Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Teaching Game Development To Fine Arts Students?

Posted by timothy on from the I-see-you've-all-brought-your-apples dept.

jkavalier writes "I've been asked to prepare a short course (50 hours) of video game development to Fine Arts students. That means people with little-to-no technical skills, and hopefully, highly creative individuals. By the end of it, I would like to have finished 1-3 very basic minigames. I'm considering Unity 3D, Processing, and even Scratch. How would you approach teaching such a course? What do you think is the best tool/engine/environment for such a task?"

7 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. How about "Alice"? by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alice is a pretty simple way to introduce newbies to game/3D-environment development. I used to use it in an introductory programming class and the kids loved it. Gives you a real sense for how game development and programming work without being heavy-handed about it (or requiring students to jump right into hand-coding, without so much as flowers and dinner first). Here is the text I used for the course.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:How about "Alice"? by samkass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd also check out GameSalad, which offers a GUI for attaching artwork to objects, then setting properties/events across objects to build a game out of it. It's really easy to create a basic platformer or simple touch game mechanics, and you can focus on how the artwork contributes to the game.

      You can also generate web, Mac, PC, and iOS output (the latter which can be submitted to the App Store, which might be a fun reward for your students.)

      --
      E pluribus unum
    2. Re:How about "Alice"? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I would stick to alice and or flash. A lot of art guys already know how to make movies in flash (which is a valuable skill unto itself for them), making a game is different, but a text like Foundation Game Design with Flash by Rex Van der spuy works well. Alice is too simple for programming students but not bad for arts ones.

      I would emphasize the distinction between "design' and "development'. They should get an overview of the whole process and the content pipeline, and a light introduction to programming, but the most you're going to get is a basic VB cardgame or something. If you put them with a robust 3D engine (unreal, unity) they'll get lost very quickly. Stick with simple. Design on the other hand is something they can do with creativity and then you can have them apply that in simple ways, and they can design something as complex as they want.

      For example. A room full of straight guys. Have them design a gossip girl game, in flash, about dressing the character. Here you get to first teach them that you design what you're paid to design, whether you like the material or not, and secondly you break all of their pre-conceived notions about what a game should be. What makes a game fun? How do you make interactivity in a game about how to dress? How do you make the game accessible? What should the UI and controls be for a game about dressing? The technical aspects would be very limited, but they would have something at the end they could put on a webpage and showoff, and it highlights a lot of art skills. You can hand them core stuff, how to collide with walls that sort of thing, keep it to the level of putting stuff in arrays, iterating over arrays, and some basic strings text boxes that sort of thing. There are other examples.

      Basically treat them like first year uni/college students, and ask yourself what can you do with 50 hours of lecture time (that's basically 1 and a half semesters of courses, depending on whether or not you're including labs), and what can 1st year comp sci students develop in that time? What can you stick in array, maybe a list, how can you traverse it, how do you define objects in memory, how do you manipulate them, and how do you make basic decisions.

    3. Re:How about "Alice"? by Idiomatick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh god. I got that in my 1st year game programming + engineer specialty overloaded program. It made me want to slit my wrists. Forced to take advanced chem for the program and the course that is to be my focus is geared towards 5th graders? Fucking painful.

  2. Re:Fine-arts + programming = ? by asdbffg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I took a game design/development course as a student at CalArts. Many of the students were from the film program, but we also had some musicians, sound designers, and theater kids. Many of the students came into the course with a basic knowledge of programming. Out of that class I saw games developed and completed in Processing, Flash, and Torque.

    Another game design class that worked with created two games based on Arduino hardware and Max/MSP. One game incorporated RFID scanners and custom built MP3 players to take players on an audio scavenger hunt. That game received funding from the city arts council and was installed in local mall and again later as part of a city-wide arts festival, the other used video tracking to track players in a physical game arena and has been shown at several Maker Faires and art exhibitions here in LA and Europe.

    Many artists I've met are more than capable programmers, and many of them make their art exclusively in coding environments. I would assume that artists taking a game development class would at least be technically minded. The point is that it's probably a mistake to assume that "fine arts" students can't or shouldn't handle more technical work.

  3. Re:you said FINE art students didn't you? by liquiddark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Umm...That's not how that portfolio works. Most programs include a wide variety of media (pencils, paint, print-making, sculpture, performance art, etc) without banning students who have only one or two (sketches, paintings). In point of fact, what you're suggesting is about as far away from the goal of a BFA program as possible; much of the point of a BFA or conservatory or other formal art instruction program is to expose students to new ideas and techniques and give them the tools to be productive in those media.

  4. Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Try using the source engine maybe? With Garry's Mod, you have a relative freedom of the FPS genre, and there's a huge knowledge base for it, it's still relevant, and really simple. /2cents