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About the Course
Game Graphics 1 is a 'half course', run in conjunction with the Game Design Course. Each course has enough material for half a week of sessions (3 hours/day), so together they form a full course. If there are 8 or less students studying Game Design in a particular week, one tutor will teach both, Game Design in the morning and Game Graphics in the afternoon. If there are more than 8 campers (and therefore >2 tutors), the group should be split in two and swap between courses in the morning and afternoon, so one tutor is always teaching Game Design and the other Game Graphics.
We're trying to get the students to:
- Learn the basics, origins and ideas behind pixelart
- Have a go at making their own pixelart (sprites for their games made in the Game Design Course)
- Learn basic digital art techniques
- Do some basic sprite and object animation with frames and sprite sheets
- Have an introduction to backing tracks for games
- Make their own backing tracks by combining existing loops
- For the more musically inclined, make parts of their tracks from scratch by playing in notes directly
The Kit List
Student consumables (one per student to take home)
- USB flash drive
- Paper (for sketching ideas)
Student non-consumables (one per student, not to take home)
- 1 x Headphones
- Pencils (for sketching ideas)
Preparing Yourself
Like any practical course you'll find this much easier to teach if you have run through it yourself as completely as possible first.
As a minimum, you'll need to:
- Read through this guide completely and be comfortable with it
- Run through the student's guide completely, watching all videos and having a go at creating some pixel art and backing tracks yourself so you can advise them on techniques
Creating the pixel art and backing tracks to a high level is actually quite difficult - for this reason, having a good go yourself is very important so you can provide good technique advice to the campers which isn't necessarily obvious without trying it first. For example, how to make a face look good in pixel art or how to start making a melody.
If you are teaching just the Game Graphics half of the course (currently only at Winchester) as opposed to Game Graphics for half the day and Game Design for the other half, it is a good idea to have a look through the Game Design course as well, and familiarise yourself with the GameMaker software. Students often want to add the graphics and sounds they make to their games during the Game Graphics sessions, which you should be able to help them with at a basic level. Please read through the Game Design tutor guide and course material if this applies.
As the start of this course is tutor-led you'll also need to run through your delivery of the course a couple of times - ideally out loud, but at least in your head. If you are working with more than one tutor, you will want to decide between yourselves how to split the tasks/explanations in this initial part of the lesson.
Tutor Training Day
When you arrive for the tutor training day (at Winchester this will be before the students arrive, for other camps it will be a number of weeks before the first camp), we will go through some general things (like child protection training), but the bulk of the day will be on preparing yourself for teaching the course.
What will I receive?
There is no equipment for this course as it is entirely computer based. All of the tools are online, so you will be able to try out all of the projects made during the course. If you are teaching Game Graphics 2 as well as Game Graphics 1 (currently only at Winchester), there will be a sound recorder for you to familiarise yourself with during the first few days at camp.
How will we check that you are prepared?
We will expect you to:
- Explain to us some of the concepts in the tutor guide - i.e. you need to be able to tell us how the course is organised, what some of the important points are about safety and efficiently operating the courses, and be able to answer questions about these things intelligently!
- We'll ask you to show us some of the graphics and sounds you have made
- We'll ask you to run through some of the introductory activities for the start of sessions which are detailed at the end of this guide, as if you were running the course for real.
What will we show you?
- There should be very little (if anything) that you can't complete yourself in advance - of course we will be able to answer any questions you may have about the running/content of the course.
Pre-Course Setup
- Make sure students come with their flash drives (if run at a camp where we supply them at the start of the week).
Student Logins
All students will need to login to this online system to access the course material. They can login using the following details (everyone logs into the same account):
Username: 2dgamedesign@techcamp.org.uk
Password: techcamp
They can continue to login with these details to access the material at home after the course if they want to.
IT Systems Check
- Student logins work for this website
- Audacity installed and works (for Game Graphics 2)
- All videos work in the student guide
- Student login works for this site
- Check following websites are available:
- youtube.com
- images.google.com
- courses.techcamp.org.uk
- piskelapp.com
- soundtrap.com
Rules for Students
This course is primarily delivered by a number of text and video tutorials. For this to work well, the students should:
- Follow along with the videos, doing exactly the same steps
- Pause frequently so that they can do just one or two steps at a time
- Rewind if necessary to watch steps again
- Save their work regularly
The individual sections are setup so that all campers move onto the next section at the same time as led by the tutors, which is detailed later in this guide. As such it is important that they remain on the section they are on until told to move on, and do not 'skip ahead' of their own accord onto new material for the next day.
Guidelines for Tutors
- This course is somewhat different to other Tech Camp courses as it is far more open ended. As such, some campers might be much more interested in one section than another and wish to spend more time on it, which is great. However, it is important that all the campers complete at least the main steps in each section and don't finish the week having not started some of the sections.
- Equally some campers might find some sections more boring than others - it is important to make sure all campers are engaged as much as possible, which might require suggestions or encouragement from you if they are not particularly interested in a specific section. Please avoid allowing them to move on to later sections early at all costs.
- Each section consists of a number of main steps, which all the campers should be able to run through. At the end of each one are a number of challenges, and subsequently extension challenges also. It is designed such that most campers should get onto the challenges, but may not finish them, and really advanced ones might get onto the extension challenges. It does not matter to what degree these challenges are completed - they are there to stretch the more able campers so that the whole class is able to progress at the same rate, and provide interesting ideas that they can continue with after the camp at home.
- The course is designed to be run over 4 days for the main material, allowing the campers to spend the last day working on the extension challenges or creating things for their own game in the sections they found most interesting. This also allows for slower campers to have another day to get through the base material.
- All the software used is web based, allowing for no setup or installation. This does however require the campers to make individual accounts for each web application, which is fully detailed in the instructions. Encourage them to save things regularly as a crashing browser is likely to lose their work.
- On Soundtrap and Piskel, if the campers have a Google Account they should use this to login and make an account. If they don't have one, for Piskel they should click 'Create Sprite' and then save their creations as a .piskel file to their memory sticks. For Soundtrap, they can make an account with any email address, or failing that they can use theirname@techcamp.org.uk as they don't need to confirm the address.
- Sometimes at Winchester, you need to plug the headphones into the computers before booting up, otherwise the sound won't work at all (will have a red cross in taskbar and not output until you reboot with headphones plugged in).
Running the Session
At the start of each day's sessions (3 hours, 2x 1.5 hour sessions), there is a small tutor led section for you to deliver to introduce the topic, and avoid the campers staring at a screen for the entire session without any interaction. We have prepared these for you, so please run through them 'as written'. It is a good idea to practice this before each session!
Day 1
Sections for campers to complete: 1 - Pixel Art Basics, 2 - Making Pixel Art
Introduction topic - History of Pixel Art
Bring up the following images on the projector - ask the campers to guess when each game was first released, and how many copies have (ever) been sold:
- Legend of Zelda - 1986
- ~75 million copies sold
- Mega Man - 1987
- ~30 million copies sold
- Transport Tycoon
- 1994
- So popular remade into fan remake, still being developed (no actual number)
- Age of Empires
- 1999
- ~1m
- Stardew Valley
- 2016
- ~3m
Discuss how:
- Pixel Art used to be necessary due to the small screen sizes
- Whilst some consider it outdated, very large market for 'retro' feeling pixel art games
- Many modern titles still released with it
- Can look really good
- Hard skill to make good pixel art - not many pixels available to make a really clear character!
Show them how to access the course material and logon to this site, then get them started on first section.
Day 2
Sections for campers to complete: 3 - More Complex Tools
Introduction topic - Famous Characters
Explain how:
- A well drawn pixel art character can be incredibly popular and important for a game and company
- It can spawn a brand, merchandise, a character for the player to relate to, even create a franchise that is recognisable all over the world
Ask if they recognise these characters and who they are:
Mario
Sonic the Hedgehog
Pacman
Mega Man
Tell them to get started on section 3, to learn how to draw good characters in Piskel.
Day 3
Sections for campers to complete: 4 - Basic Animation, 5 - Character Animation
Introduction topic - Animation spritesheets, Animation Examples
Explain how:
- Good animations are critical for bringing a game to life
- Some are straightforward - e.g. ball bouncing
- Some are harder - e.g. characters running
- It can take a lot of time to create good animations, and they often have loads of frames and many more different animations than you might expect! For example:
Small section of Mario Spritesheet
Sonic Advance 3 for Game Boy Advance
Work in progress for modern pixel art game, Aporkalypse Now
Explain how they are going to learn how to do their own animations today with simple objects and characters, and to get started on section 3.
Day 4
Sections for campers to complete: 6 - Backing Tracks Introduction, 7 - Using Soundtrap, 8 - Playing Instruments
Introduction topic - Theme Music Quiz
'Pub Quiz' style game to get them to think about how the feel of the music effects the feel of a game. Explain the purpose of music is to influence the mood of the player, and how music must be suited to the type of game to be a good theme.
Split them into pairs. Play each clip in turn (10-15s of each), have the game covers up on the projector and ask each team to guess which game it comes from. Record their answers and decide a winner.
Star Wars Knight of Old Republic
Wrap up and explain a bit about what Soundtrap is, then get them started on section 6.
Day 5
Sections for campers to complete: Working on Extension Challenges/Own Ideas
Introduction topic - Last Day Ideas
- Last day is for the campers to work on extensions challenges or their own ideas in sections they particularly enjoyed.
- If they are struggling for ideas, get them to create some assets for their own games they have made in the other half of the course, or try and make their own version of a theme of character they really like.
- Remind them to save everything onto their memory sticks, but can still access their online account (hopefully) when they get home
- Down to them to make sure they have saved things - we won't have access to their accounts!