Two in the middle: digital character production and machinima courses

ABSTRACT

Many Universities and Colleges are building interdisciplinary programs between engineering and fine arts that focus on games, special effects, animation and other areas that require interdisciplinary efforts. This is in response to the needs of the entertainment industries. The video game and 3D animation businesses fundamentally involve computer scientists and artists working closely together. The Entertainment Arts and Engineering (EAE) program (founded in 2007) is an undergraduate interdisciplinary program at the University of Utah (UofU). Students pursuing an animation or computer science degree may enroll in the program as a means of focusing their education on digital arts and entertainment. Two courses taught at the UofU with curriculum in the middle of the continuum between the two departments are the courses: Digital Character Production and Machinima. These courses provide an extraordinary applied learning experience for students to combine learning concepts that are not commonly taught together. The curriculums are designed to teach students to breakdown extremely complex problems, requiring understanding from both disciplines, into manageable segments that allow easy understanding of diverse concepts from computer graphics principles to sculptural ideology and from graphic algorithms to film/storytelling. It is a process that provides a direct view of the correlations of the critical concepts from each of the disciplines. This paper presents our insights from teaching and reviewing these two classes.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Curriculum

General Terms:
Design, Management

Keywords:
3d modeling, digital entertainment, education, film/storytelling, interdisciplinary curriculum, machinima, video games