lecture

Clarity of vision

Tuesday June 30th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 min): 

• Clarifying the intended user experience

• Understanding the desired moment-to-moment reactions on the part of the player, mapping the emotional beat chart at both micro and macro scale. 

• A list of descriptors (verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc.) should be reverse-engineered from the intended user experience. It needs to be defined, negotiated, debated, agreed upon and ultimately prioroitized before being eloquently communicated to the team. 

• This list points with clarity to the ‘’North Star’’ and equips the team with the information they need in making their decisions. 

• Examples from own projects and popular media.

Open Q&A (15-30 min):

• Addressing student questions and confusions as applicable, referring back to personal experience where relevant.

Atelier (~2 hours):

• Guiding independent students with personalized feedback in pursuing, executing, and realising their creative vision (see 2. Assignment Sheet).

• Utilising a group feedback format - All students can learn from the process and conversation of whoever is being discussed. 

• The instructor should make an effort to start from specific individual questions/processes, and work their way up to general concepts widely applicable across the class - showcasing how the little choices can be traced back to the grander creative strategy, and purposeful creative direction is key in maintaining coherence and effective output.

• The instructor should make an effort to ensure that their feedback is distributed evenly among students, providing everyone with ample opportunities to discuss and engage.

• Students agree prior to the class to share their work process and join the open conversation, ensuring everyone participates willingly and respectfully. Students are encouraged to join the conversation and question the process/provide their own input. 

• Alternating between individual project feedback, group discussion, personal references, and real-life examples illustrating the underlying concepts as suited to the class.

lecture

Design Process Breakdown

Tuesday July 7th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 mins):

• All design processes require:

• Starting by understanding the mission statement.

• Deconstructing the challenge down to its single-function building blocks.

• Assessing the role of each module/function in the larger architectural arrangement.

• Critical thinking needs to be employed in challenging the status quo and proposing new, better, simpler, and more streamlined arrangements of the building blocks.

Open Q&A (15-30 min) 

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Concept art vs. production design vs. illustration.

Tuesday July 14th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 min):

• Concept Art vs. Production Design vs. Illustration

• Three genres frequently confused that need to be differentiated

• Presenting a unique practical method of original ideation.

• Experimenting with it live, discussing and noting its practical applicability and overall strengths and weaknesses.

Open Q&A (15-30 min)

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Prioritizing message over visual language

Tuesday July 21th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes):

• Visual language - its grammar, morphology, and syntax.

• Pursuing visual literacy - experience and intuition.

• The concept of “Visual targets”.

• Emphasis on flexibility throughout the development cycle.

Open Debate (~30 min):

• Attendants are encouraged to engage and vigorously debate the pros and cons of established pre-production work practices.

Open Q&A (~10-15 min)

Atelier (1.5-2 hours)

lecture

Graphic fidelity/production values vs. visual storytelling/ artistic quality.

Tuesday July 28th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes):

• The differences between high production value and powerful storytelling. 

• Production value can enhance a story, but is not a substitute for one. No amount of polish or technical glitz can elevate soulless content.

• Excessive, non-essential visual information leads to overload and dampens full emotional effect.

Open Q&A (15-30 min)

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Stylistic positioning

Tuesday August 4th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes):

• The spectrum between photo realism and extreme stylization.

• Photo realism - its wide-spread acceptance and artistic utility, Limited opportunities for a strong, distinct, and ownable visual identity.

• Extreme stylization - polarizing, and potentially divisive; the opposite end of the continuum. Drastically narrows the acceptance by a wide audience but maximizes expression.

• Finding the sweet spot along the continuum is an on-going challenge.

• Allowing for flexibility to be built into development practices enables the fine tuning of the definitive stylistic positioning.

Open Q&A (15-30 min) 

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Building a culture of empowerment

Tuesday August 11th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes):

• The power of well-aligned unique independent strengths.

• No contributors should be seen as interchangeable workers on a factory conveyor belt. Their unique traits and skills should be identified, recognized, and encouraged.

• Teams should regard themselves as highly technically competent musicians engaging in an improvisational jam session.

• To maintain cohesion yet allow everyone to imprint their personal touch on the final product, it is imperative to constantly enforce clarity of vision (see: week 1), and remind the team of the central pillars/descriptors defined early.

• This enables everyone to use their personally-honed judgment in navigating decisions, big or small.

Open Q&A (15-30 min)

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Orchestrated eclecticism vs. excessive visual consistency. The value of team diversity

Tuesday August 18th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes)

• History of art direction practices

• Defining a style upfront and policing it fiercely throughout the production process.

• Adopting a deeper role and perspective.

• Mapping the general stylistic path, communicating it eloquently both up and down the hierarchy.

• Allowing individuals to contribute their own sensibility and aspects of their diverse backgrounds.

• Encouraging flexibility and, above all, building trust across the company hierarchy.

Open Q&A (15-30 min)

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

The beauty of imperfection

Tuesday August 25th at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Short lecture (30-45 minutes)

• History of artistic perfectionism.

• Craftsmen have long strived for technical perfection, pursuing impeccable alignment, flawless parallelism, and rigorous perpendicularity.

• Modern tools effortlessly generate sterile perfection.

• In order to infuse soul in our CG worlds, we have to go in the opposite direction, deliberately introducing imperfections.

• Imperfections greatly contribute to depth perception and sense of movement/speed within our environments.

Open Q&A (15-30 min)

Atelier (~2 hours)

lecture

Final lecture and closing thoughts

Tuesday September 1st at 10 AM PDT | 1 PM PDT | 7 PM CET (3 hours total)

Final lecture conversation:

• Project showcase across the classroom. Before and after’s, reflecting on the choices made and the growth accomplished in the past 10 weeks.

• Talks of future orientation - project future, career positioning, and overall market adaptability and attitude.

Free slot - Feel free to wave off your students however you believe best. Suggestions:

• “The most common silly mistakes that you can expect people/companies/institutions will keep committing - and how to avoid them”

• How and where to draw inspiration from when feeling creatively burnt out.

• Learning how to think on longer time-frames within the industry, rather than chasing current trends too blindly and risking becoming dependent on passing “fashion” choices.