Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

• Prototype a game screen with a player, interactive foreground elements, and a static background.

• Differentiate between the types of animation in modern industry game pipelines, such as frame-by-frame animation, puppet animation, minor effects and filters, sprite animation, and complex procedural effects.

• Identify techniques used to create environments for games and player-focused interactive media. 

• Apply Thomas and Johnston's 12 principles of animation to create game objects and characters. 

Course material will be presented in a lecture format. This course is designed to maximize learning through the use of strategies such as outcome based instruction", collaborative learning, contextual application and performance based assessment. Lecture material will consist of discussion, diagrams, multimedia," and other educationally sound practices. Other activities will include hands-on utilization of vector and production software. Demonstration and handout materials will be provided.

Assessment is designed to indicate achievement of the course outcome and performance tasks. The instructor will outline the methods used to assess student progress and the criteria for assigning a grade at the beginning of the course. Assessment will be based upon a combination of in-class participation", attendance, examinations, and quality of the multimedia project(s). Determination of problem solving skills, teamwork, and communication skills may also be included.

Project planning

Storyboarding

Terminology

Setting animation key frames

Working with layers

Working with audio

Applying special effects

Optimization

Publishing projects

Industry standards

Real world applications