Video Game Design/Developers

There has been some conversation about having digital art (Blender, etc?) as part of a Game Design curriculum.  I think it is a great idea.  The glitch is I do not know Blender ( or whatever) and do not have the space for a new class.  Finding an art teacher interested in offering a class in DA also seems to be an issue.  I have absolutely no talent for art so I have very little interest in doing the course myself.  I do a section on Blender in my Intro to Unity class but it is more of a quick and dirty tutorial ( https://youtu.be/sbCW0Cs7aI8 ) but then we do not use it.  The time to build a Blender object then use it in a game project is more than a semester will tolerate.  Those of you that do a DA course, how do you approach it?

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Tutorial: Blender MODELLING For Absolute Beginners | Low Poly Girl Learn how to make a simple character in FREE 3D software. This tutorial is for ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, everything is in one simple video for you to get started with, and finish with a pleasing result. View this on YouTube >

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Garth Flint
Missoula MT
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Blender is a bit of a bear as a one-off unit. It's pretty time consuming, we spend about a quarter on it and we get VERY shallow.

If I was going to do a detour in a Game Dev class into game art, I would do pixel art. Talk a little bit about 4 frame animation loops, have them make little 64x64 assets and such.

As far as my intro into blender it changes a bit, I haven't really found one I am happy with that is free. But the two best ones I would recommend taking a look at are

The Donut

The Monster

I did the donut this time because it is a very broad look at a bunch of stuff Blender does, but strictly in terms of game assets, you are probably good to stop at video 10. But I like to go through all of it to introduce concepts like lighting and such.

There are a number of good low poly game asset tutorials out there, but a lot of them assume familiarity with Blender.

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Brian Bautista k12teacher
Citrus Heights CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 5/2/2023 5:34:00 PM
From: Brian Bautista
Subject: RE: Digital Art and Game Design

Blender is a bit of a bear as a one-off unit. It's pretty time consuming, we spend about a quarter on it and we get VERY shallow.

If I was going to do a detour in a Game Dev class into game art, I would do pixel art. Talk a little bit about 4 frame animation loops, have them make little 64x64 assets and such.

As far as my intro into blender it changes a bit, I haven't really found one I am happy with that is free. But the two best ones I would recommend taking a look at are

The Donut

The Monster

I did the donut this time because it is a very broad look at a bunch of stuff Blender does, but strictly in terms of game assets, you are probably good to stop at video 10. But I like to go through all of it to introduce concepts like lighting and such.

There are a number of good low poly game asset tutorials out there, but a lot of them assume familiarity with Blender.

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Brian Bautista k12teacher
Citrus Heights CA
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I haven't dedicate a unit to Blender, and I wonder how well a few weeks to learn the basics of modeling in Blender would go. I've been teaching a stand-alone 3D modeling/animation course using only Blender. It's been a year-long course and we're barely scratching the surface. I think low-poly like you linked would be your best bet, but then we consider what we're doing with those assets after we model them. Do they need armature for rigging/animation, are they static assets, do we need to bake textures for lighting, what's our tri count, etc. Lots to consider it almost would seem best to be a semester-long course just to go over those topics. Those are specialized fields in the grander scheme of things. 

I have had students use models in games that were created with an application called Asset Forge, by Kenney.nl. It's dead simple to use, and can create 3D and 2D sprites for games. It's similar to using Legos as the pieces snap together and can be customized in terms of materials. I purchased a license through his itch.io page, and emailed to see if we could install on other computers in our lab and he agreed. $40 for 20 computers is a deal. Below is an example of an asset built with the application: 

As for 2D Pixel art, I can't express how wonderful the Piskel app is. I have one student who's used it exclusively to build his Robot Blast game. Animations, background, tilemap, everything. It's browser-based, free to use, and has all the bells and whistles tools like Asperite have. The GDevelop Game Engine has the Piskel app integrated into its application, which is also pretty amazing. 

Anywho, maybe one of these days we can come together as a group and create some curriculum/unit outlines that integrate Digital Art and Game Dev. I have used lots of different tools with my students. 

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Anthony White
Top of the World CSTA Vice President
CS/Game Dev - Kodiak High School
Kodiak, AK
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Kenny.nl basically made my program work the first few years.

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Brian Bautista k12teacher
Citrus Heights CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-02-2023 17:37
From: Anthony White
Subject: Digital Art and Game Design

I haven't dedicate a unit to Blender, and I wonder how well a few weeks to learn the basics of modeling in Blender would go. I've been teaching a stand-alone 3D modeling/animation course using only Blender. It's been a year-long course and we're barely scratching the surface. I think low-poly like you linked would be your best bet, but then we consider what we're doing with those assets after we model them. Do they need armature for rigging/animation, are they static assets, do we need to bake textures for lighting, what's our tri count, etc. Lots to consider it almost would seem best to be a semester-long course just to go over those topics. Those are specialized fields in the grander scheme of things. 

I have had students use models in games that were created with an application called Asset Forge, by Kenney.nl. It's dead simple to use, and can create 3D and 2D sprites for games. It's similar to using Legos as the pieces snap together and can be customized in terms of materials. I purchased a license through his itch.io page, and emailed to see if we could install on other computers in our lab and he agreed. $40 for 20 computers is a deal. Below is an example of an asset built with the application: 

As for 2D Pixel art, I can't express how wonderful the Piskel app is. I have one student who's used it exclusively to build his Robot Blast game. Animations, background, tilemap, everything. It's browser-based, free to use, and has all the bells and whistles tools like Asperite have. The GDevelop Game Engine has the Piskel app integrated into its application, which is also pretty amazing. 

Anywho, maybe one of these days we can come together as a group and create some curriculum/unit outlines that integrate Digital Art and Game Dev. I have used lots of different tools with my students. 

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Anthony White
Top of the World CSTA Vice President
CS/Game Dev - Kodiak High School
Kodiak, AK
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I am hoping to do more with art for games next year. Most of my students just get their assets from various asset stores. That's fine, but I have students all year long, over 2 years, and they should learn how to make more of their own game objects.

I got a grant to bring a working artist to my class to teach so I and the students could learn along together. I was lucky to find a game artist who taught Blender. The problem is that I have 4 classes and I wanted every class to get his instruction, so I needed him all day to teach my 4 classes and the grant only allowed him to come for 2 full days. He agreed to give help over Zoom on a couple of pre-defined days, but that wasn't as successful. Needless to say we didn't get very far in Blender, although it did inspire a few students to learn it on their own. I should have just had him come to one class, over more time, to get deeper into Blender, and I just taught my other classes, what he was teaching this one class. We could have benefited over a longer period of time from his expertise.

That said, next year, since I'm going back to 2d games, I'm going to do more with Pixel art. I love the Pixel art that the SaulToons Youtube channel does. https://www.youtube.com/@saultoons/featured

He also runs a challenge in September each year called Septembit. You basically get a prompt each day and you have to spend 10 minutes making a pixel art design for that day's challenge. There are parameters set at the beginning like the size and color palette and how much time you spend. He also has his own Discord server where he releases the challenge and his critique of the best submissions. It looks really great. Here is the link to his Discord, https://discord.gg/TCjDT4ke

I wonder if anyone in here is interested in learning more about Septembit and figuring out what it would look like to roll it out in our classes. I think starting the year off with Pixel art in a game design class works well since it's easy and there is a low barrier to entry. It sets the tone, everyone can do this. At the end of the month you have basically a sprite sheet with 30 different sprites on it. I've attached sample so you can see what I mean.

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Owen Peery k12teacher
SAN FRANCISCO CA
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