Game Art
& Animation

This unit is the second part of the capstone project building upon skills learnt in GDC300A Major game production 1 and progressing the alpha version of the game your team developed. You will progress through the industry development cycle to the completion of a publishable gold version. You will demonstrate advanced level knowledge of project development while leveraging technical skills in your area of specialisation, deliver game documentation and a post-mortem. You will apply professional level teamwork and project management skills and demonstrate advanced level design skills during the development and completion of the game.

You will also apply basic business planning skills to pitch a business plan, explore production and post-production stages, and complete your individual professional portfolio. You will be working more independently, while receiving feedback from your supervisor as a group, and utilising the skills you have gained throughout your study.

The final stage of the project requires you to provide constructive feedback to your peers in a professional manner and reflect upon and document your own performance and role in this project from initial design in GDC300A to final completion.

Shaders are user-defined programs designed to run on a graphics processor to execute one of the programmable stages of the rendering pipeline. In this unit, you will study the history and evolution of shaders in video games. Building on your knowledge of GDX103 Art optimisation techniques, in this unit you will explore some of the key advances made in shader graphics and become familiar with the industry pioneers who have influenced and contributed to the technology used by many contemporary game engines. You will review the introduction of hardware acceleration, the competing Open GL and Direct X APIs and the resulting GPU wars of the late 1990s that would ultimately shape the computer graphics landscape for the next two decades.

You will develop the skills and knowledge to design and create custom shaders in a game engine using current tools and techniques. Analysing the basic structure of a shader script, you will learn how today’s shaders can be easily assembled and modified in a game engine using visual editing systems. On completion of this unit you will understand the history and evolution of shader technology and how to develop and modify basic shader materials for game designers and game artists through practice-based exercises.

This unit will explore the nature of entrepreneurship and the role of the entrepreneur in pursuing innovative game concepts and technologies. You will extend your enterprise and business planning skills to cultivate and exemplify your identity as a professional practitioner by pursuing innovative game concepts, together with learning how to analyse case studies and conduct market analysis to develop strategic business plans.

This unit will include seminars and guest lectures given by established game development entrepreneurs, who will touch on key challenges experienced by start-ups including funding. Through multi-disciplinary teamwork, oral and written communication, and self-management skills you will collaborate on developing a business plan for a game start-up or technology and deliver a game pitch to an industry panel. You will also evaluate and peer review other teams’ business plans and pitches.

Sound plays an important role in the interactivity and immersion of digital games, as a player’s actions can trigger dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, and music. In this unit, you will develop the skills and knowledge to design, generate and manipulate audio elements for sound in video games. You will incorporate middleware and Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software solutions to prepare audio and sound effects in a game engine while learning concepts and principles of sound and acoustic behaviour in an interactive environment. You will also gain an understanding of audio recording and layering techniques, sound editing and production workflows. You will apply basic programming functions to script game object components and trigger sound events in real-time while considering performance optimisation and compression requirements to improve CPU and memory performance applicable to the development target platform.

By the end of this unit, you will have the skills and knowledge to prepare audio resources; edit and implement real-time sound events for character, animation and environments; understand the roles that music, dialogue and sound effects play in communicating narrative storytelling and how these sound components can affect gameplay and direct player decision-making.

In this unit, you will extend your understanding of 3D modelling by demonstrating advanced skills and knowledge in grey-box level design and UV mapping techniques for the application of textures to a 3D model. Building upon what you have learned in GDD101 Level design theory and GDC101 Introduction to game art, you will apply the principles of game art to efficiently create 3D models for proof of concept (PoC) of your game design vision. To enhance rapid PoC development, you will also learn modular level design and rapid prototyping techniques for the quick iteration and turnover of your level design ideas in response to player input and feedback.

By the end of this unit, you will be able to create, evaluate and improve on your level design environments and understand the export process between a 3D modelling package and a game engine.

In this unit, you will build on skills and knowledge gained in GDD101 Level design theory. Using evaluation methods taught in GDC201 Human-computer interaction and user experience design, you will develop skills and knowledge in Quality Assurance (QA) principles and gameplay testing, and integrate these with your team management skills. You will critically evaluate key quality assurance concepts and liaise with other students who will play the role of your clients and identify issues and items that require testing, and seek approval from those clients to proceed with testing.

You will also undertake responsibilities in team management, the creation and maintenance of documentation and testing plans, and the delivery of completed product testing and reports. Your research and market analysis skills will be developed and applied to provide effective feedback to clients in regard to their products and markets. Your self-reflection and written communication skills will also be consolidated through the documentation of product testing outcomes and the production of detailed reports for clients.