones, and digital sound recorders.
Upper-class animation student monitors and a lab manager offer assistance according to a posted schedule. All Studio spaces are available for student use all day and evening when there is no class use. There is also an equipment room, staffed all day and evening, for borrowing equipment like camcorders, tripods, sound recorders, microphones, and so on; this staff person also offers assistance with computer stations. The Studio is always stocked with at least a dozen reams of 16-field Cartoon Color Acme-punched animation paper for student use at any time.
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Computer Studios
Academic Computing Services at AIB provides students with state-of-the-art equipment for learning and for producing comprehensive digital works. Students utilize these facilities to construct professional portfolios and to access a variety of creative mediums outside the traditional studio atmosphere.
The AIB digital graphics and media studios are equipped with hardware and software designed to support the requirements of illustrators, fine artists, photographers, graphic designers, and animators. The facilities boast a variety of Apple computing solutions including, but not limited to, powerPCs, MacBooks, and Intel equipped iMacs. These machines are also equipped with an equally varied array of peripheral devices such as media readers, CD/DVD-R/RW burners, color and B/W laser printers, wide-format printers, flatbed and slide scanners, as well as digital acquisition devices, which include digital still- and video- cameras.
The computing facilities also offer the industry standard software packages such as the Adobe Design Premium Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Bridge. Some of our studios provide specialized software; our digital video/animation studio offers the most current versions of Maya, Final Cut Studio, and Adobe After Effects. Of course, we also provide additional software support for Corel Painter X, Microsoft Office, iLife Suite, and many others.
Through Lesley University, AIB coordinates with Harvard University to obtain educational prices on Apple computer hardware and software. The Microcomputer Center, part of Sherrill Library at the Lesley campus in Cambridge, has more than seventy microcomputers (Macintosh's, IBM PCs, etc.) for student use at almost all hours, as well as 1,300 software packages.
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Exhibition Space
The Art Institute of Boston presents a full program of exhibitions throughout the year in the college's main gallery and in student galleries in the Lounge, Gallery South, and at the college's 601 Newbury Street building. Major exhibitions offer the chance to experience works of important American and international artists as well as works by alumni, faculty artists, and emerging artists. Students have the opportunity to assist in mounting exhibitions and to personally meet visiting artists. Exhibits of student work in all visual media are displayed throughout the year in student galleries. Additionally, students exhibit their artwork in the public gallery on the third floor of the Porter Exchange Building on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Students may also participate in exhibitions arranged with commercial galleries around Boston.
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