Thursday, February 15th

Class Hours: 9:40 – 2:05
Mr. Cronin

Notes

Thursday!
Today we have visitors from SB. Students working with visitors:
- Lee (10-10:30)
- Mia (10-10:30)
- Zander (10-10:30)
Please note that we will be running Open House Workshops tonight, using your computers. If you have accounts logged in (email, Discord, 1 click Amazon, Reddit, Spotify, Steam) log off before you leave today. You have been warned. Do I think the visitors will be malicious? No, but just to be sure. We will clean at the end of the day… others will clean for you if you are not here. Handle your assets before we get there, we are just deleting.…
Today’s 19 minutes Reading Session will be swapped out for cleaning and asset copying.
- Clean desktops (you do it yourself or we delete all that is on the desktop – you are warned)
- Clean stations
- Put assets from public on ALL the desktops
Dear lord did you all forget how to turn off a computer yesterday? It will show up in T&E…
Sapan? Games? Multiple times? I had the sub AND my two spy students tell me this… as always, extra credit to my spies.

10:05 Attendance

10:10 Week 23 Skills Production

Thursday and Friday we will have time for SkillsUSA production. We are going to get into more and more team based work where you need to practice working together.

You and your partner are going to create (1) 15 second animation. It must be 15 seconds long exactly for full credit.

Your team will:

Model a new humanoid character (2 legs 2 arms head with face)
Setup with Armature
Setup with Shapekeys

You will pick an emotion to demonstrate. You must take this emotion to the full extreme, really exaggerate it – think of that Principle of Animation. You will convey this emotion through:

Character animation of the body (using the Armature)
Character animation of the face (using Shape Keys)
Animation and setup of the scene

Example: Let’s say that my team chose “pain” to demonstrate. This is what I would visualize:

A character goes to a desk to pick up an anvil. He starts to lift it, but it is too heavy, and drops it on his toe. His body and his face would then animate to match that feeling of pain, with the character hopping around, the face looking like a grimace, yelling, etc.

In this project you are going to need to start dividing up roles:

Lead animator – who is doing the character animation?
Organic modeler – who is making the character?
Scene modeler – who is making the world?
Inorganic animator / scene creator – what can be done that doesn’t involve the character?
Video editor – who cuts things together?

At the State and National Animation competition the teams that do the best have defined roles, and don’t step on each others toes. You simply won’t have enough time to go through the organic creation process of a week in CAWD – you will have 7 hours in the competition. Try to start specializing in what YOU do best as a partner, this is a group discussion.

Render out at 1080p in size for full credit called lastNamelastNameEmotion.mp4.

Our schedule:

Jan 25, 26 – GDD / STOT / Mood Board
Feb 1,2 – Work and document with Alpha testing as our next deliverable.
Feb 8,9 – Work and document with Alpha testing as our next deliverable.

(CURRENT) Feb 15,16 – Alpha Testing and Feedback. This is an early test, conducted after the development phase but before Beta testing. It’s considered a form of internal acceptance testing. Mr. Cronin will play each of your games on Thursday the 15th and Friday the 16th. I must have a playable character to “be”, a world to interact in, and a reason to do what we are doing. This is more than just a level demo – we should start seeing basic gameplay mechanics (collection, opening, exploring, etc.)

I have to play your game from now until English tomorrow. I will be looking specifically for:

A playable character
A world to interact in
A reason to do what I am doing
Gameplay mechanics that match up to what you are selling as a game. Am I collecting? Can I collect? Am I putting food elements together? Can I cook? Let me cook.

Feb 22, 23 – Work and document with Beta Testing as our next deliverable.
March 7,8 – Work and document with Beta Testing as our next deliverable.
March 14,15 – Beta Testing and Feedback. Mr. Cronin will play each of your games on the 15th. You must have all that you had in Alpha testing, now with sound, a complete 1st level, UI elements, and an achievable goal. This is your MVP – or Minimum Viable Product to pitch to the judges. If the judges walked in the door we should be able to sell our game to them this week.
March 21, 22 – Create Game Trailer for judging (OBS + Premiere + Sound Design)
March 28, 29 – Create and practice 10 minute presentation for juding.
Thursday April 4th – Vermont State Design Competitions!

You are going to create your team folder and document what you have done. Make it as easy as possible for me to learn what you have done through file names, through notes put on images, etc. It is up to your team to impress me with progress and documentation of this weeks work by 12:25 Friday.

You may find that you have to work on this outside of Thursday and Friday to hit the Alpha and Beta milestones. That is expected.

See Mr. Bohmann’s CAWD2 Dayplan.

10:50 Morning Break (10 minutes)

10 Minute break – you have to exit the room.
When the door near the TV is open, you are welcome to come back in.

11:00 English

11:55 Week 23 Skills Production

12:25 Lunch

No food in the room / eat in the Cafe.
You are welcome to return to the room when you have finished eating and work / hang out.

12:55 Attendance and Article

1:00 Steve Jobs Biography

Read along with Mr. Cronin. Improve literacy, word decoding, enjoy a nice story, and unplug from the world.

1:20 Afternoon Break (10 minutes)

10 Minute break – you have to exit the room.
When the door near the TV is open, you are welcome to come back in.

1:30 Speed Design

Speed Designs are 10 minute sprints in CAWD where we practice. It could be any medium – 3D, 2D, video, programming, etc.

1:45 Afternoon Practice & Production

Flexbox Powered Gallery
- Folder called “gallery”
DH23: Banana
- (lastName)DH23.jpg
Week 23 Agency
- (lastName)Agency_1.jpg
- (lastName)Agency_2.jpg
- (lastName)Agency_3.jpg

2:20 Dailies

2:25 Cleaning / Prep for visitors

Clean all desktops
Clean stations
Copy assets to all machines