2D and 3D Art for Game and Film

The goal of this course is to introduce students to concepts, techniques and tools they can use to communicate ideas and narrative through visual media in both 2D and 3D. Students will learn skills such as sketching, storyboarding, and visual framing, and examine existing practices in print (e.g. comics, graphic novels), film (e.g. storyboards) and games (e.g. concept art) to help them ideate, prototype, develop and communicate visually. A key theme of the course is an introduction to visual culture, including representation and objects as taonga. Students will learn how to create art in styles ranging from caricature to photorealistic, understanding how these different styles focus and emphasise different things depending on what must be communicated. In addition to 2D art, students will also learn how to create visual assets in 3D, including both translating existing artworks from 2D and developing new artwork in 3D from scratch. Students will learn the differences between creating 3D artworks for fixed camera mediums (e.g. film) and dynamic camera mediums (e.g. games).

15 points

Special Topic: Narrative Design for Interactive Media

This course provides a practical and theoretical introduction to storytelling and narrative design for applied games, entertainment games and related interactive media applications. From fictional worldbuilding, networked story structures and character and conversation design to social simulations and emergent narrative, students will explore different design patterns and approaches for delivering meaningful play experiences, while gaining experience with standard tools and technologies for constructing interactive narratives and simulations. Students will work individually on smaller design activities reflecting the specific tasks and problems commonly faced by narrative designers in the game industry as well as collaborating in a peer group with complementary skills to deliver a more fully-developed systemic worldbuilding and storytelling project.

15 points

Subject to the approval of the Head of School.

Algorithms

This course teaches a range of fundamental algorithms and analyses their properties and behaviour.

15 points

(1) COSC121 or COSC131; (2) COSC122; RP: MATH120

Software Engineering II

SENG301 builds on the material introduced in SENG201 (Introduction to Software Engineering) and is intended as a companion course to SENG302 (Software Engineering Group Project). The focus is on quality and how to model, measure and maintain it as project size and complexity scale up.

15 points

SENG201. RP: ENCE260 or COSC262.

Computer Graphics

This course focuses on all aspects of fundamental computer graphics methods, including three-dimensional object representations, transformations, projections and rendering algorithms. The theoretical bases and implementation aspects of illumination and reflection models, texture mapping techniques and ray tracing are also covered. The course aims to provide a good foundation of OpenGL programming for the development of graphics applications using both fixed-function and programmable pipelines. The course also gives an introduction to WebGL programming.

15 points

(1) ENCE260, (2) 30 points of 200-level Computer Science, (3) 15 points of 100-level MATH/STAT/EMTH (MATH120) recommended). MATH101 is not acceptable.

Artificial Intelligence

This course introduces major concepts and algorithms in Artificial Intelligence. Topics include problem solving, reasoning, games, and machine learning.

15 points

COSC262

Human-Computer Interaction

The course provides an introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is concerned with understanding, designing, implementing and evaluating user-interfaces so that they better support users in carrying out their tasks. On completing the course you will have knowledge of the theoretical foundations of designing for interaction between humans and computers. You will also have practical experience in implementing and evaluating graphical user interfaces.

15 points

(1) COSC121 or COSC131; and (2) 30 points from COSC261, COSC262, COSC264, COSC265, ENCE260, SENG201; and (3) 15 points of MATH/EMTH/STAT/PSYC206 (excluding MATH101 and MATH110) RP: COSC101

Special Topic: User Interface Design

15 points

Subject to the approval of the Head of School.

COSC368