Tuesday, September 3rd

Class Hours: 10:05 – 2:40
Mr. Cronin

Notes

Welcome to Week 2!
- Today being a Monday/Tuesday means we are in an “A” day for CTE 7/8 classes. These classes happen Monday and Tuesday afternoons every week.
- Today is an “B” day for EHS 7/8 classes are they still go on an every other day schedule.
- If you have a “B” day CTE 7/8 class, you will have these classes on Thursday and Friday afternoon.
Let’s all make our Week 2 folder – called “week_02” inside of our G drive.
As we are into Week 2 we are going to start holding each other more accountable to hit our daily activities. We will be copying down the folder for our Speed Design and our Dailies on-time going forward. You hit the deadline and upload an asset saved as your last name – such as cronin.jpg – you get credit. Having your work uploaded means it is part of our presentations each day, and gets you working with mini deadlines every day – just like the industry. If you miss the deadline and don’t have the deliverable uploaded on-time, it isn’t part of the submission and you don’t get credit for that component of the day. This is part of your Transferable and Employability Skills grade.

10:05 Attendance and Article

10:10 CAWD Syllabus – what we plan to do when:

Year

First Semester – 3D Design / Animation / Game Design / College @ CCV (Mallory and Caleb)
Second Semester – Web Design and Development / State Design Competitions / College Credits / Industry Recognized Credential Exam
All year – Traditional Art, Graphic Design, Video Editing, English

First Semester

September – 3D Modeling and Asset Creation
October – Animation
November – Game Design and Development
December – What is next? 3D in AR / VR. Animation in AR / VR. 3D Printing.
January – End of Semester Capstone

10:20 Submitting projects / presentations / grading

CAWD will have 3 projects created from Monday through Friday. I always give the weekend as extra time for students to work, and then all work from the previous week is due Monday at the start of class. I will give 15 minutes for “Last Looks” Monday. This time is not meant for doing work, but for uploading and final checking on asset count and names.

To reiterate, you need to have your Monday->Friday work done before you walk in the room Monday morning. Use “Last Looks” time to upload the work to our Public drive.

The weekly CAWD Projects

CAWD is built around 3 weekly projects, the CAWD Project, the Design Homework, and the Agency Project

#1 The CAWD Project (25% of your Weekly Grade)

Focused around specific learning objectives.
Medium changes, from Blender, to Unreal, to Web Layouts, to programming…
This week (Week 1 and 2) the CAWD Project is your Castle.

#2 The Design Homework (25% of your Weekly Grade)

Provides the traditional, off-computer pieces that colleges, universities, and employers require.
We use Champlain Colleges’s Game Art & Animation Portfolio requirements as our signpost here, as it is the most popular local option for CAWD students over the last 10 years.
- Quarter 1 – Introduction. Using the tools, learning about the scanner, getting comfortable with a sketchbook, art supplies, etc.
- Quarter 2 – Perspective. 1, 2 and 3 point perspective. Taught in a traditional stand and deliver teaching environment. I lead with lessons in front of the class.
- Quarter 3 – Still Life’s. What goes into a classic still life? Taught through online YouTube resources. The ability to learn while outside traditional education environments (on your own, or to extend class material) is incredibly important. I curate the videos in Q3.
- Quarter 4 – Portraits. Weekly I give you the topics and it is up to you learn and apply the topic. The most likely way is self selecting your own YouTube resources, but you could talk to an artist, go get extra help from an art teacher, jump in their Discord, whatever you need to do to learn on your own, and create a project demonstrating your new skills. Learning how to learn will be very important to you in your career.
- We are looking for an hour of work on your Sketch Effort is easily apparent, and your work is presented each and every week.
- This week (DH2) the Design Homework is a free sketch – anything you wish, and I will also accept any traditional medium if you want to use pastels, paint, marker, etc.

#3 The Student Agency (25% of your Weekly Grade)

Students choose how to demonstrate their learning.
- Extension of our coursework (3D Modeling)
- New learning (Blender 2D Animation tutorials)
- Group Work (so long everyone pulls their weight)
- Literal, abstract, tutorials, art, programming, I have a lot of flexibility. I want to honor your interests and drives. What piques your interest?
- This week you have your first agency. You COULD follow this workflow:
  - Decide to make a bus stop in Blender
  - Use afternoon today to get started
  - Work at home or in class throughout the week – so long as you are ready to turn the work in first thing Monday morning.
  - Looking for about an hour of labor per week per agency. Some of us are gone 2 afternoons per week and will lose production time, make sure you are working at home to meet the deadlines!

Transferable and Employability Skill Grade (25% of your Weekly Grade)

As part of CAWD we are going to practice the soft skills of business that aren’t an artistic technique, aren’t a technical process – but workplace skills that will transcend your time in CAWD and be applied to the other areas of your life.

This week we will start recording and noting your Transferable and Employability skills. Here are some notes I took last week for certain people that will become an issue this week if they continue:

Leaving computer on at the end of the day, not pushing chair in
Leaving a mess at your station either with garbage, and/or art supplies being left out
Books not stored neatly on top of computer
Missed Speed Design / Dailies, or file named incorrectly
Being off task, in Photoshop when in Blender, in Blender when in Photoshop, etc

This week we are going to start holding you accountable for your actions and how you present to an employer (I act as this in CAWD). Let’s do the best we can every day so we can get as high a T&E grade as possible!

Let’s look at a normal weekly workload – listed in our afternoon Practice & Production Window. In this afternoon work session students can work on current work, incomplete work, get 1:1 help, and in general use their time smartly.

10:50 Morning Break (10 minutes)

11:00 Blender Review

Week 1 Review:

Array
Sub Objects
HDRI

11:20 Blender

Collections
Subdivision Surface Modifier – before / after
Basic Terrain / Land / Water
Reflections – Eevee vs. Cycles – choosing your render engine
Camera clipping controls

11:45 AM Production Time

This morning we are going to give you some AM production time to get to work on this weeks project workload. All of our weekly work will be due next Monday at the start of class. During these Production Windows I really don’t care which project you work on, so long as you are making progress. If anything I would choose to do my Design Homework outside of class as that is the easiest project to complete outside of CAWD – a sketch.

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 A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow is a reader’s dream — a wonder-full, nuanced story full of wit, insight, and imagination.

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

1:20 Afternoon Break (10 minutes)

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

Castle Project

lastNameCastle_1.jpg through lastNameCastle_3.jpg

Design Homework 2 – Free Choice

lastNameDH_2.jpg

Week 2 Agency

lastNameAgency_1.jpg through lastNameAgency_3.jpg

We are going to use a hybrid of camelCasing and snake_casing in CAWD. camelCasing the English words, and snake_casing the _1.jpg, _2.jpg, etc.

2:15 Dailies

2:20 “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 2:39 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.