GAME 285 - Advanced Topics in Game Development

SPRING 2023 TOPICS

SEC 01 TABLETOP AND FANTASY CARD GAME ILLUSTRATION DESIGN

This course focuses on illustrating and designing artwork for collaborative Tabletop and Fantasy Card Games. Illustrate and design full color works of art based on common elements, tropes, and archetypes found in these heroic games of adventure. Coursework will place emphasis on creating representational art that combines figures, objects, and environments. Assignments will teach you the process of planning and building artwork that tells a story from the ground up using compositional elements, clearly defined preliminary drawings and color images that exhibit punch and impact.

SEC 02 BASICS OF SCREENWRITING

This course focuses on scriptwriting for cinematics, cutscenes, and voiceover bytes, as well as principles of screenwriting. Students will also learn how to take into account budgetary factors and storyboarding while drafting their scripts.

SEC 03 GAME ANALYTICS/MODELING
This course introduces students to strategies and methodologies to design, implement, and utilize in-game data collection points to be used for analytics, statistics, and research data. Students will discuss game title case studies, create datasets, design game variables suites based on research and model needs, while also learning how to analyze collected data.

SEC 04 DRAWING ANATOMY FOR GAME ARTISTS

Students will study the basics of human anatomy and with that acquired knowledge work on drawing projects that will explore how human anatomy functions whether at rest, or in action. Human proportions will be studied at length. Projects will be comprised of skeleton drawings, muscle drawings, at rest and action poses, portraits, facial expressions. Live models will be utilized in the second half of the course.

SEC 05 3D ANIMATION FOR WHITESNAKE

Students will create 3D animations for a White Snake performance in Boston, MA. Motion capture technology, keyframe animation, and real-time Unreal Engine pipeline topics will be covered.

FALL 2022 TOPICS -

SEC 01 CHARACTER DESIGN ART This course will focus on the elements involved for successful 2-D character design ranging from concept to final project. These elements include, but are not limited to research, conceptualization, synthesis and refinement. The student will develop a body of work, consistent with her/his/their interests, while at the same time learning about industry methods, practices and standards.

SEC 02 CREATURES & CHARACTERS In this course, students will learn and put into practice the process of developing creatures and characters for story-intensive games. In addition to narrative development, students will also create art requests and develop specs for statistics, skills, special abilities, and other elements that would be implemented by systems designers and programmers.

SEC 06 PIXEL ART In this course, students will learn how to create various pixel artwork using the software Aseprite. They will study how to use the fundamentals of Asperities, while at the same time creating various 2D game assets such as: items, obstacles, environment, enemies, and character, that can be imported into a game. Using techniques that focuses on precision and control, students will also be able to create sprite animations and export them as sprite sheets.

SEC 07 DRAGONS: ART & LORE, FROM ASIA TO THE WESTERN WORLDDragons have appeared in numerous fantasy stories from The Hobbit to Game of Thrones.  This course focuses on the historical and cultural representation of Dragons in the visual arts and folklore.   Coursework emphasizes the development of both illustration and writing based on common elements found in these legends.  Prerequisites:GART 100 - Principles of Drawing for Games  and ENG 101 - Introduction to Creative Writing  (or the equivalent)

 

Prerequisites: Established per Topical Section

Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall & Spring