Thursday, January 25th

Class Hours: 9:40 – 2:05
Mr. Cronin

Notes

Thursday! Skills Kickoff! A great, different, way we do the 3rd quarter!
Congrats go out to Tobi for taking 3rd place in the CTE Pin Design competition! In years past this means you have earned a spot in the state Pin Design competition. Great job.
CAWD will not have a CAWD project this week. We are going to have as graded work:
- DH20: Baseline Still Life
- Week 20 Agency
- Week 20 Skills Work (due Friday’s at the start of lunch – this is a 4th project that will match the weight of your Agency work)

10:05 Attendance and Article

10:10 Skills Kickoff!

Over the 3rd quarter (around English Thursday and Friday) you will work with a partner in one of the following:

3D Animation

7 hour competition, you are given the task to animate the day of.
Each week there will be deliverables. Assigned Thursday start of day, due Friday at lunch.
Preparation with Mr. Cronin will include rapid fire animation projects to prepare and practice. Last year this practice led to the National Championship. We have been the National Champions multiple times. Trust the process.
Each week there will be deliverables. Assigned Thursday start of day Thursday, due Friday at lunch.
Potential roles in partnership: Creative Director, Modeler, Animator, Editor, story board artist, Manager, etc.

Web Design

7 hour competition, you are given the task to code the day of.
Preparation with Mr. Bohmann will include acceleration through Web Design – faster than a typical CAWD1 student. We have been National Champions multiple times. Trust the process.
Each week there will be deliverables. Assigned Thursday start of day, due Friday at lunch.
Potential roles in partnership: Creative Director, Coder, Graphic Designer, Manager, preproduction artist, etc.

Game Design

Preparation with Mr. Cronin using workflow that will take a team from concept to minimum viable product of a video game.
In this competition a team game over the 3rd quarter and pitch it to industry judges (last year the judge was a former CAWD student who works at Insomniac Games.) The judges are often looking for new intellectual property. Something different. They don’t want post-apocalyptic; they don’t want Zombies. Played out.
I have VR kits you can use if you want to explore VR game development (but we don’t want flashlight simulator)
You get a 10 minute pitch with the judge to sell your game at the state competition.
Each week there will be deliverables. Assigned Thursday start of day, due Friday at lunch.
We have never been National Champions, but we do have a top 10 finish. This is a relatively new competition… let’s win the National Championship this year, why not?
Potential roles in partnership: Creative Director, programmer, 3D artist, sound designer, video editor (trailer), texture creator, Lore creator, game logic and design creator, etc.

Everyone find a partner, and let Mr. Cronin know who your partner is and what discipline you have chosen.

You must stick with what you choose – choose wisely. Think about it. Discuss with partner.

Once your team has informed me of your partner and dicipline, please start to work on your deliverables!

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 Skills Production / Deliverables

Each week you will be assigned work as a team which is graded as a team. It is up to you and your partner to meet the deliverable and by the start of lunch on Friday’s. You will get roughly 26 hours to do the work week by week.

Some of the work is two people on 1 computer, some of the work is 2 projects, it will change week by week.

On the public create a team folder in the skills folders. Place the all required deliverables there by 12:25 Friday’s. Elect the Creative Director of your project that will ensure you hit your deadlines.

You must have this turned in by 12:25 each Friday for full credit – you receive a single team grade.

This week you start the process of creating a working relationship with your partner. I want you to rely on each other to work through technical questions if they come up.

Each partner will model and animate a basic biped “skin bag” character (modeling)
- just skin
  - 2 legs
  - 2 arms
  - head
Rig (rigging)
Create repeating jumping jack animation (animation 5 seconds+)
Combine with high BPM dance music (sound design / editing)

Each student will upload an mp4 to the team folder. Total of 2 deliverables:

(lastName)Skills20.mp4
- and
(lastName)Skills20.mp4

This week you are going to create 3 initial documents for your team’s entry into the Game Design competition.

You will outline your game in 3 deliverables:

Game Design Document – create a PDF called lastNameLastNameGDD.pdf
SWOT Analysis – create a PDF called lastNameLastNameSWOT.pdf
Mood Board – create a JPG called lastNameLastNameMood.jpg

Game Design Document:

Create a new Google doc, copy and paste the questions below, and fill out as a team. Where do you want to build? What are you going to create together?

Executive summary (game concept, genre, target audience, project scope, etc.)

Gameplay (objectives, game progressions, in-game GUI, etc.)

Mechanics (rules, combat, physics, etc.)

Game elements (worldbuilding, story, characters, locations, level design, etc.)

Assets (music, sound effects, 2D/3D models, etc.)

Think about where you want to go, and what you don’t know yet. Think big, but realistic. Are you going to have a 1000 item inventory system multiplayer game with haptic feedback and loot boxes. No.

SWOT Analysis

Now that you have finished the GDD (and know where you want you want to build), create a new Google doc, and create 4 sections. Under each section outline what your team is going to realistically run into during this development process.

Each subsection needs at least 4 distinct items – be honest.

Stengths

What does your team bring to the table? (great creativity, amazing modeling, can program like a wiz, great ideas)

Weaknesses

What are some limitations to your team? (bad at modeling, could be better time managers, can’t work at home)

Opportunities

What could this do for you? (create a portfolio piece, try out a career, build your resume with design competitions, have fun, work with friend)

Threats

What could negatively impact this project? (you have been lazy before, you don’t know how to do anything yet, your parents are starting a divorce, you just brought up with gf/bf, the scope of what you are doing)

Mood Board

Moodboards are a collage of images, videos, fonts and colors. They’re used to communicate a visual direction, reflect a style or convey a mood. A lot of creative industries use them to communicate various things including: Conceptualization: Visualize and explore creative ideas.

In Photoshop create a new document at 1920 x 1080 resolution – this is 1080p. Copying and pasting images from the internet, fill the mood board with:

colors
fonts
ui elements
movies
colors
shapes
objects
textures
… anything that would make us get the rough feel for what your fame will look like.
… if you want to be super cool put a cork board background like you are “pinning” things to an actual bulletin board.

Here is an example for something that feels Zelda – yes it’s the wrong resolution, but you get the spirit of the example.

Will show up in the Thursday CAWD2 Dayplans.

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

DH20: Baseline Still Life
- (lastName)DH20.jpg
Week 20 Agency
- (lastName)Agency_1.jpg
- (lastName)Agency_2.jpg
- (lastName)Agency_3.jpg
Skills work (due Friday at start of lunch)

2:20 Dailies

2:25 “19 Minutes”

4 of 5 days per week we will end our day in CAWD with the “19 Minutes” of silent reading. Closing down our day with silent reading provides many benefits:

Improve Literacy Skills / Reading Stamina
Create space for a small reading meditation where we can disconnect from the world and get lost in a story
Unplug

At 2:44 each day I will come to 3 students and ask for a 1 sentence explanation of what happened in your story over that day’s reading session. It is neat to hear little pockets of a story, here and there.