Hi! I’m Ben Jaffe, one of the instructors for Digital Media Academy’s Adventures Program. I want to give you a closer look at Multimedia Fusion 2, one of the primary software packages we use in the class to create dynamic and exciting games.

There are several computer programming languages that programmers use to communicate with computers. Learning how to program is very similar to learning a new language. You also have to learn how computers “think,” so you can give the computer instructions effectively and efficiently. Teaching a programming language to 9-13 years olds would be difficult and possibly boring to many of the kids; teaching the main concepts is much more fun. That is what Multimedia Fusion 2 (MMF2) allows us to do! We can teach our students the main concepts of game design. If they pursue computer programming at a later age, they’ll already understand many of the concepts of programming from this class.

The window pictured below allows the students to visually lay out the graphical elements in the game. This is one of the two main windows in MMF2. This is where the students choose the graphics, design the game’s levels, and tell the objects how to move (bounce, walk/jump, etc).

In every game, there are graphics and objects that move around the screen. Normally, a programmer would have to write code to get an object to move in any way, but our students can focus on the concepts instead of grappling with writing code. In MMF2, there are several movement types to chose from. In this example, we’re telling the ball to bounce around like a bouncing ball.

The Event Editor is the other main window in MMF2 (pictured below). This is where you program the “brains” of your game. The Event Editor lets you program without writing a single line of code. Technically speaking, you are creating “conditionals” in this window. Whenever “this” happens, do “that.” For example, line number 9 says “If the number of lives reaches 0, then restart the application.” By creating lists of these conditionals, we can create complex and interesting games that our students can be proud of! Multimedia Fusion 2 games will run on any Windows computer.

I’m very excited to be teaching MMF2 again, and I hope I see you all at DMA this summer!
-Ben Jaffe

Hello! I’m Ben Jaffe, one of the instructors for Digital Media Academy’s Adventures Program. I want to give you a closer look at Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. We use Dreamweaver for creating the web site layout in our Adventures Web Design class.

Dreamweaver is what we call a “WYSIWYG Editor” (stands for “What You See is What You Get”). This means we get to see our design as we create it. Before tools like Dreamweaver, we had to write HTML markup to create web sites, and didn’t get to manipulate it graphically. Here’s the Design view in Dreamweaver:

The Properties bar (across the bottom) is where we set up links, text styles, bold, italics, and change the sizes of items like images and tables. The panes on the right are for managing files, uploading to our website, and managing the CSS. When we edit in Design View, Dreamweaver is actually writing the HTML code for us.

At the very beginning of the class, we teach the kids some basic HTML. We actually build a simple webpage, coding it by hand! This helps the students understand what is going on behind the scenes, and how to fix things manually if anything goes wrong. It’s good to be able to look at the code to see what’s really going on. This is Dreamweaver’s Code View:

That HTML code is what our computers actually download when we are browsing the web. They read the code, and render out a graphical page for us to read.

After covering HTML, we talk about site design, then start on our own websites. As we create graphics in Photoshop, we integrate them into our sites. We also create a Flash animation, and add that to our site. Some students might even build a Flash animation to use as the header. (The header is the bar across the top of the page, with the website’s title).

After we build our site, integrate our graphics, and add our Flash animation, it’s time to test our sites and upload them to the internet. We test the links on our pages to be sure they all work, and upload their web pages to DMA’s web space, for friends and family to see.

After this course, your child will know how to use Photoshop, how to make simple animations in Flash, and how to put it all together into a web site. At the end of the class, the students go home with a web address for their website, and a DVD with all of the original files they used to make their content. This means that if they get access to the software (perhaps through their school), they can continue work on their web site!

I hope to see you this summer!
-Ben Jaffe

Learn how to become a web designer at DMA!

This is such an exciting time to be a web designer! Web users are getting more web savvy every day, online software applications are becoming the norm, the internet has become a part of most people’s daily lives, people are connected almost everywhere they go, half of everyone’s life is help somewhere on the net, and internet connections are faster than ever! This is a great time to be a web designer!

At DMA you’ll learn the web design skills and techniques to build amazing websites. Digital Media Academy’s pro web courses are built around Adobe’s web creative suite of applications including Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash.

Earlier this week I came across a CNN “Breaking News” video clip that demoed a new site by GE. This site uses 3d animation, live video, and Flash technology together with a tangible piece of paper you print out from the site. They are calling this “Augmented Reality.” The website uses your computer’s built-in camera and microphone to interact with website. Check it out! It is a very interesting site that shows a little of what is possible when combing your web developer skills and a good chunk of imagination. Creative web designers and web developers continue to push the limits of what is possible on the new web frontier.

    

Watch the CNN Video Clip!
(Opens in New Window) 

Learn more about web design training courses and summer camps at DMA!

By Claire Haggin, DMA Adventures Parent

Last summer at Digital Media Adventures, my 9-year old son worked on 3 different types of computer games: Platformer, Ball & Stick, and Dodge the Screen Bouncers. On Monday, the teacher started by explaining how to “control” the environment with arrow keys so the characters won’t “float” around. After that, he showed them how to make ladders, how to utilize the screen to “zoom” and “follow” a character  –  even how to create enemies who shoot weapons that must be dodged! Then, at the end of the week, they learned how to incorporate sound effects like “crashing” and “breaking” noises.

As an aside, my son especially liked circling around and switching chairs so he could  play and test classmates’ games, and of course, give them feedback.

A highlight of every morning and afternoon was going outside to play – after working for a few hours it was a great way to get re-energized. A favorite memory was playing a game that involved tying a balloon around your ankle, then running around trying to pop others’ balloons – all while not getting your balloon popped. All in all, he really had fun.

And not to be taken for granted, Miles also loved the lunches!

Janet Armstrong is a high school teacher at Adrian Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, California. She recently attended CUE (Computer Using Educators), where she learned of DMA. Seeing the importance of technology in today’s world and the importance of keeping up with and teaching the latest technology to her students, she is going to take a DMA course this summer to advance her skills. The following is her views on technology in the classroom:

Schools have seen the need to educate students to make appropriate, efficient, and productive use of available technologies. At the same time they are compelled to reduce the digital divide that exists between higher and lower socioeconomic groups of students, giving them all access to the same tools. Consequently, as the tools advance, educators must be at the forefront of life long learning.

Life long learning is a phrase that has been buzzing around academia for the last decade. It’s a mindset educators must have to stay connected to the ever-evolving technology that seems to grow exponentially each year. Teachers and administrators MUST stay abreast these advances or they will quickly find themselves fossils.

Skills once reserved only for high school students are more appropriate today for middle school students. This has created the opportunity to expose high school students to cutting edge technologies that are fun, interesting and highly engaging. At Wilcox High School in Santa Clara we are opening two new digital media courses that will employ the use of Adobe CS4 products to teach web design, digital image editing, digital storytelling, and publication design. To be a proficient teacher I must become a proficient user of these tools. This summer Digital Media Academy at Stanford will prepare me to be such a teacher. The Introduction to Web Design with Adobe CS4 – Dreamweaver, Flash & Photoshop course will enhance my current skills as I learn the latest version of these programs to design lessons and activities for my students.

Life today is complex and diverse. As never before, communication involves the constant use of visuals, sound, and action. The digital age is here and education has the responsibility to prepare our children to use the tools today and into the future. Thankfully, the Digital Media Academy is available to assist with this process.

Janet Armstrong
Adrian Wilcox High School

By Keith English – Animation Director, Screaming Pixels and DMA Instructor.

Thought you might be interested in a project we have just delivered to a client which uses a lot of the tools you can learn, or might have already learned at Digital Media Academy. “Red Carpet” will be running before every movie at the upcoming Sonoma International Film Festival April 1-5th 2009. The main purpose of openings is to list sponsors before each movie and our quest is to make that repetitive experience as enjoyable as possible, especially when some of these run over 150 times during a festival.

This spot was produced using Maya, RealFlow and Shake (which could have also been done in After Effects if necessary), plus of course Photoshop to create a lot of the textures we needed. We were first given the poster, which the client had designed in Sonoma and although they gave us a carte blanche, from that point on it was obvious it needed to be styled as an art deco piece. 

To give it a poster-like look we rendered using only a 20 degree angle of view camera, so that it was almost orthographic with only a tiny amount of perspective, and then added a paint, cartoon and film grain filters all mixed back into the original so that everything was kept subtle.

The character models were built to be almost comic-like, flat and graphic, and the last thing we did was to take off the specular highlights on their eyes to flatten it a even more. The sets were also designed to be slightly exaggerated, especially the car of course, which is just the front end of a car. We only built  just as much as we needed for each shot.

The champagne was created using RealFlow. The bubbles were from Maya’s underwater Paint Effects, painted onto the interior bottom of the animated glass, which had its visibility turned off, and then those bubbles rendered, taken into Shake, color corrected, then warped with a filter to look like they were inside the liquid, rotoscoped out to be seen only in the area of the liquid and finally layered over the glass as a “screen” to combine the lighter areas of both the original image and the bubbles.

The flash bulbs were created by rendering the two finished characters separately (as they were massively different scales), then rendering them again with an all white version of each character with a single spotlight ahead of their faces for the complete sequence. This created a grayscale image of each face front lit and black on the back of their heads, which when applied as a matte to a brightness node in Shake would brighten just the front of their faces.

Their eyes were tracked, again in Shake, and a 2D flare added to the front ofeach eye. So now we had two complete sequences, the first with their normal face renders and the second with the flash on the front of their faces continuously including a continuous flare. Now we just used a “mix” node in Shake to dissolve between the two sequences every time we wanted a flashlight to go off. 3 frames up for the flash and 10 down for the bulb fading.

Only the bottoms of her dress and bottoms of his pants used Maya’s nCloth, with all else being regular polygonal geometry modeling. The hair on both characters was created using Joe Alter’s Shave plugin in Maya, but without any dynamics on it. Everything was rendered using Maya’s software renderer except for the champagne liquid and glass shot for which we used Mental Ray in Maya as it’s much faster with refractions. The project, from conception to delivery, took just three weeks.

Cody Westheimer, a very talented LA composer created the music for the piece. Well actually, that is where we really began, with the music and then everything was animated to that. Hopefully in the end it looks and feels as though it was all created together.

If you have any specific questions I would be happy to answer them. And my advice to all of you who want to work in this business? … really learn the tools and then … BE PROLIFIC.

Watch the video here:

By Carolyn Perot

My son and his friend took the digital filmmaking course last summer at the Digital Media Academy and had a blast. They loved the camp, the food, the instructors. Plus, we let them loose with a digital movie camera on a school assignment this Fall and they came up with an amazing little film.

By Jennifer Krounbi

Last summer I signed my my son up for 1 week at DMA.  He ended up going for 3 weeks.  He loved the sessions and kept wanting to do more.  The staff was so friendly that my son couldn’t wait to get to camp in the morning.  He has been talking about his DMA experience ever since and can’t wait to go back this summer and learn more.  This was by far the best summer program that my son has ever had!

I’m Ben Jaffe, one of the instructors for Digital Media Academy’s Adventures Program. I teach Game Design and Web Design.

I love teaching Web Design to 9-13 year olds. One of the best parts about DMA’s Adventures Web Course is the software we use. We teach the kids how to use Adobe Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. We use Photoshop to create and modify graphics, and we take some of these graphics into Adobe Flash to add movement to them. Finally, we use Dreamweaver to build a full website and upload it so they can share it with friends and family.

We see Flash files everywhere on the web. YouTube uses a flash player, and most web banners and online games are created with Flash. Dreamweaver is used to build and manage websites of almost any scale. Photoshop is used for image modification and preparation. Virtually every image in every print publication has been modified with Photoshop. It is even used to prepare graphics for videos!

Our students learn how to use the same tools that the pros use. Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamweaver are the industry standards for graphics, animation, and site design. After taking our course, many students continue using the software to create websites and media. Middle schools and high schools often have a few licenses of the software. Knowing these applications gives anyone a distinct advantage in the job market.

When I first learned about Photoshop, I was in 9th grade. I took a multimedia class, and we covered Photoshop in moderate detail. There suddenly were so many possibilities open to me, and so many fun projects to work on. I impressed my family by creating realistic-looking photo compositions, and eventually made my way into video. Now, I do graphics, animation, video and audio work as a profession. It only took that brief introduction to pique my interest. The seed was planted. But the job I enjoy most is teaching, because in every class, there is a chance that one kid might latch onto what I teach them, and blossom.

I hope to see you this summer at DMA!

I’m Ben Jaffe, one of the instructors for Digital Media Academy’s Adventures Program. I teach Game Design and Web Design.

On the surface, the Game Design class may look somewhat straightforward. But it’s much more than simply creating fun games with our students. In our classes, we also teach important programming concepts, which can be the foundation for a future programming career.

Game Building can be frustrating for somebody who has never done it before. As games become more and more complex, the instructors are there to help them understand how to build their games well. Programmers call it “extensibility.” Here’s an example of how students encounter this in DMA’s Adventures Game Design class:

A few days into the week, we usually start working on an RPG game. The player controls a character who interacts with bystanders in the game to get information or collect items. The students quickly discover how frustrating it is to program actions for every single bystander in the game individually. The same goes for other objects in the game, such as allies, enemies, keys, coins, and projectiles. It’s much easier to group them together, and make a rule saying, “Whenever the character talks to any bystander, run this action.”

Extensibility is not the only programming concept that we teach to the kids. They learn the importance of game planning, bug testing, and proper pacing to effectively meet deadlines. They also develop an understanding of variables, and an introductory understanding of object-oriented programming. Instead of lecturing to the students, we let them discover and understand the concepts by themselves, with guidance.

Most importantly, we teach the kids programming concepts without them even realizing it! If they pursue a career in computer science or game design, they will already understand the importance of extensibility, testing, planning, and pacing. Though it may seem like just another fun summer course, every student gets much more out of it – skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

See you in the Summer!