LCAD
LCAD’s Game Art Minor gives you the opportunity to learn in a safe and collaborative environment in which you may reach your full creative potential and make the interactive worlds you have always dreamed about.
In collaboration with partnering schools and our graduate program, students work in development teams that reflect current industry practices. The teams are established to create demos and vertical slices of original games. This multi-university, cross curricular opportunity allows artists to work with designers, engineers, and other developers, resulting in a greater understanding and awareness of the game creation process in a team environment.
This 1 unit elective will provide students the opportunity to focus on a specialized topic. Students will be given the opportunity to narrow their attention on a cutting edge technique at a more advanced level. The class will create a number of small, but focused projects utilizing current and emerging game art techniques.
In this course, students go through the development cycle of a 2D side scroller level. Projects involve concepting a cohesive idea, creating schedules, and creating a playable scene in a game engine. At the end of the course the student will have an understanding of the 2D production pipeline that can directly relate to various other disciplines in the game art program.
This class introduces students to the interrelated specialties of character animation and rigging for modern video games and their impact on other departments within the game art pipeline. Students will learn the principles of animation as they apply to simple objects and fully articulated characters, as well as create sophisticated custom rigs that can be tailored to specific animation needs. Emphasis is placed on acquiring practical, industry-relevant strategies for creating effective assets, the ability to prioritize goals and techniques in order to achieve results within time and budgetary constraints, and building a solid foundational knowledge of the crafts involved.
The purpose of this course is to instruct students in the design and construction of game levels. Theoretical aspects of level design will be discussed during each class. The class will discuss player navigation, story methodologies, level aesthetics, and general issues of game play which make the difference between an entertaining level and a mediocre one. Students will review examples of both good and bad levels for class critique. In addition to the theoretical aspects of level design, students will also learn the practical aspects of level creation through the course projects.
This class teaches the fundamentals of game art production from a broad perspective. Students will learn to work within multiple specialties within the game art field in order to build up a general understanding of the pipeline and processes involved. Emphasis is placed on strong foundation skills, compelling conceptual ideas, and self-motivated problem solving. Class will consist of lectures, demonstrations, in-class workshops, and take-home projects. The second half of the class will be devoted to an all-inclusive final project, where students will work in groups to build a compelling playable game world. The final project will serve as a culmination of all they have learned in the class, as well as become a platform for further experimentation and problem solving. This class will not focus on a single element, but rather, it will attempt to give a broad overview of the role that art plays in the creation of Games.