MDP School

"This class is the perfect boot-camp for a student to understand the pipeline of designing for film, Jama designed the perfect curriculum to walk you through each steps, from idealization to final results. He had compressed his years of experience to share with you in a short intensive 5 week course. Definitely one of the best learning experience of my life!"

I took Jama Jurabaev's mentorship because I needed to better understand how today's industry leading concept artists work. What tools have they added to their belt and how their process has changed or evolved to keep pushing the bar higher for story telling and world building. This is must take course if you want to learn how to work in today's market. The course is about enhancing your tool belt to clearly communicate to audiences the world and cinematic moments in an impacting way. Jama's entire process is broken down into clearly defined steps, each building off the last. This makes it easy to make your artwork stronger, as you can pinpoint weak areas and fix them. Being able to fail and clearly see where, makes you grow so much faster. To anyone taking this course, I wish I had spent extra time and thought on steps 1-3, these are far more important than making a finished piece. The stronger steps 1-3 are, the more confident you will be. You can look at it like steps 1-3 are making a puzzle, first what is the overall image/idea you want people to spend time piecing together. Then breaking it up into interesting pieces that "fit" together. Steps 4-5 are about putting it all together. If there is a clear goal you can see, then you know where you are going, it is just going to take some time to get that reward, but you know damm well your going to get it! What I liked most about the course was Jama's approach to feedback and the realistic numbers for what is expected of you day to day. I was really surprised to hear how he himself has dealt with stress/panic. During feedback he always focuses on what can be done to improve, how to get there and what to focus on. Through paintovers and back and forth conversations challenging what you are trying to do, they really help you reflect on how to better tackle them. This mentorship has been one of the best I've taken to date and will probably be taking it again in the future. I would highly recommend anyone thinking about taking it do so as soon as you can.

"Whole experience was a blast! During course we were working on projects under Jama guidance, with him helping and destroying us with feedback ;) I highly recommend taking mentorship with Jama for everyone who wants to improve their skills and learn solid workflow."

"This was an amazing experience! Jama has a wealth of knowledge, skills, and expertise to help get your work to the next level. Not only have I greatly improved my skills but also my thought process when it comes to design and image-making. And you will learn what it’s like to actually work on movies! Highly recommended!!!"

At the end of the year (2019) I had two amazing opportunities, a job opportunity at Marvel Studios or enrolling in Jama's mentorship. It was an incredibly tough decision to make because I knew I would grew either way, BUT the trajectory of my career would be different. My background is in storyboards and costume design but my ultimate goal is to work as a concept designer in the Art Department. I've been babbling with concept art for over 10 years, taking classes, watching gumroads and youtube but something just didn't click. It was unbelievably frustrating to say the least. Getting a late start in this game, the 6 week intensive was exactly what I needed to jump start my career in this competitive market, essentially cutting out through all the clutter and laser focusing on what the needs of the Art Department. As of April 2020, just 4 months in I have worked with Director, Robert Zemeckis on the upcoming "The Witches" reboot and currently working on a new Netflix feature with Director Juel Taylor.

Taking Jama’s course on Concept art for Films was definitely one of the best decisions I’ve made in 2019. I am consistently fascinated by Jama’s ability to innovate and discover new and better ways to do concept art. In this day and age, moving & learning fast is key and that is exactly what I wanted to learn from Jama. During the Pro-tier course that I took, he was very generous with his time and providing honest feedback on the works. He also spent a lot of time explaining the material to make sure we understood it. There are many things that I wouldn’t be able to look up online because it related to my unique situation & skill level, so having him point things out that work for me specifically was tremendously valuable. Here’s a tip for those who are considering. Ask yourself what you want to achieve by the end of the course and make sure to communicate it early on with Jama. This is what I did and, needless to say, I got everything I wanted and so much more. After this experience, I feel more solid & confident in my work than ever before. I 100% recommend taking this course to anyone who is serious about their career in films or the entertainment industry in general.

"I think most learning resources out there are too worried about "how" we do things rather than "why" we do them. This course will not only get you lifetime access to awesome lectures but you are getting the opportunity to bounce ideas out of Jama and learn why he tackles problems the way he does which will make you rethink the way you do."

If you have a slight interest in concept art or art in general you'll definitely love this course. This course is well planned and well taught. It completely changed my workflow for the better. Now i produce my concepts way more efficiently than before. On top of that, the people i met during the course are awesome! Constantly helping one another to do great! I cannot recommend this course enough. TAKE IT!

Jama's course were six intense weeks, filled with practical experience, individual mentorship and knowledge worth a year of watching tutorials! Something every aspiring Concept Artist will know: You spend hundreds of hours watching tutorials, learning techniques and skills in certain areas and programs. So you have all this fragmented pieces of knowledge and skills. What Jama did for me was closing exactly these gaps - connecting my fragments so to say :-)! I finally got a profound understanding of the industry's workflow - from ideation, sketching, building assets to 3d setup, rendering and final paint over - combined with the basic theory of light & color, camera lenses & angles, composition and storytelling. Just do it - enrol! :-)

"This course was highly beneficial for me as concept artist. I have gained a lot of insight into the concept art field for movies in a short amount of time. During the course I learned about new techniques that accelerated the speed of my process. Apart from that, you will feel inspired by your peers learning with you, making you push your limits while you are learning with your mentor. I highly recommend this course to artists who never got the opportunity to learn about concept art for movies in general."