Time flies when you are teaching the world, how to be an artist.
FolioAcademy went live on July 20, 2011 and even sold a few of our courses on that opening day. Since then we have added all kinds of content, made tons of new friends, some were heavier than others, started this blog, and completely redesigned our web page. Below is a pic of the old us.
Art Lessons Online: Folio’s Humble Beginnings:
Folio Academy, first known as Fun Art Now, (oh how we brainstormed on that name) was started in 2010 by artists Will Terry and Wayne Andreason in Cedar Hills, Utah. The headquarters was soon moved to Provo, Utah where it remains. We soon changed the name to folio academy, short for portfolio academy, as we figured fun art sounded like a site for children. All that brainstorming for nothing.
Circa November 2010, accomplished illustrator/artist/college instructor, Will Terry was looking for a way to assist his students at Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University with a means to take home a few art demonstrations. He created a few art demos with a cheap hard to use, editing program, a $100 little digital camcorder and a microphone that he borrowed from his children’s Rock Band video game. He posted them on YouTube for his students. As it turned out, there were and are a lot of people out there that want to learn art. Not just college students but a lot of would be students that don’t have the means to attend school, and more.
There was actually quite a demand for this type of art learning platform and a lot of people, I included asked Will to make more of these tutorials and teach the masses. In the spring of 2011 Will asked me, Wayne, to join him and we set out to teach the world to sing do art, well mostly how to draw and how to paint. We teamed up with Ryan Haldeman, of Amber Media Pro, famous for their wonderfully hilarious shorts called Kid History, we found some investors, hooked up with a talented programmer who is also world traveler but happened to be renting from Will while we were getting this all started. He now lives on an island in a lake somewhere in Malaysia, where he commutes via the WWW as our web master. Ain’t the internet great. And we got started teaching how to be an artist.
It didn’t take long till we realized that we didn’t know it all. OK, it was pointed out to us right away. So we realized that in order to “teach the world how to be an artist”, we should get some real artists to help us with our quest. So naturally we approached some of the best artists in the world and then wondered why they weren’t all that interested in climbing on our little cause. We are proud to say that we have been turned down by some worlds best artists who were too busy, some pretty big names. We also learned that some wonderfully talented artists aren’t always wonderfully talented teachers. It is nerve racking to stand in front of a camera, do your art work while talking to an audience that isn’t there and act natural.
As we got rolling however, were able to talk a bunch of wonderfully talented artists and teachers into joining our quest and we are still thankful to them. It is a little sad that the great artists out there are also the busy artists out there too or we would have more. We have also had artists approach us to get on board and sadly we have to turn a lot of them away as their art work lacks the professional quality that we need to maintain here at folioacademy.
Since going live in July, 2011, we have assisted clients in more than 30 countries around the world. We know we still have a lot to do and we plan on making FolioAcademy the best place online to learn art. So stay with us. We plan on being here to assist you while you are a beginner, an intermediate and a pro. In fact, at that point, you may very well be assisting us with our ever growing library of wonderful art courses for everyone.
lots of love, happy holidays, Wayne
PS here is a little testimonial from one of our peeps, Agy, probably our number one fan.
“THANK YOU Will Terry and Wayne Andreason! I’ve been yakking about the Folio Academy courses . . . I love the fact that they’re reasonable in price. I love there’s a LOT of great information. And I have to say I love the heart of it. I’ve had wonderful friends try to explain the Photoshop process . . . Wonderfully giving, patient, artists, but I really [diddn’t get it] and they were all so wonderful at it, I didn’t want to ask too many questions when I didn’t “get it” and appear stupid. So I didn’t “get it”. Then I found Will’s course, and he not only explained it the way I needed it to be shown, but he also did it from a similar point of view (a painter who wanted to expand the boundaries) Often he would explain a process in a similar way as painting with acrylics (one of my favorite mediums) so I really KENNED it. Now he’s REDONE the original course, because he could improve it. I just LOVE that. As someone who worked compulsively, I get and admire this. Folio has a special offer for December. Will will (hehehe, that’s just funny there!) be blogging about it, when he does, I’ll share the link on my page. I just wanted to crow a bit, and let them and the world (okay not really the WORLD, but anyone paying attention)I appreciate the effort and THANK YOU, again!”
Alicia VanNoy Call had her (TOTALLY AMAZING) app rejected by Apple twice because it didn’t have enough animation/interactivity. They wanted her to publish it as an iBook but she doesn’t want to do that for various reasons – so it’s in limbo at the moment.
