We are super excited to announce our new YDACS which has been completely redesigned using the latest technologies!
The new registration system makes it super easy to register for your courses. Once registered our All Courses page makes it simple to enroll in courses using the Take this Course button contained in each course listing. Students using Purchase Orders to enroll from school simply register and then send their YDACS username and a list of the courses they want to enroll in to their teacher who then creates the PO.
Our all new course design walks students through each course, step-by-step, and lets them know how many lessons and the the percent of the course they've completed.
Our My Courses page is an amazing place where students can see all their courses in a single glance. It also shows their progress in each of their courses and all of their quiz scores.
We are equally excited to announce our completely new courses: Digital Manga 101, 3D Drawing 101 and Internet and Mobile Video Game Design 101. These are amazing amazing courses updated with the latest and greatest technologies. You can read about all of our courses and our three course tracks on our All Courses page.
We look forward to our students diving into our new Cyber School and the digital arts!
My experience with YDACS has been fantastic. I started in 6th grade with Digital Manga, and I quickly moved on to Digital Photo Painting, Digital Drawing and Painting, 3D Drawing, and then I became a Student National Mentor. Now I’m a freshman in college–and although I’m not pursuing an artistic degree, I’ve used the digital programs YDACS taught me for various diagrams on school projects, as well as for my own artistic escape! I’ve always had a particular interest in physical media, but it’s great to trace, enhance, edit, and experiment with my work digitally. On another note, I’ve loved collaborating with fellow YDACS members on projects and seeing the amazing work they come up with.
YDACS has been an amazing experience for me personally. I had always loved to draw and create art and YDACS taught me how to take my traditional ways of drawing and blend them with digital art programs, such as GIMP and Inkscape. As a Student National Mentor, I feel incredibly fortunate to connect with all the other amazing mentors in our cyber jams! I look forward to another amazing, art-filled year with YDACS!
YDACS has proven time and time again to be an amazing platform for expressing creativity, and I personally am grateful for the opportunities it’s given me to collaborate with other Student National Mentors who have a similar creative spark. I’ve been able to take what little motivation or experience I’ve had with art and gain the motivation to create something new, and while it may not be my current career path I now feel confident in expressing my own creativity thanks to the time I’ve spent here. I look forward to what creative opportunities YDACS presents in the future!
YDACS has been such an amazing and informative experience for me. I have learned how to use many different video game development and art programs like Clickteam Fusion, Unity, and Anime Studio Debut. I have also met many helpful and nice people along the way while being a Student National Mentor. YDACS has helped me on my journey to becoming a video game developer greatly!
I grew very interested in video games as a digital art medium since I was very young. While I was homeschooled, my mom signed me on for the VGD101, and that opened a door to a bunch of possibilities to let me imagination run wild. I learned how to create digital worlds, characters, and stories, all within the context of a video game. It was a fantastic way to experiment with my creativity. The light programming I learned has also been very useful for understanding the inner workings of many digital platforms today. I’m now a college graduate of Liberty University with a BA in English.
Since then I’ve transitioned my focus from video game design to primarily writing, with my passion being fiction writing. The courses at YDACS taught me how to build consistent fictional worlds early on and spring-boarded my love for storytelling! I wouldn’t be nearly as affluent in world design without such an early start in transitioning my dreams into a digital reality.
I took several of the courses offered through YDACS (DM101, DDP101, 3DDRW101, and VGD101), all of which opened me up to a world of art that I didn’t know existed before. I’ve always loved drawing as a hobby, but learning how to use digital tools allowed me to expand the range of my creativity. I used programs and techniques from these courses to help design my robotic’s team logo, my dad’s official business logo, greeting cards for my cousin to send out to his company, make stickers for my Etsy shop, you name it. I was homeschooled and took these courses through my homeschool’s partnership program, and I loved that YDACS was accessible to anyone, no matter what their background. I ended up minoring in Art in college, and have my first illustrated book (artwork edited with skills and programs I learned in YDACS) being published soon!
YDACS offered me my first digital art experience, with the Digital Manga and Digital Photo Painting courses. I’d always been fascinated with ‘drawing on the computer,’ and these courses proved a great introduction, expanding on the skills I was already learning while helping me expand my horizons a bit. The community here is always inspiring, there’s a fantastic mix of veteran artists perfecting their craft and newcomers that use these courses in their own unique way.
Since my days as a YDACS student, my ‘pen-and-paper’ art and my digital art have grown with each other, with these classes preparing me for my Associate’s in Studio Arts. I’m focusing on a film degree right now, but I know my passion for digital art will play a role, one way or another.