What can you expect from a Digital Media Academy Instructor?

  What are the summer camps like?

By Ben Jaffe, Instructor

As a regular instructor for several companies around the San Francisco Bay Area, I believe it is important to ensure that every class I teach is different from the last. Even if I teach 5 consecutive classes on CSS, each class has a completely different set of students, each with different skill levels and interests. In many training centers, often classes really do end up exactly the same. Many instructors I have worked with simply plod along, following the curriculum word by word, line by line. No deviations, and no excitement. Of course, as a student you can ask questions and take advantage of their expertise in the field. But that experience doesn’t make for an interesting class. You may learn the topic, but it’s not fun.

It is certainly important to have guidelines and curriculum for a class so every class matches or exceeds a certain quality baseline. But what really brings a class to life is enthusiasm and flexibility. The instructor and the students both need to have fun, or it will be monotonous.

Digital Media Academy hires passionate and enthusiastic instructors for their classes. Just as importantly, DMA also allows their instructors quite a bit of flexibility with the course curriculum. Some of the best classes I have ever taught were classes where we went off the beaten path, attacking a project that nobody in the room had ever tried before. Last year, I taught Flash Actionscript Class for Teens at Stanford. After a few days, we voted on a game to work on together. We ended up making a playable version of Connect Four in Flash. Not only was it the first time any of my students had programmed Connect Four, it was the first time I had too!

Because Digital Media Academy hires only the best and most competent staff and instructors, we can go places with our classes that other companies cannot. Having taught with many computer training companies over many years, I truly do feel Digital Media Academy has something very unique. When you take a class with DMA, you don’t leave with a curriculum mindlessly stuffed into your brain. You leave with knowledge, confidence and a fulfilling experience.

I hope to see you this summer at Digital Media Academy!

If you’ve had a fulfilling experience at DMA in previous summers, feel free to join the conversation and leave a comment below!  Read one of our summer camp success stories!

I love free stuff. Free stuff is always better than stuff you pay for.

That’s why it’d be a shame if you missed your chance to win FREE tuition for a Digital Media Summer Camp Course of your selection.

There is only 1 week left in the iLike. iWin. iLearn. iPad. Sweepstakes presented by Digital Media Academy. We have already given away 4 FREE iPads! But what is even better is what is still to come. Next Tuesday, June 1st, we will be announcing the winner of a prize worth more than all 4 of those iPads combined!

Do you want to learn how to become an animator with Maya? Maybe you want to produce music using Logic Pro or make your own videos with Final Cut Pro. Maybe you want to direct music videos using both?

Whatever your dreams and aspirations are in digital media, Digital Media Academy has a summer camp that can help you get on your way. All you have to do is head on over to our Facebook page and sign up for the sweepstakes and you could win your FREE ride!

Hurry the sweepstakes ends in a week!

SIGN UP HERE!!!!!!!!

Technology and Sunshine Meet at San Diego Summer Camp

By Arash Afshar

Imagine exploring cutting edge media technologies such as robotics, 3D modeling, animation, video production, game design, graphics and more from top rated instructors in beautiful San Diego. The Digital Media Academy Summer Camp at UCSD offers students this in a unique, one of a kind learning experience!

Through the UCSD Summer Camp, your child will not only have an educational summer, but also get to explore the outdoors in very non-traditional ways.

Skateboarding and Filmmaking is a weeklong summer camp at UCSD which combines an interest in film making along with the excitement of skateboarding!  Teens enrolled in this camp will have the opportunity to receive skateboarding instruction from experts, and film all the action.  Students will also learn editing and special effects skills when they take their skateboarding video into a state of the art classroom studio for post production.

For teens and kids who would rather spend time on the beautiful San Diego beaches, the Digital Media Academy offers a Surfing and Filmmaking summer camp at UCSD.  In partnership with La Jolla Surf Camp, parent company of Surf Divas, students will have the opportunity to improve their surfing skills while filming and editing their own video!

These are only two of the many fun opportunities students have at the UCSD summer camp.  For more information on these programs and more visit: summer camp information.

There are many reasons why year after year, students return to the Digital Media Academy summer camps. Fun classes, experienced professors, and the chance to make life-long friends are just a few of them!  Register for summer camp today and see for yourself!

The Growing Market for Virtual Tourism

By James Matthew Taylor

The breadth and scope of games today have expanded far beyond the early efforts in the medium. Where previous games once tracked only a few actors and a single play-screen, modern games immerse players in sprawling worlds filled with talking people and objects to interact with.

Simple Graphics for Vintage Video Games

The sheer size of these worlds has dramatically increased the need for artists to create them. When the console cycle shifted to the Playstation 2 in the year 2000, the average art team for a game was maybe five to ten people. By the time the next-generation consoles arrived, art teams had grown tenfold. And as consumers become more demanding, requirements for art are sure to grow.

Modern titles are built around the idea of living, breathing worlds. The Grand Theft Auto series places players in elaborate urban environments, with city blocks that stretch for miles. Fallout 3 creates a huge, post-apocalyptic world to explore. The newly released Red Dead Redemption gives the player the chance to experience the Wild West. In every case, the user is able to experience a world completely apart from everyday reality.

Experience the Wild West with Red Dead Redemption

Certainly, huge game worlds are being built, and artists are needed to create them! But these virtual worlds will almost certainly expand to fields outside of gaming. Building worlds for industrial simulations, business telepresence, medical imaging, even virtual tourism, are all possibilities. In each case, the technology will rely heavily on what has been pioneered in the gaming sector. And there will be a huge need to create all the art content for such elaborate worlds.

Digital Media Academy’s 3D Game Creation – Level Design course is an amazing introduction to just this kind of art! The students will use 3D art creation tools (Maya) and level creation tools (Unreal 3) to create their own custom level that they can play in-game. This mirrors the professional development pipeline I work with in the game industry. Students will come away with the class with the skills to build anything they want inside a game engine – which is a first great step towards a career in the budding realm of virtual tourism.

Maya and Unreal 3 Game Design

Why not jump start your career in game design with a two week Academy for Game Design Summer Camp?  If you are a serious gamer and interested in a career in game art and design, don’t miss this incredible opportunity!  Over two exciting and intense weeks, you will build a state-of-the-art 3D environment and one or more stunning characters, all while using industry standard tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Zbrush and the Unreal 3 Game engine!

I just recently returned from a 2 1/2 week tour on board the Lennon Bus. The relationship with the Lennon Bus and Digital Media Academy is what gave birth to the idea of the Come Together: Music and Video Production Course. For a student coming into that summer course with no prior experience it can be intimidating thinking about having to write your own song and shoot a music video in just one week. But it should be anything but intimidating. Technology has made it so easy for us to have a quick turnaround with high production value. The Lennon Bus typically works on a project with students for just 8 hrs! At DMA Summer Camps you get a whole week! By the end of the week you are going to be so filled with ideas your head may just explode. Here are some projects I just worked on with students on the Lennon Bus in just an 8 hr work day. Check them out and I hope to see you in a Come Together class this summer!

I just recently returned from a 2 1/2 week tour on board the Lennon Bus. The relationship with the Lennon Bus and Digital Media Academy is what gave birth to the idea of the Come Together: Music and Video Production Course. For a student coming into that summer course with no prior experience it can be intimidating thinking about having to write your own song and shoot a music video in just one week. But it should be anything but intimidating. Technology has made it so easy for us to have a quick turnaround with high production value. The Lennon Bus typically works on a project with students for just 8 hrs! At DMA Summer Camps you get a whole week! By the end of the week you are going to be so filled with ideas your head may just explode. Here are some projects I just worked on with students on the Lennon Bus in just an 8 hr work day. Check them out and I hope to see you in a Come Together class this summer!Play Pretend

http://www.youtube.com/user/johnlennonbus#p/a/u/1/zVcGcBhCKEA

Music Video Production and Skateboarding Summer Camp

By SCOTT TAYLOR

Summer 2010 is almost upon us and I for one am truly exited to return to the University of California – UCSD campus for another round of Digital Media Academy US summer camps for kids courses. As a full time video editor, skateboarder and musician, the addition of the music video production class in the summer camp line-up has got me amped to see what this years students can come up with, both musically and visually using Final cut suite and Logic studio 9. Even if you’ve never touched an instrument, this summer camp will have you rocking like a pro.

The intro to film making class is a must for anyone who wants to get an understanding of some of the best techniques for telling stories, while leaning the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro. And as if that weren’t enough, There is my personal favorite class “Skateboarding and Film making summer camp“  This is the class that takes students on a non stop skate park tour of SoCal, where we will see local pro’s at work, well as get a chance to make a film of their summer skate adventures. If Skateboarding is your passion, this is a class I can assure you you’ll never forget…

Check out this video made by Circa shoes of their am rider Walker Ryan as he gives you the lowdown on some of the spots and skate-history that UCSD offers. Here’s the link over to Thrasher Magazine:

Thrasher Magazine Video

And here’s the actual video. 

(Note from the blog editor – this is NOT a film of Digital Media Academy summer camp!!!  This is a cool video that shows you a professional skateboarder showing you the UCSD campus… He is not wearing a helmet….  He SHOULD be wearing a helmet!  EVERYONE at Digital Media Academy summer camps SHALL wear protective gear, so no worries.  Now, editor’s note out of the way, enjoy the scenery!   Penny – the blog admin and mother of  a 13 year old that ALWAYS wears a very cool helmet while skateboarding…)

In the few months between now and July, you can catch me hosting the internet broadcast for this Years Vans Pro TecPool party, on May 22nd.

Vans TecPool Party

And here’s the video of the 2009 Vans TecPool event: 

And if you happen to be in San Diego on May 23 I’ll be MCing the Tony Hawk demo set to benefit local animal shelters.

Tony Hawk Demo

Computer and video game development is a fast-growing field, with a lot to offer both professionally and creatively. Considered by some as a curiosity in the mid-1970s, the gaming industry has quickly grown from niche market to mainstream, grossing $9.5 billion (USD) in 2007, and 11.7 billion in 2008. Sure you’ve play video games, but have you ever considered making them? Enthusiasm is crucial, but you’ll also need skills and training. The gaming industry is highly competitive, and you’ll need talent and dedication to make it.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nate Torkildson, 3D artist with Red Monkey Games and Gamer Salvation, and Instructor in 3D level Design for the Digital Media Academy, UBC. Nate has turned his childhood dream into a successful and rewarding career. He still marvels that he gets paid to make video games. In what other industry could you have this much fun, challenge yourself, and reach the hearts of countless fans?

10 Questions With Nate Torkildson

1. How did you find your way into video game design?

I’ve dreamed about making games since I was 7 years old. I think I still owe my parents about a million dollars in quarters from many visits to the arcade long ago. During my teenage years, I became serious about pursuing a career in design within the gaming industry. I’ve always been creative, but I wanted to take my skills to the next level. I enrolled in creative and technical courses, at an institution very similar to the Digital Media Academy, to transform my passion into a solid skill set. I haven’t looked back since.

2. What about your college years?

After I graduated high school, I was accepted to the Vancouver Film School where I studied 3D Animation and Visual Effects. I also attended the University of Washington, where I obtained my degree in Computer Science. After graduation, I was looking for my first big gig in the gaming industry. But, like all new grads, I had to prove myself. I worked tirelessly to build my own video game to give my potential employers a taste of what I could do. I developed “Eclipse,” a science fiction game where the player served to protect the planet from rogue aliens. The folks at a local gaming company, Black Sun Entertainment, loved my game so much they decided to take me on as an intern. During my internship, I worked on a short science fiction film called “Azures Rising.”

3. Take us through a day in the life of a 3D artist.

I usually arrive at work around 9 am to start off my day. The hours can be pretty long is this field, usually 9-10 hours a day, especially if a deadline is approaching. But I love my job so the time flies by quickly. I usually finish off work around 6 or sometimes 7, depending on what I’m working on.

4. How does the video game design process work?

At the beginning of a project, I sit down with the concept artist to review rough sketches outlining the overall vision for the project. I would then take these sketches and put them into 3D work for the lead game designer to review. Designing a game is complex. From designing characters to roads, plants, and shrubbery, every scene and level of the game needs to be flushed out.

5. What do you most enjoy about being a 3D artist?

Every project is dynamic. One day you’ll be designing shrubbery for a game, and the next you may be moulding a character out of clay or painting a backdrop. There’s so much variety, I never get bored. You’ll be working closely with a team, so you’ll be sure to make some great friends along the way.

6. What is most challenging about video game design?

The gaming industry is fast paced and demanding. You’ll need to put in long hours and work the occasional weekend. At the start, you won’t always get to have a say in the creative vision. But once you work your way up, you can collaborate on the big ideas.

7. What misconceptions do people have about game design?

People have this fantasy that working in the gaming industry means you’ll play games all day. This isn’t the case. A lot more work is involved than I imagined as a kid. There are a lot of people lining up to take your job – you’ll need to put in your dues to get ahead. Having said that, I love what I do and barely notice the time fly by. It’s hard work, but it’s extremely rewarding.

8.  What skills are most important for a career in game design?

You’ll need to be creative, detail-oriented, artistic, and computer savvy to make it in game design. Skills in art help, since you’ll be sculpting characters and painting textured backdrops. You’ll need to have a good understanding of human anatomy to design characters that move naturally. This profession requires a lot of programming, so computer skills are a must.

9. What advice can you give someone considering a career in video game design?

Get involved in the community. Being part of a M.O.D. (modification) team is a great way to showcase what you can do. A M.O.D. team creates a video game from concept to completion. You don’t own the rights to this game, but if a company likes it, they may decide to hire you full time. In fact, this is how I landed an internship at Black Sun Entertainment.

10. What is the coolest project that you’ve worked on?

My favorite project was working on a Science Fiction movie called Azueres Rising, where futuristic space-marines go to battle against a big, evil corporation. I helped develop the movie from concept to completion. It was great to see the final project come together. I’m so lucky to do what I love every day. There’s nothing better than that.

When I first started making movies, at the ripe old age of 15, I’d shoot my friends doing skateboard tricks with my dad’s VHS camcorder. I’d take the footage and edit using two VCRs—the process was tedious and yielded not-so-impressive results. The final “films” were very rough, filled with shaky camera work, jittery edits, and terrible sound (I’d add a soundtrack by playing music, usually, pop-punk, on my boom box). Needless to say, not a single one of my friends asked for copies of the final films.

It’s not that the movies I made were entirely unwatchable, but presentation counts for so much; true when I was 15, but especially true today when there are so many forms of entertainment vying for your attention. When you screen your work, you want it to be an event. You want to screen in a darkened room filled with your friends and family, and you want to wow people the second you hit play. To my mind, nothing ups the film presentation ante like an authored DVD. I remember the first time I used DVD Studio Pro, to make a DVD copy of a short film I made a few years back. My parents were so impressed, floored really, by the DVD menu that it almost didn’t matter how good or bad my film was (FYI, the film was good enough to get me into film school).

DVD Studio Pro is included as part of Final Cut Studio, and it’s definitely the most powerful program in the bundle. Basically, if you can dream up the main menu, the chapter select menus, and the special features, you can build it in DVD Studio. I go through a basic instruction of the program in my beginner’s course and a more comprehensive instruction in the advanced course. It’s a very intuitive program, designed to work seamlessly with Final Cut Pro, so here’s a quick look at how easy it is to turn your film project into a DVD.

When you’re finished editing a project and are ready to start making a DVD, you’ll want to export the final sequence to QuickTime. For short films shot on SD, an uncompressed version is fine. Translation: just turn it into a QuickTime file, and don’t go through Compressor.

Next, open up DVD Studio Pro. I always use the program’s “advanced” configuration, simply because it’s what I’m used to, and because all the of the program’s options are at your disposal. On the lower left-hand corner you’ll find a window with two tabs, one entitled “Assets”, the other “Log”. Make sure you’re under the “Assets” tab and click the “import” button.

Find the QuickTime file you made in Final Cut Pro and import it into DVD Studio.

Grab both the video and audio icons and drag and drop them onto the Track icon in the asset manager. Hold onto the Control button, click on the track icon (which at this point has been renamed to match the QuickTime file’s name) and select first play. This is the fastest way to make a DVD without a menu, something I do all the time when I’m screening films at various stages to classmates and colleagues.

Now, insert a blank DVD-r into your computer’s disc drive, wait for your computer to recognize the blank disc, then hit the “burn” icon at the top of the screen.

That, believe it or not, is it. You’ve got yourself a playable DVD. Of course, I’ll explain how add a main menu, a chapter select, and how to add fun stuff like blooper reels and photomontages in my filmmaking courses. I just wanted point out how DVD Studio Pro is at once intuitive and powerful, how easy it is to put on a great show.

I’m teaching the Beginning and Advanced Digital Filmmaking for Teens courses at both Harvard and Yale this summer. In the meantime, I’m easily friendable at:

www.facebook.com/lee.manansala

or sign up for classes at DMA’s website!

www.digitalmediaacademy.org

Special Effects Filmmaking

By Lee Manansala

This is The Conjuror by Georges Melies from 1899. It is (and please forgive the pun) magical.

Maybe you have to be a film history nerd like me, but seeing that never gets old. Film was still a novelty back then (placing the camera at an angle to create a more interesting image was a revelation) so when Melies cut frames from his shots to create his magic tricks, he basically stumbled upon editing—something specific to the cinematic medium. Now take a look at this and see if you can find the connective tissue:

Yes. I just drew a straight line between Georges Melies and Vampire Weekend. This is the first video from the band’s second album, so their record company probably threw a lot of money their way to spend on the video. I love that they made a video that could have been made in the 50’s and employed effects that have been around since the days of Melies.

I guess I’m making one of my deepest filmmaking biases all too clear: I’m not a huge fan of fancy special effects. I do, however, appreciate when my students want to use effects to help tell their stories, and Final Cut Pro has a pretty wide selection of video effects to choose from. I explain what they do and how to use them in my Advanced Digital Filmmaking for Teens course. Here’s a preview.

When you start a new project on Final Cut Pro, you’ll notice a tab in your browser window called “effects.” Choose that, and you’ll get a number of folder icons, one of which is called “video filters.” This is the effects set you’ll most use, especially if you’re doing event and wedding editing like I’ve done for the past six years. Video filters manipulate the characteristics of the image; you can remove excess blue from an image that was shot outdoors, excess orange from an indoor shot (cameras read sunlight as blue and light from fixtures as orange), or you can remove color from the shot altogether to create a black and white image. In addition to correcting color temperature mistakes, you can add filters to distort, sharpen, or literally highlight the image:

This is a trailer for a film called “That’s My Majesty” by Emily Carmichael (cinematography by yours truly). You’ll notice the unearthly glow around the princess/alien character. This was accomplished using a glow filter. The important thing to remember is that a filter will inform the entire image, meaning you can’t simply draw the filter onto a specific portion of the image. A glow filter will make the entire shot glow. In Emily’s movie, only the princess glows; the light follows and illuminates her and only her throughout the entire movie. This was accomplished through two processes called keyframing and masking. Masking involves drawing a border around the portion of the image (in That’s My Majesty’s case, the princess) you want to affect, and keyframing entails shifting the mask, frame by frame, to follow the subject as it moves. Emily’s movie is 4 minutes long, she had to move the mask frame by frame for most of the movie. At 30 frames per second, 60 seconds per minute, it’s needless to say the processes were very time consuming and tedious. I’ve often described a young filmmaker’s discovery of the Final Cut Pro effects tab as a time vampire. Before you know it, you’ve spent an entire day throwing filters onto shots just to see what they do.

I don’t discourage my students from using special effects, but I do implore them to heed this bit of advice: know the effect you want to use before you use it. The course is an intensive 5-day program, and there’s very little time for experimenting in the editing room. Fortunately, I’ve lucked out in this department, because every student I’ve taught at DMA has had a clear idea of the story they want to tell.

I’m set to teach the Digital Filmmaking for Teens courses at Harvard and Brown this summer. In the meantime, I’m reachable and friendable at:

www.facebook.com/lee.manansala

or visit the DMA website to register for courses:

www.digitalmediaacademy.org