Why Do Our Courses Cost so Much?

School of Motion classes are expensive. Here’s why.

If you’re reading this, chances are you looked into signing up for one of our sessions and discovered that our courses are more expensive than other online Motion Design classes. We know how important it is to feel like your money is well spent, which is why we invest as much into our courses as you invest into your career.

The sticker shock is understandable…our sessions can cost as much as $1000, and that is a heck of a lot more than the $19 a month some of the bigger sites charge. This article should clear that up, and even if it doesn’t convince you that a School of Motion class makes sense for you, it will hopefully give you a better understanding of what you’re actually getting for the premium that we charge.

Have you ever wondered what it's like on our "campus?" Grab your backpack and come on down for the full tour.

We call them Bootcamps for a reason

The first thing you should know about our interactive courses is that they are beefy. When you sign up for one, you aren’t just getting a download link with a bunch of videos. You are enrolling in a specific session.

Take Animation Bootcamp, for example. When you sign up for it, you are enrolling in the next session of the class, the date for which can be found next to the informational video.

The session begins on that date, and runs for… wait for it...12 weeks. You read that right—it’s a 3-month long class. You can take the course as quickly or as slowly as you like, but the entire “experience” of Animation Bootcamp lasts for 12 weeks and includes a mind-boggling amount of learning.

In total, the class has more than 25 hours of video training, 13 homework assignments, 10+ hours of podcasts, dozens of PDFs, and a few more surprises. There’s a reason we spread that much content out over a 12 week period: We want you to have time to absorb the material and to practice what you’ve learned.

Even our shorter classes, After Effects Kickstart for example, run for 8 weeks and feature a ton of content in them. All of our content is highly produced—and built using a process we’ve honed over the years that lets us do something other online schools can’t do: build a curriculum.

Curriculum vs Tutorials

There’s a world of difference between 8-10 videos that roughly cover the same topic (essentially just longer tutorials) and a multi-week interactive experience that has been sequenced in the most effective way to teach various concepts.

The learning results can be staggering when you sequence out a series of lessons and exercises in the right order, with the right pacing and the right support. Comparing that to a 3-4 hour passive video course is like comparing a banana to a French horn… hilarious, but not very useful.

The 3 C’s

Our interactive courses are built on a philosophy that there are 3 C’s… not 1, or 2… but 3. And those would be: Content, Community, and Critique.

CONTENT

We’ve already talked about the content in our courses (accidental alliteration). There is a massive amount jam-packed into each course, and that content has been very carefully orchestrated into a curriculum that not only builds within each class, but also between classes. If you take Design Kickstart, it leads perfectly into Design Bootcamp.

COMMUNITY

The second C is “Community,” and it might very well be the most important one.

All of our interactive courses have moderated student groups for every student and teaching-assistant in that session. These groups run 24/7 and serve as the watercooler for the entire class while it runs. Here, you’ll be seeing lots of work (and posting your own) while getting and receiving feedback. All of the Teaching Assistants are in here to offer technical and creative support, and we also have staff that moderate these groups to help keep the conversation focused and the energy high.

You will be in a group with, potentially, hundreds of other artists from all over the world who are on the same mission as you: To Get Better. I can’t overstate how powerful this makes the course dynamic. If you’ve ever purchased an online course and then never finished it or—let’s be honest—never started it, then you will notice a drastic difference with our courses.

These groups eventually spill over into our alumni community, which has grown into a worldwide clearinghouse for Motion Design talent. Honestly, the community at School of Motion is one-of-a-kind and I hope you get a chance to experience it.

CRITIQUE, THE FINAL “C”

The other part of our interactive curriculum that makes School of Motion unique is the fact that, unlike most online schools, we really want you to push yourself and to use the new skills you’re learning. To that end, we assign homework every week. Yup. HOMEWORK.

Here’s the thing… you don’t have to do the homework. We’re not going to send your parents a report card, but if you don’t actually do the work you won’t get better. It’s that simple, and we really, really want our students to get better. I’d even go as far as telling you that you should not take a School of Motion class if you don’t want to work hard and to be pushed.

Here’s how it works. We have an incredible team of Teaching Assistants, all of whom are professional artists with varying skill sets. Every class is staffed with an insanely experienced crew, one of whom will be assigned to you for the duration of your class.

You can contact your TA at any time with one click, and they will be giving you surgical, personalized feedback on everything you upload into our Homework Locker. Our platform has critique tools built right into it, so everything happens in one place and it’s easy to use.

If you’ve never had a professional artist give you feedback before, it can be an incredible eye opener. Your clients may tell you how great you are, but our TA’s will be looking for your weak spots, pointing them out to you, and then helping you fill them in. It might be a little scary at first, but feedback will help you immensely.

A huge bonus with our classes is the fact that you also have access to every other students’ homework as well, meaning you can check out hundreds or even thousands of critiques, and download project files for all of them to see how things were executed. There is no other school out there that can offer this, and it’s an unbelievable learning tool.

Provable Expertise

Many employers pay for their team to go through our classes as a way to level them up. Afterwards, it’s common for them to want some kind of verification that the class was actually completed. For students who complete 70% or more of the coursework, we offer verified badges through Acclaim that can be used to prove you took a course, and also can be added to a LinkedIn profile to help show off your fancy new skills.

The Alumni Community

The last thing I’d like you to know about is our alumni community. We have taught over 10,000 motion designers across the globe, and all of them are part of our extended family. We do as much as possible to foster networking opportunities, help alumni get hired or connect with potential clients, and feed as many opportunities as possible into our alumni channels.

Our alumni newsletter keeps you updated as we roll out new initiatives, and you have an inside channel to our team whenever you need assistance or have a suggestion. We feature alumni constantly on our social media channels, and try to help raise the profile of artists who have passed through our (virtual) halls. We’re working on making this part of our program even more robust, and hope that the community grows even stronger as it expands.

You get what you pay for

After reading all of that you might be thinking, “This isn’t for me.” To be honest, I see that as a good thing. Look, we don’t want you to waste your time or money if School of Motion isn’t right for you. We intentionally set things up in such a way that our classes will not work for some artists, and we get that. But for those that are craving an intense, interactive, one-of-a-kind learning experience, we’ve got you covered.

Our team is dedicated to crafting the best training on the planet, and we’re standing by to answer any questions you may have, or to share memes. We love memes.

Please reach out if you need any help, and thanks for taking the time to consider School of Motion!

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