VFS GD25 – Month: 01

Posted by Matheus Pitillo on Jan 30, 2012 in Life at VFS | 8 comments

Yoo! What’s up, guys? I know, I’m taking so long to update the site, I should post more every week, and.. and.. mimimimi. But I’m here now, so let’s focus, okie? 😉 Today is 31 January and in one hour the first month at VFS will be over. WHAAT??! Yeah, yeah! It was fast. Anyway, I’ve decided to do a quick retrospective of January, explaining a little bit the assignments, lectures etc. So take your chair – or straighten your pillow – and come with me. I hope you enjoy.

Where to start?  Besides all assignments, we had in this month of January the GD25 Welcome Party, the VFS Winter 2012 Impact Awards and, as the Game Expo happened this month, we had one day full of Lectures and Q&A at VFS with some great speakers from big companies. To those who wanted to get some questions answered, it was awesome! The speakers was:

• Bruce Nesmith, Director of Design, Bethesda Softworks (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)
• Emmanuel Lusinchi, Associate Lead Designer, Bioware Austin ( SWTOR )
• Bruce Kelly, Narrative game Designer, Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution)
• Anna Sloan, Studio Talent Manager, Slant Six Games

Impact Awards and Bruce Nesmith Lecture

Every week we need to submit a lot of assignments. Almost all of them we need to present in class, in front of the other students and teachers. For Pre-Production Techniques Classes, Christopher Mitchell – the teacher of this subject – started to film our presentations. This way we can analyze what points we need to improve to make a better presentation. At VFS, It’s common to work together and create different game ideas in the same day. Teachers are always asking us to create new pitches for games, making us practice exploring our creativity.

This first month of classes were more focused on the theory part. Of course we already had programming classes, where we need to program and create a Dice Game using C# language and Visual Studio 2010. As we also had some activities on Photoshop. But almost all subjects in this term are more focused on the theory part about the games, techniques of Pre-Production, how to create and construct a good game story etc. And all of this is REALLY IMPORTANT. I can say from my own experience as a graduate student in Game Design, that one of the most important thing in this area is to learn how everything “works”, since the creation of one idea until the game finished and running. So the way that VFS are managing the program is really intelligent and awesome.

Ok! To make it easy, I will organize this post by subject and quick explain everything that we did during this first month.

Game Production
Basically a loooot of content. LOL. Dave Warfield and Olivia Bogacki are the teachers of this subject and they are amazing. The classes were more focused in the basic concepts of “best practices” in game production. They are always teaching about the ways to identify risks in a project cycle, demonstrating the understanding of a typical development cycle, and also explaining about contracts and licensing in game production. The classes were in the theatre and we are always seeing very good presentations. We had the first exam last week, and it was cool the way that Dave tested us one week before, during class, with a Game Quiz with all students competing against each other. Hahaha. The test was pretty creative.

• Assignments:
• For this class we had no assignments!

Game Theory Analog and Practical
The most weird class. And I say weird in a good way. We have two different teachers for this class, and two different kind of class. Gregory MacMartin give us the theory part focused in analog games. All my life I never met anyone who talks as fast as him. But he is great. He knows everything about rules, mechanics and we feel confident when we saw he speaking. For now he is teaching the theory behind the games, and board game mechanics. We did three assignments for his class until now. The first one was the 25-50 Board Game Ideas – that I’ve already cited some post before – a Game Analysis Paper assignments, in which we analyzed a board game that we like, and the Game Concept Overview of our last project board game. For his class we are doing a board game in pairs. My partner is Mustafa, and for now we just have a prototype of the game, with the rules and a lot of notes. In the end this term we need to finish the board game, with everything 100% complete, including the board and the art.

Board Game Prototype and Practical Class

The other class of this same subject is about PLAYING GAMES. WHAAAT?! Yeah, that’s why I said sometimes it seems weird. LOL. Every week we need to play at least 3 hours of games. In this first term, as we are focused on board games, we just play them. The best way to understand the mechanics and rules is playing another games. I need to admit that sometimes I feel boring during this class, but I know it is an important class and in some way is good to have this “break time” during the week. Btw, I won this match that I’m showing in the picture above. Hahaha.

• Assignments:
• Analog Game Idea Brainstorming;
• Game Analysis Paper;
• Game Concept Overview;
• Development of a Board Game.

Storytelling
WOOW! I need to admit that with the Pre-Pro classes, this one is one of my favourites. Who teach us is John Meadows. Particularly I think he is an excellent teacher. He is funny and very intelligent, and his classes are awesome. We learn about storytelling – obviously – and until now he teached us about the Hero’s Journey and 3 Act Structure that is always present in games and movies story. By the way, I will post as soon as I can the 3 act structure assignment that I did for his class, as one article to my website. So stay tuned to see when I update. 😉 For the 3 Act Structure I chose the game Heavy Rain. And for the Hero’s Journey I will present in the next week the movie Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain.

• Assignments:
• 3 Act Structure;
• Hero’s Journey.

Cinematics / Storyboarding
Two different teachers, each one for one of this subjects. Bren Lynne teaches Cinematic, what are the best ways to create a good cinematic, which techniques we can use to make it better and also about camera properties, shots etc. In his classes we are always seeing movie scenes and analyzing the blocking and breakdown. For his first assignment we chose a cinematic from one game and we made the scene breakdown of it. Anne Mann teaches storyboard to us. She’s a very funny teacher and very talented also. We had just two classes with her until now, and she taught some good techniques to draw fast, and then we did a Shot List thinking in our cinematic that we want to create. For now, the next step is to end the Storyboard of the Shot List.

• Assignments:
• Scene Breakdown;
• Shot List;
• Storyboard.

Programming 1
Hmm. What to say? It’s programming class. And for those who knows me better, programming never was something that I really enjoy or I really understand. LOL. But that’s the point, actually. For the very first time in my life I think I’m understanding it. I can’t say already that I’m good at it now, but at least I can understand how everything works and I also did the first assignment. This is a good start. Who teaches us is Peter Walsh. He’s a very intelligent and patient teacher. The way that he leads the class is very good. He is able to explain in a very comprehensive way what everything means in the codes. For now we are learning C# and we did our first Dice Game.

• Assignments:
• Back Alley Dice Shooter

Portfolio
Jacob Tran is our teacher and we had just one class until today. Basically he presented a lot of tools and websites to create our portfolio. He explained how important is to have a great one and what we can show online to give a good impression.

• Assignments:
• No assignments.

Presentation Skills
We also had just one class until today. Classmates were separated into two groups. Each group had class on a different day of the week. Andrew Laing is the teacher and he will teach us how to be more comfortable when we are presenting in front a lot of people. In the first class we did a brainstorming to present a rollercoaster idea for an amusement park. In the same class we presented to the other students.

• Assignments:
• No assignments.

Level Design Theory
Another class that I really like is LD. Victor Kam is the teacher and he is very nice and communicative. He’s always asking us what we want to see in class, to make the class even more fun and specific. We are always analyzing Level Designs for a lot of games. We started with a Level Deconstruction with a game level that we like – I chose Uncharted 3, the Sink or Swim level. We should say the positives and negatives points of that level and say what we love on it. Then we did some exercises creating our own level that we will suppose to develop later. And finally a Level Summary Document with a lot of details about that level. The first two exercises were not considered as assignments, but as we should do in the same way, I will write it here.

• Assignments:
• Level Deconstruction;
• Level Pitch Document;
• Level Summary Document.

Pre-Production Techniques
AHHH! Surely the most laborious of all classes in the first month. The teacher is Christopher Mitchell and, even having some nightmares with him, because every week I know that we will need to present one more game pitch in front of class and that has been hard for me, he is one of my favourites teachers. Christopher can communicate his ideas very well and the class content. Every week we have more assignments/exercises to submit and to present. I never though that we could create so many game ideas in a short time period.  And during classes we are always doing this too. For sure, Pre-Production Techniques is one very important class and I’m happy to been learning from start.

• Assignments:
• The Elevator Pitch;
• Wii Game Pitch;
• Blue Ocean Pitch.

2 hours Brainstorming in group

Visual Design Principles
Art classes with Elizabeth Metzker as Instructor. We had a class presenting the principles of Visual Design. Then we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery to analyze some pieces of art and to write about, using the principles that we learned in the first class. After that, we had an introduction to Photoshop Layers and Masks, with Destructive and Non-Destructive Editing methods in PS.

• Assignments:
• Painting Art Critique

And for today that’s all, folks! I really need to go to bed now, because it’s too late and tomorrow will be a very busy day as always. I hope I have succeeded in explaining better how classes are going on during these days. Any question, just send a comment here in this post and I will answer as soon as I can. Thank you for your visit and stay tuned in the articles section of my site, that I will post the 3 Act Structure soon. See ya!