Archive for ‘Film’

The School of Information and Technology recently had our Digital Entertainment Technology awards celebrating the creations of our students. Each of our winners got various nerd-related gear (I myself got a pretty sweet Oregon Trail inspired board game!). Here are our winners:

For 3D Models:

Drake Pamplin’s “Microphone”

For Games:

Drake Pamplin’s “8-Bit Survival”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lX1XKdJzxkSKpH6xVK4Ex0PMaWSc8QFd/view?usp=sharing

For Animation:

Drake Pamplin’s and Matthew Middlebrook’s “The Robot and the Balloon”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZDCcbOXM3gb-L-buxa7c9_XiRWqaQGc5/view?usp=sharing

For Film:

Lauren Mullen’s “The Promotion”

For Scenes and Environments we had a tie:

Drake Pamplin’s “Croquembouche”

and Matthew Middlebrook’s “Low Poly Environment”

With an honorable mention:

Will Stanley’s “Space”

For Textures:

Drake Pamplin’s “Rusty Metal”

For Photoshop:

Sierra Beaton’s “Snake”

For 2D Art we had a three-way tie:

Morgan Hutcherson’s “Concept Art”

Camile Rodrigues’ “Woman”

Hayley Hand’s “Pasta”

For VR:

Matthew Middlebrook’s “Carnival Games”

With an honorable mention:

Jessica Lowry (No picture submitted)

And with that, all of our awards have been handed out! We were so excited to see all the submissions that came pouring in and the great breadth of skills being showcased. Here’s to looking forward to another great year of Digital Entertainment Technology!

Drake Pamplin

DET Club President

Digital Entertainment is very excited about a current project using the Oculus Rift.

Last Fall the department acquired an Oculus Rift for development purposes.  This spring we have been exploring the use of the Oculus Rift as a technology for storytelling in film.  Our first short film is in production.  We hope to have a sample available for viewing later this semester.

We have had a great year thus far creating special effects for film.

Here is a small sampling of student projects:

Tekkan Battle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQUFW6YioUQ

Hockey Magic: http://youtu.be/lAVJZYym7nY

Lessons: http://youtu.be/JEDU0cnx9CQ

The Reporter: http://youtu.be/041VEwFLXvQ

Polo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij0JXaCMNp0

These are short demonstrations of students learning special effects.

More samples coming soon!

Beginning Fall of 2012, the DET program now has multiple licenses of ToonBoom’s Harmony animation software in the DET Lab.  Harmony is used in many of the top-rated, award nominated (and winning) cartoons and animations in both TV and film.

If you are itching to make the next great cartoon or animation, stop by and check it out!

Regularly we are asked which engines are used to teach game development as part of the Digital Entertainment major and minor.

While we use a host of products to create the content for the games (Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator, Flash, Premier Pro, etc) we primarily use two engines for our classes:

For 2D/mobile projects the SDK of choice is Corona by Corona Labs.  We have found it easy to learn but powerful enough to handle the most intricate of projects.

For 3D projects we use Unity3D.  Again, easy to learn, wonderful pricing structure for the indie developer, and powerful enough to make the most intricate multi-player games, Unity was a natural choice for the DET program.

Digital Entertainment Technology
Software used in Major/Minor
Spring/Fall 2012

 In most situations you are able to select the software that you find most comfortable to use (or can afford).  There are times when we use several pieces of software from one category during a course so that students are able to become familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Modeling

Google Sketch-up (free)       PC/Mac
*3DS Max  (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)       PC
Maya (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)                PC/Mac
MudBox (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)          PC/Mac

 Texturing

*Adobe Photoshop    PC/Mac
*Adobe Flash                        PC/Mac
GIMP (free)               PC/Mac

Engines

*Corona SDK (unlimited trial is free http://www.CoronaLabs.com)        PC/Mac
*Unity3D (basic version is free http://www.unity3d.com)               PC/Mac
*UDK – Unreal Developers Kit (free http://www.udk.com)                    PC

Sound

Adobe Soundbooth  PC/Mac
Audacity  (free)         PC/Mac
Sony Acid Pro                        PC
GarageBand               Mac

Film

*Adobe Premier Pro       PC/Mac
*Final Cut                            Mac

Compiler

*Visual Studio            PC
*Eclipse IDE               PC/Mac
GCC (free)                  PC/Mac
*Java Developers Kit (JDK) free    PC/Mac
*Apple xCode                         Mac
Python IDLE  (free) PC/Mac

• *- Industry standard
• Bold – required software in one or more DET courses.

If you haven’t seen Jacob Kitt’s movies and parody’s then you have been missing out!

Jacob graduated with a minor in DET in the Spring of 2012 and has already been freelancing in the film industry (expect to see many more announcements as soon as the film is released).  But on campus, Jacob is best known for his parodies and award winning work at film fest.

If you haven’t seen Jacobs’ work, check out his Parodies  and demo real