Interactive Animation Diploma (full time)

The first year of the Interactive Animation program is a full-time course designed to prepare graduates for a job in the industry of games development or 3D production. This requires excellent 3D skills and broad knowledge about the games pipeline, history and experience in producing high quality content. This course provides hands-on training in industry standard software. Students are trained in game design and writing game design documents, storytelling and scriptwriting, 2D drawing and animation and various 3D techniques. Besides that students acquire important inside knowledge about the industry during the course.

Graduates of the first year obtain a Diploma and are prepared for entry-level work in the games of animation industry in positions such as (junior) texture, modeling, animation, rigging or lighting artist. Graduates have learned to work with industry standard hard- and software and will have a broad knowledge about games, the interactive entertainment pipeline and the industry of games production. For more advanced skills students can continue on to the second year in order to attain a Bachelor Degree.

Main modules covered during this course:

• Digital Audio & Video Production:
  This module provides students with knowledge of the digital audio and video production process and introduces them to the fundamental methods used in digital audio and video productions.
  
• Fundamentals of Drawing:
  Introduces the student to the fundamental methods and concepts of observational and expressive drawing practice, focusing primarily on drawing and the visual representations of ideas, concepts, characters and environments.
  
• Concept & story writing:
  Provides students with the skill to create and write a story using fully realized characters. These skills can be put in practice in film as well as in game animation and programming. This is the basis for creating exciting and appealing interactive entertainment.
  
• Design for Interactive Entertainment:
  This module focuses on the fundamental design of electronic interactive entertainment applications. It introduces the principles of game theory, basic interactive design, rule and level design and more practical aspects such as design documentation, testing and the game development business.
  
• Principles of 2D Animation:
  Introduces the student to the principles and practices of 2D animation, providing a foundation for the more advanced modules in 2D animation and 3D modelling which follow in later semesters.
  
• Principles of 3D Modeling:
  Provides students with an understanding of 3D modeling and its place in the multimedia and interactive entertainment environment. It introduces students to current tools, principles and practices for the efficient creation, transformation
  and editing of 3D objects.
  
• Scripting and Storyboarding:
  Provides the students with skills and concepts to develop complex scripts and storyboards for various media. Examines traditional elements such as tone, pace, flow, tension, beginning, middle, end, equilibrium, protagonist, problem, sub-plots, climax, resolution and style and the challenge of applying these elements to interactive media.
  
• Interactive animation:
  Gives the students the opportunity to study effective game level design in a variety of genres and export and test some of these levels for playability using game engines. Explores aspects of game level design, examines strengths and weaknesses of existing games and creating their own templates.
  
• Character Animation:
  Develops the knowledge and skills in the design and creation of 3D animated characters, exploring pose to pose and keyframe animation theories, examining the use of dialogue and lip-sync in 3D. This develops the students’ 3D animation skills and enables them to translate the principles of animation to 3D digital characters.
• More topics like:
  Realtime texturing, environmental modeling, rigging, rendering, exporting, etc. are covered in other lectures during the course. Content is subject to change.