Producer's Note II - machinima course

Team

Industrial team works in a different dynamic from academic collaboration. Their work flow is designed to maximize the use of time and resources of each individual team member. Multiple projects will be assigned, and specialized tasks are distributed to corresponding skilled professionals. When I was talking to the 3D artist from one of the Nickelodeon studios in New York City, she mentioned to me that she has less chance working on various aspects of the animation production. On her team of 13 to 14 people, she mainly works on render pass based on the shot list the production assistant provided to everyone when others worked on background texture, lighting, 3D car animation in Maya and 2D characters animation in Flash, composite in After Effects, etc. based on the 3D models made by another team in India.

However as a course, collaboration is specific to a learning environment instead of a working environment. Even though the current stage of the machinima project requires quite a lot of production time, the instruction needs to be designed to empower participating students to contribute their expertise and perspectives to the project in both levels as an art film (results derived from iterative process of experiments and discussions), and as an innovative media and technology research (providing chances for engagement). At the same time, the guidance needs to create a focus and scope and set explicit goals and milestones. So at the end of the course, students may reflect upon this experience to further develop themselves within the field of design & technology.

Precedents/References:
Design & Education, Karen Sideman
(design questions, principles of empowered learning)
Media Lab, MIT - "learning by doing"
(the use of laboratory instruction)

Course Info
Timeline - 15 meetings
Design, storyboard, animatic - 2 weeks
Modeling, texture, lighting - 2 weeks
Animation - 2 weeks
Scripting avatar behaviors, particle effects, windlight - 2 weeks
Camera, lighting tool, avatar controller - 2 weeks
Shooting - 2 weeks
Post-production, presentations - 2 weeks
Screening - last week

Specialty Professionals:

3D Maya Artist - ShuChen Lin