video is the new sketch

What if video was your sketchbook?

• Fall Dates Coming Soon!
• Online!
• Five-weeks, 6-8pm CET
• Small class of participants

Artist / Student (Full Time)
€225* (Reg. €245)

Freelancer
€245* (Reg. €265)

Professional
€275* (Reg. €295)

Generous Supporter Ticket
€295* (Reg. €305)

*Early enrollments (by 28. Sept.) keep our courses sustainable and help us plan ahead. Thank you for supporting!

course
description

In this course, we will use a method called Tiny Storms to think and create when endless tools make starting hard and staying with an idea even harder. What if video was your sketchbook? Direct, alive, experimental. A fast way to prototype ideas: powerful enough for experts, playful enough for beginners. And not just for moving images, Tiny Storms is a method to test any kind of idea.Animation used to take weeks or months. With today’s AI and procedural tools, video sketching is possible at the pace of thought.

Developed over years, the Tiny Storms Method is inspired by thinkers who challenge the myths of creativity, from neuroscientist Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments to architect Leski’s Storm of Creativity to historian Franklin’s Cult of Creativity.

In this course you’ll:

• Make short experimental animations as prototypes for ideas of all kinds

• Learn to use video as a tool to test ideas, tell stories, or communicate research

• Play with both AI and analog materials that resist control

• Balance speed and play with critical reflection

• See the instructors’ process in action, projects across science communication, digital theater, and personal narrative, showing how one method moves across contexts.

Computer artists warned sixty years ago about the misuse of technology in art. The same applies today. This class takes both sides seriously: the joy of speed and play, and the responsibility of critical reflection.

What You’ll Take Away

You’ll also get a workbook, not a handout, but a zine-shaped tool from visual art and experimental publishing. It’s a guide and a playground where you can annotate, remix, and turn any idea into moving images.

course
outline

Week 1: Prototyping as Noticing

Which detail is so ordinary you’ve stopped noticing it, and what if it became a superhero?

• Quick observational video sketches from everyday life

• Blind drawings, flipbooks, and first experiments

• Start a shared “rich mess” inspiration board

Week 2: Prototyping with Constraints

What if you erased every option except the one that scares you most?

• Build a short animation using only one material or rule

• Explore how limits (time, format, prompts) accelerate discovery

• Encounters with generative AI tools, with attention to bias and limits

Week 3: Prototyping Against Norms

If your work could insult you, what would it say, and how would you answer back?

• Genre collisions: combine different sources in motion

• Translate movement principles into body + image

• Question a myth of creativity

Week 4: Prototyping in Public

What happens when your tools stop obeying you and you lose control in public?

• Push tools until they misbehave

• Share unfinished fragments and use errors + feedback as raw material

• Draft a one-line manifesto for making moving images in 2025

Week 5: Prototyping Futures

• Remix a peer’s fragment (with consent + attribution)

• Destroy to create: subtraction, glitch, reassembly

• Reflect collectively on the futures these tools open and erase

about tools

We’ll use both generative AI and traditional media as part of the Tiny Storms Method. Tools aren’t here for tutorials or mastery, they’re here to misbehave with you. Each one is introduced briefly, just enough to open new directions, show what’s possible, and let you bend it your own way. You don’t need to know them in advance. Curiosity is enough.

Examples may include: AI / procedural: Runway, Luma, Houdini; Physical / analog: watercolor, body movement, pen plotter

who is this
class for?

Anyone who wants to use video as a sketching practice, to test ideas, tell stories, or prototype research. If you’ve ever wished you could show an idea in motion instead of explaining it, this class is for you: artist, scientist, beginner, or simply curious.

about online classes

Classes are 'live' meaning that you can directly interact with the instructor as well as with the other participants from around the world. Classes will also be recorded for playback in case you are unable to attend for any reason. For specific questions, please email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

about
scholarships

We are offering a limited number of reduced fee scholarships for this online class for those facing financial hardships. These allow participants to pay a reduced fee and are reserved for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ who otherwise would be unable to attend. To be considered for one of these scholarships, please use this form. 

To apply for a reduced fee scholarship, you must fill in the form no later than two weeks before the course begins. We will not accept any class sign-ups or scholarship applications after this date, as our regular sign-ups will determine the amount of scholarships we can accommodate. We will notify you only shortly thereafter if your application has been approved.

We are a small organisation with no outside funding and like many, we are also in survival mode. We depend on tuition fees for reimbursing class instructers, space fees, and operational costs. We ask you to consider this when applying for a reduced fee scholarship. <3

meet the
instructor