Proposal to revise Game Animation concentration

Proposed title: Game Art

Rationale

As the Game Design major in IAM anticipates its first graduating class in spring ’09, we have an opportunity and an obligation to reflect upon the successes and inadequacies of our program, and to make adjustments and revisions where necessary.

Curriculum design:

We find that, because of the vast amount of knowledge necessary for an animator in today’s game development environment, much more intensive, game-adapted information must be conveyed much earlier in the program.* The current design of the Animation Concentration includes many courses and class topics that, while they may add to a student’s overall capability, are not as necessary to their actual performance in a professional game development environment as more computer-intensive classes would be. This is in part due to the fact that our program exists in a liberal education environment, and IAM has a strenuous core foundation series of classes in which students take many classes outside their major, and in part to the current emphasis on traditional animation techniques early in the concentration.

In order to remedy this situation, we suggest a revised Concentration in Game Art to supplant the current concentration in Game Animation. A four-year plan and revised learning objectives are appended.