Video Game Design/Developers

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

What is your progression or unit plan for Blender?   I've been looking at it on my own and it seems like a very large application.   Just wondering where to start and how to go through it.

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

What is your progression or unit plan for Blender?   I've been looking at it on my own and it seems like a very large application.   Just wondering where to start and how to go through it.

------------------------------
John Hadenfeldt k12teacher
Cairo NE

Original Message:
Sent: 11-08-2023 12:15
From: Brian Bautista
Subject: Wednesday Discussion - Difficulty

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

------------------------------
BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA
------------------------------

It is an absolute beast of a program, I touch very little of it. More of an exposure to Blender than anything.

To piggy back on Garth, you definitely need the right kids. I would never do it in an intro class and part of the reason I turn the heat up on my intro course is to make sure I have the right students in the room when I get to blender in the second class. 

Your students have to understand how to be bad at something and getting better through iteration, students that "just want to be done" really don't have a chance. I used to be very hands on with tutorials and being over their shoulder and such and it really isn't a good way to learn it, they need to struggle to stay a float to learn it and I intervene when it transitions to drowning, which does happen to most of them at least once or twice.

I only have a quarter to do blender, the first half of my graphics course is pixel art, so we dive in pretty hard. 

I use the donut, which is a very well made and pretty comprehensive intro to blender. It takes about 2-3 weeks for my students. To be honest, it is a little overkill, you could probably stop at video 11 and be fine, but I do all of it to expose a little more of blender to them. It is intimidating at first, but it is among the biggest wins when the finish (all student work from this quarter). I always bring donuts on the last day of it as a joke/reward. 

I have also used Grant Abbit's Monster Scene as an intro, it's pretty good as well and a little less intimidating.

From there, I kinda open it up to what the students want to do, I give them a menu of options grouped around a product I want them to make. 

For example, we make a low poly asset. Which is a menu of different youtube tutorials based around low poly game assets.

Then we do some low poly animals to intro kinematics. Example Example Example (We just wrapped this up yesterday)

From here we do a series of small low poly scenes of their choice.

Then a small animation loop.

Before getting to their final, which they pitch to me. I really take the training wheels off and have them go chase their muse in either 2d or 3d. Some students play it safe and others... go a little crazy.

I definitely do not have the best way to do it, but I have found that I get better results when I really embrace all the UDL/Flipped classroom stuff and just take my hands off the wheel. I spend more time as an art director/render engineer than I do as a teacher. You definitely need the right kids for this way though, For example, I have 28 students in my graphics class right now, of them it works great for 14 of them, another 10 are grinding their way through and need a lot more support from me/their peers but they are embracing the grind and there are 4 who decided this is too much work and have basically checked out. To be honest, all 4 weren't exactly who I would have picked to be in the class to begin with.

But that brings me to another side of this I have discovered in the last 9 years. I have no idea who will be good at blender. I have yet to adopt even the outline of a model to try and predict success. I presently have a student I considered telling his counselor to move him before the class started. I was positive he would crack under the strain and be a dead chair. He is doing absolutely bonkers work. If I was not physically watching him do this stuff in front of me I would bet my credential he was plagiarizing. He is basically a savant and at this point the students go to him for help more than me. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it is the most extreme version of this story for me. 

My advice I usually give to people is that you cannot dip your toe into blender, you have to dive in and you have to have the right students ready to collectively suffer. It's kind of a vibe and when everyone buys in it works really well, it becomes a super student centered and collaborative class that makes crazy stuff and is the envy of a campus but when it doesn't work... man it doesn't work. A lot of students just aren't emotionally able to deal with wanting to be good at something, knowing what good looks like in that thing and having no skills to produce it. It's intense for some of them. I have had to talk to parents about burnout at every BTSN, because every class I will have an AP student-type kid grinding out something at 2am on a school night because they aren't used to struggling/asking for help.

It's also one of those things that is real hard to keep up with. Blender 4.0 is about to drop and hopefully it doesn't change everything. The transition from 2 to 3 was a little rough for me. The fundamentals don't change much, but everything else changed quite a bit and it was a real pain for a while to play catch up. I was basically picking up stuff through my students for the first semester after the transition.

------------------------------
BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-09-2023 08:11
From: John Hadenfeldt
Subject: Wednesday Discussion - Difficulty

What is your progression or unit plan for Blender?   I've been looking at it on my own and it seems like a very large application.   Just wondering where to start and how to go through it.

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

It is an absolute beast of a program, I touch very little of it. More of an exposure to Blender than anything.

To piggy back on Garth, you definitely need the right kids. I would never do it in an intro class and part of the reason I turn the heat up on my intro course is to make sure I have the right students in the room when I get to blender in the second class. 

Your students have to understand how to be bad at something and getting better through iteration, students that "just want to be done" really don't have a chance. I used to be very hands on with tutorials and being over their shoulder and such and it really isn't a good way to learn it, they need to struggle to stay a float to learn it and I intervene when it transitions to drowning, which does happen to most of them at least once or twice.

I only have a quarter to do blender, the first half of my graphics course is pixel art, so we dive in pretty hard. 

I use the donut, which is a very well made and pretty comprehensive intro to blender. It takes about 2-3 weeks for my students. To be honest, it is a little overkill, you could probably stop at video 11 and be fine, but I do all of it to expose a little more of blender to them. It is intimidating at first, but it is among the biggest wins when the finish (all student work from this quarter). I always bring donuts on the last day of it as a joke/reward. 

I have also used Grant Abbit's Monster Scene as an intro, it's pretty good as well and a little less intimidating.

From there, I kinda open it up to what the students want to do, I give them a menu of options grouped around a product I want them to make. 

For example, we make a low poly asset. Which is a menu of different youtube tutorials based around low poly game assets.

Then we do some low poly animals to intro kinematics. Example Example Example (We just wrapped this up yesterday)

From here we do a series of small low poly scenes of their choice.

Then a small animation loop.

Before getting to their final, which they pitch to me. I really take the training wheels off and have them go chase their muse in either 2d or 3d. Some students play it safe and others... go a little crazy.

I definitely do not have the best way to do it, but I have found that I get better results when I really embrace all the UDL/Flipped classroom stuff and just take my hands off the wheel. I spend more time as an art director/render engineer than I do as a teacher. You definitely need the right kids for this way though, For example, I have 28 students in my graphics class right now, of them it works great for 14 of them, another 10 are grinding their way through and need a lot more support from me/their peers but they are embracing the grind and there are 4 who decided this is too much work and have basically checked out. To be honest, all 4 weren't exactly who I would have picked to be in the class to begin with.

But that brings me to another side of this I have discovered in the last 9 years. I have no idea who will be good at blender. I have yet to adopt even the outline of a model to try and predict success. I presently have a student I considered telling his counselor to move him before the class started. I was positive he would crack under the strain and be a dead chair. He is doing absolutely bonkers work. If I was not physically watching him do this stuff in front of me I would bet my credential he was plagiarizing. He is basically a savant and at this point the students go to him for help more than me. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it is the most extreme version of this story for me. 

My advice I usually give to people is that you cannot dip your toe into blender, you have to dive in and you have to have the right students ready to collectively suffer. It's kind of a vibe and when everyone buys in it works really well, it becomes a super student centered and collaborative class that makes crazy stuff and is the envy of a campus but when it doesn't work... man it doesn't work. A lot of students just aren't emotionally able to deal with wanting to be good at something, knowing what good looks like in that thing and having no skills to produce it. It's intense for some of them. I have had to talk to parents about burnout at every BTSN, because every class I will have an AP student-type kid grinding out something at 2am on a school night because they aren't used to struggling/asking for help.

It's also one of those things that is real hard to keep up with. Blender 4.0 is about to drop and hopefully it doesn't change everything. The transition from 2 to 3 was a little rough for me. The fundamentals don't change much, but everything else changed quite a bit and it was a real pain for a while to play catch up. I was basically picking up stuff through my students for the first semester after the transition.

------------------------------
BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA

Original Message:
Sent: 11-09-2023 08:11
From: John Hadenfeldt
Subject: Wednesday Discussion - Difficulty

What is your progression or unit plan for Blender?   I've been looking at it on my own and it seems like a very large application.   Just wondering where to start and how to go through it.

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

It is an absolute beast of a program, I touch very little of it. More of an exposure to Blender than anything.

To piggy back on Garth, you definitely need the right kids. I would never do it in an intro class and part of the reason I turn the heat up on my intro course is to make sure I have the right students in the room when I get to blender in the second class. 

Your students have to understand how to be bad at something and getting better through iteration, students that "just want to be done" really don't have a chance. I used to be very hands on with tutorials and being over their shoulder and such and it really isn't a good way to learn it, they need to struggle to stay a float to learn it and I intervene when it transitions to drowning, which does happen to most of them at least once or twice.

I only have a quarter to do blender, the first half of my graphics course is pixel art, so we dive in pretty hard. 

I use the donut, which is a very well made and pretty comprehensive intro to blender. It takes about 2-3 weeks for my students. To be honest, it is a little overkill, you could probably stop at video 11 and be fine, but I do all of it to expose a little more of blender to them. It is intimidating at first, but it is among the biggest wins when they finish (all student work from this quarter). I always bring donuts on the last day of it as a joke/reward. 

I have also used Grant Abbit's Monster Scene as an intro, it's pretty good as well and a little less intimidating.

From there, I kinda open it up to what the students want to do, I give them a menu of options grouped around a product I want them to make. 

For example, we make a low poly asset. Which is a menu of different youtube tutorials based around low poly game assets.

Then we do some low poly animals to intro kinematics. Example Example Example (We just wrapped this up yesterday)

From here we do a series of small low poly scenes of their choice.

Then a small animation loop.

Before getting to their final, which they pitch to me. I really take the training wheels off and have them go chase their muse in either 2d or 3d. Some students play it safe and others... go a little crazy.

I definitely do not have the best way to do it, but I have found that I get better results when I really embrace all the UDL/Flipped classroom stuff and just take my hands off the wheel. I spend more time as an art director/render engineer than I do as a teacher. You definitely need the right kids for this way though, For example, I have 28 students in my graphics class right now, of them it works great for 14 of them, another 10 are grinding their way through and need a lot more support from me/their peers but they are embracing the grind and there are 4 who decided this is too much work and have basically checked out. To be honest, all 4 weren't exactly who I would have picked to be in the class to begin with.

But that brings me to another side of this I have discovered in the last 9 years. I have no idea who will be good at blender. I have yet to adopt even the outline of a model to try and predict success. I presently have a student I considered telling his counselor to move him before the class started. I was positive he would crack under the strain and be a dead chair. He is doing absolutely bonkers work. If I was not physically watching him do this stuff in front of me I would bet my credential he was plagiarizing. He is basically a savant and at this point the students go to him for help more than me. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it is the most extreme version of this story for me. 

My advice I usually give to people is that you cannot dip your toe into blender, you have to dive in and you have to have the right students ready to collectively suffer. It's kind of a vibe and when everyone buys in it works really well, it becomes a super student centered and collaborative class that makes crazy stuff and is the envy of a campus but when it doesn't work... man it doesn't work. A lot of students just aren't emotionally able to deal with wanting to be good at something, knowing what good looks like in that thing and having no skills to produce it. It's intense for some of them. I have had to talk to parents about burnout at every BTSN, because every class I will have an AP student-type kid grinding out something at 2am on a school night because they aren't used to struggling/asking for help.

It's also one of those things that is real hard to keep up with. Blender 4.0 is about to drop and hopefully it doesn't change everything. The transition from 2 to 3 was a little rough for me. The fundamentals don't change much, but everything else changed quite a bit and it was a real pain for a while to play catch up. I was basically picking up stuff through my students for the first semester after the transition.

------------------------------
BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA

Original Message:
Sent: 11-09-2023 08:11
From: John Hadenfeldt
Subject: Wednesday Discussion - Difficulty

What is your progression or unit plan for Blender?   I've been looking at it on my own and it seems like a very large application.   Just wondering where to start and how to go through it.

------------------------------
John Hadenfeldt k12teacher
Cairo NE

Original Message:
Sent: 11-08-2023 12:15
From: Brian Bautista
Subject: Wednesday Discussion - Difficulty

How hard would you say your classes are/should be?

I very intentionally turn the difficulty up on my intro course as the semester progresses. It starts out pretty easy as we cover the building blocks of games, but towards the end of the course we are doing some pretty abstract and difficult stuff.

I feel like my graphics class is pretty demanding. Especially as we transition from pixel art to blender halfway through.

Oddly enough, I feel like my Capstone (Unity) isn't really that bad, but by the time they get to that point, generally the correct kids are in the room for it.

------------------------------
BrianBautistabbautista@rjuhsd.usCA
------------------------------