At LAS, our teachers are continually developing new ways to engage students, foster creative thinking, and build the skills they’ll need for future success. Recently, students in our Savoy Visual Art & Design class explored how art history, studio practice, product design, marketing principles, and emerging AI technologies can complement and strengthen one another—rather than compete or replace each other. The result was a collection of truly self-expressive, exciting, and thought-provoking work, all created without the use of phones.

Using this approach, students worked on three different project briefs, and the results were inspiring!

Artist-Inspired Immersive Environments
Students were tasked with designing and building an environment based on the work of a master artist. After researching and studying their chosen artist’s style and creative approach, students constructed miniature “rooms” inside simple cardboard boxes, carefully designing each space to reflect the aesthetic and conceptual qualities of the artist.

After photographing their handmade environments using laptop-based software, students wrote detailed descriptive scripts outlining characters, scenarios, and interactions within the space, including costumes, mood, movement, dialogue, and environmental details.

Using Google’s VIDS AI platform, students uploaded both their constructed room and written script. The result was a short AI-generated film in which lifelike actors inhabit and interact with the student-designed environment. Characters opened refrigerators, sat on furniture, cooked meals, talked with each other and moved naturally through the student created space. The combination of traditional craftsmanship and digital animation created an experience that is both technically impressive and conceptually rich.

Our art and theatre faculty are collaborating to explore how similar AI tools might enhance set design projects in our theatre design class. It's inspiring to see departments working together, exploring the potential of this exciting and innovative work. 

Skateboard Product Design & Marketing
Merging art, entrepreneurship, and branding, students designed original graphics and marketing concepts for their own skateboard brand. Students began with hand-drawn logo concepts that were uploaded into AI platforms for idea generation and refinement. Through an iterative process, students collaborated with AI to revise and finalize both their skateboard designs and the accompanying company logos. Students then hand-painted their finalized graphics onto blank wooden skateboards, bringing their digital concepts into physical form.

To extend the project into the marketing realm, students photographed their completed boards and wrote full commercial scripts, specifying setting, character details, action sequences, and music. Using AI tools they generated promotional videos that simulated the manufacturing process and featured actors riding the skateboards in student-selected environments. The finished skateboards are now displayed with QR codes, allowing viewers to scan and watch each brand’s promotional video. 

This was an authentic fusion of visual art, design thinking, and digital media production and Ai tools!

Alebrije Identity Project
Inspired by the vibrant Mexican folk art tradition of alebrijes—brightly colored, fantastical hybrid creatures—students explored themes of identity and symbolism. After completing a personality assessment that connected the students to a representative animal, the students combined that animal with two additional species to invent an original imaginary creature. Using the bold colors and intricate patterning characteristic of the alebrija tradition, students constructed three-dimensional sculptures using plaster wrap and hand-painted finishes. The results were beautiful, vibrant, and highly imaginitive art pieces. 

Soon students will animate the alebrijes using AI-generated video, similar to the artist-inspired environment project, allowing these imaginative creatures to “come to life” through digital storytelling.

Sharing Discovery and Innovations With the Wider Educational Community
These projects will be featured at the upcoming SGIS Art Teacher Conference, emphasizing the intentional use of AI as a tool that enriches—rather than replaces—artistic practice. This approach demonstrates how emerging technologies can deepen creative exploration, strengthen conceptual development, and broaden the scope of contemporary visual art and design education. We are incredibly proud of the creativity and dedication our educators bring to their classrooms, continually introducing engaging and effective teaching strategies that position LAS at the forefront of innovative education. We look forward to seeing what they create next!