AI for Artists Online Course
Software: Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, DALLE, ChatGPT and others
Registration Now Open. Course Start: Sep 8, 2025
The CG industry is evolving — AI is opening up exciting new possibilities for artists.
It’s already part of creative workflows in games, animation, illustration, and design.
If you want to stay up-to-date and expand your professional toolkit, this course is for you.
It’s designed for artists and designers, as well as beginners exploring the world of CG art.
What you’ll learn in 8 weeks:
Master Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, DALL·E, and ChatGPT
Streamline your creative workflow
Become a more in-demand professional
Course Authors
Maximilian Klimov
Concept Artist, Matte Painter, and Art Manager at OwlCat Games
5 years in game development, 8 years in commercial illustration
Worked with Lab Zero Games, Happy Fox Studio, Yuga Vision, and Demiurgus Dreams (sculpture studio).
In his professional roles, Maximilian trained Stable Diffusion models, integrated AI tools into studio pipelines, and taught AI workflows to teams at Happy Fox Studio.
He has used AI tools to create storyboards, video content for sports shows and commercials, as well as promo art and book covers.
Andrew Sidorov
Lead Artist, Concept Artist, and Game Artist
10+ years in game development and animation
Experience includes: Lead Artist at Belka Games, Concept Artist for Netflix animated series “Leo and Tig” at Parovoz Studio, Concept Artist on King’s Bounty 2.
He successfully implemented Stable Diffusion into the studio pipeline at Belka Games and trained colleagues to use AI tools efficiently.
The author and instructor of our Digital Art course and co-author of the 3D for 2D Artists module in the Environment Concept Art course.
AI Artwork by Course Authors
All images shown were generated in Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL·E, with no overpainting.
About the Course
Created by Artists, for Artists
This course was designed by professional 2D artists with years of experience.
They use AI daily as part of their creative workflow in game dev, film, book illustration, and freelance projects.
Real Industry Workflows
You’ll learn how to use AI to speed up matte painting, rendering, texturing, idea generation, and game asset design.
We provide ready-made prompts, full video walkthroughs — from sketch to final image — and focus on artistic control over AI results.
Dynamic Poses & Expressive Characters
AI often struggles with emotion, complex poses, and composition. We'll show you how to direct your models to get truly artistic results.
Course Format & Support
📅 Duration: 8 weeks + 2 bonus weeks to finalize your project, with optional feedback from the instructor.
🎥 Each week, a new lecture will be released along with assignments. Weekly live feedback webinars will be held to review homework (except for two technical weeks focused on setup and model training — during which support is available in chat).
💬 Direct support from the instructor throughout the course — feel free to message with questions any time.
🔗 Lifetime access to our private forum and CG LAB School chat channels filled with resources, organized topics, job opportunities, and a friendly community.
Course Program
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Setup, installation, and updating of Stable Diffusion. Core principles of the software.
You will install and generate your first images using:
Automatic1111 – the most popular Stable Diffusion interface, widely used in the industry.
Fooocus – a beginner-friendly interface for SDXL models. Works even on low-end GPUs. More about system requirements is provided in the course FAQ.
Forge – an optimized alternative interface.
There is no group webinar this week due to the simplicity of the task, but technical support is available in the chat.
🕐 Video duration: ~ 1 hour
-
Models, LoRA, embeddings + hands-on practice.
Advanced prompt crafting.
Txt2img generation (from text prompts).
Overview of Forge, SDXL models, and Flux.
A group webinar with homework review will take place at the end of this week.
🕓 Video duration: ~ 4 hours
-
Img2img – image-to-image generation in Stable Diffusion.
Working in Fooocus – settings and models overview, Img2img features.
🕑 Video duration: ~ 2 hours
-
ControlNet – a tool for controlled image generation in SD.
Colorizing your own sketches and drafts.
Recoloring and changing atmosphere.
Pose generation from references.
Upscaling (increasing image resolution) with ControlNet.
🕒 Video duration: ~ 3 hours
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Neural networks for high-quality results "out of the box."
In-depth walkthrough of Midjourney features.
Comparison of Dalle 3 in Bing, Copilot, and ChatGPT. Dalle 2 for photorealism.
Overview of ChatGPT tools to assist artists.
🕑 Video duration: ~ 2 hours
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Creating mini-models to generate your own characters or illustration styles.
Preparing a dataset for style and character.
Textual inversion training method.
LoRA training on 1.5 and XL models — free online and local options.
Matte painting style training on the works of course author Maximilian Klimov and CG LAB founder Lina Sidorova.
Traditional watercolor style training.
Stable Diffusion training using synthetic datasets from Midjourney.
LoRA training for the Flux model.
🕑 Video duration: ~ 2.5 hours
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Comfy UI – a node-based alternative UI for Stable Diffusion. Highly optimized, though potentially challenging for beginners.
Neural networks for generating 3D objects.
AI animation: bringing your art to life with tools like Pika Labs, Runway Gen-2/Gen-3, Luma Dream Machine, and more.
Stable Diffusion plugins for Krita and Adobe Photoshop.
🕑 Video duration: ~ 1.5 hours
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+ 2 additional weeks of curator support in chat after the main 8-week webinar course ends.
Testimonials
“I simply didn’t have time to learn AI tools on my own, but they were becoming more and more necessary at work. So I decided to take this course — and it was absolutely the right decision!
It’s packed with useful, well-structured content and excellent support from the mentor.
Before the course, I used AI tools sporadically and without a clear system — and I knew I was only scratching the surface. Now I use them more confidently in different parts of my workflow, like idea generation, color and mood exploration, and even rendering over my sketches.
Special thanks to Maximilian for his detailed and thoughtful guidance! And it’s great that after the course, I can keep watching updated lessons and follow AI news in the group chat — super helpful in such a fast-moving field.”
“I had been eyeing this course for a while — I really wanted to figure out how to work with AI tools, but I couldn’t manage it on my own.
The course exceeded all my expectations! The lessons are detailed and full of practical examples that clearly explain how and where to apply different tools. And whenever I had a question, the mentor was always there to help.
After the course, I finally stopped being afraid of that “beast” called AI. I especially appreciated the live webinars — you can ask questions, get in-depth answers, and even request additional resources tailored to your personal tasks.
Now I have a clear understanding of how to approach creative challenges using AI tools.
Thank you for such a valuable and high-quality course — absolutely worth every penny!”
“I’d like to thank the course authors and my mentor, Maximilian, for their professionalism, support, and the incredibly welcoming atmosphere! This course gave me a solid foundation — the materials are full of practical examples and conveniently broken down into small, focused topics. You can easily revisit anything at any time 👍 Thanks to this course, I now confidently work with various tools and in the style I need. It became an important step in my professional growth. Thank you for the knowledge and inspiration!”
Course Enrollment
Course Fee: $410
Registration Now Open. Course Start: SEP 8, 2025
🕘 Students will meet up with Andrew Sidorov LIVE once per week on Sundays at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET.
+ 💸 Exclusive Offers for Our Students
Bundle Discount: Save 15% when you buy 2 courses at once, and an extra 5% for each additional course — up to 30% off total!
Feedback Bonus: Leave a course review and get 5% off your next enrollment.
Returning Student Discount:
- 10% off your second course
- 15% off your third and beyond
👉 All discounts stack — save up to 30%!
You can pay the full fee or in two parts:
– First half before the course begins
– Second half by the end of the second week
Please fill out the form to enroll, make a payment, or ask a question.
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