Welcome to Game Development!
In this class, you will learn how to...well animate. We will focus on 2D and stop motion animation primarily. I know, I know. You wanted to do 3D animation. Well, let me be upfront about that. We simply do not have the facilities to do that. A 3D animation could take hours to render one frame (there are two vocabulary words you'll learn about in time) With there being 4 other classes being taught on these computers, we simply cannot do that. However; there is a 3D animation program on these computers, so feel free to play with it.
Let's talk about safety before we get into the class itself.
Game Development is a relatively safe art form. Most of these safety points were talked about in the contract. But let's go over some again.
- Do not put things in the outlets other than chargers or things that should be put in them. don't lick them either
-Do not swing things around the room
- Absolutely no running
- Please be mindful of sharp objects you might use for cutting.
- The light tables emit a fair amount of heat if left on for too long. Be mindful of this as well.
- Do not throw things in the room.
- (for the safety of your sanity and animations) make sure your drinks have lids on them that can be fastened to prevent spillage.
- There are a few other things we will talk about as we use new equipment.
Alright, that is most of the boring, but the important stuff out of the way. let's talk about what you will be doing this year and how the year is broken up.
Our school year is broken into two halves, both with 3 grading periods in it. each grading period last 6 weeks. The first half of this class will involve a lot of learning, dead lines and stress. This is your first-semester project brake down.
- Flip books (you need to understand the basics)
- Cell Animation. (this will end up being fairly close to stop motion actually)
- Stop Motion Animation (we will be touching on video editing at this point as well as teams)
- Green Screen Animation. (Color keying.)
- GIF animations (from scratch using photoshop)
That is 5 projects. Some time will be broken into watching animations, talking about them, going out into the school to watch motion and what not. This is a fairly involved class, so be ready.
Now, your second semester is a lot more free flowing. You will still have to produce an animation. You will be set up into your teams from the first semester and you will have 15 weeks to put an animation together. you can use any method you'd like, but your animation must have a story, voice overs (you will learn these as well), back grounds, character movement, and camera movement. But you will be allowed to do whatever you wish.
Now there are a few things you will need for this class. To get started on your Flipbook faster, I highly recommend you get yourself 100 index cards. For the Stop motion, any toys you may have you'll want to bring or any other object you want to do your animation on. We are limited on what we can get and it may take it some time to get to us. So it's best to be ready.
Things such as lights, cameras, tripods, light boards I can provide. Unfortunately, our district isn't made of money, so we have to do the best with what we have. The good thing is, this is how animation started off. with the best they had. which was some sand in a bucket.
Lets get creative and have a great semester.
