SYLLABUS
ARCH 5420: DIGITALANIMATIONANDSTORYTELLING
Fall 2016

INSTRUCTOR: Earl Mark ejmark@virginia.edu

TEACHING ASSISTANTS:
Sally Aul saa3fn@virginia.edu
Susannah Jones msj6nb@virginia.edu

Description: Arch 5420 is a workshop/seminar that explores moviemaking through exercises in computer animation. Approximately five independently developed short animations constitute the work of the term culminating in a one to five minute time-length final movie project. It is anticipated that an interdisciplinary group of students will bring perspectives from across the arts and sciences, and design and engineering. Movie projects may range in creative subject areas. For example, built and landscape architectural places may be experienced according to our own changing eye point of view, the transformation of light and objects, as well as the movement of other people. In addition, objects found in architecture and nature reveal formal, tectonic and spatial orders that can be understood through animated sequences that depict varying intervals of time.Story telling, whether by means of simple character animation or more complex scene description, may be related to these contextual aspects of either real or imagined environments. An in-depth exploration of NURBS three-dimensional modeling and rendering will be the basis for representing built and natural environments, sculpting characters and creating complex geometrical forms. Subject areas for individual projects may range widely according to the disciplinary perspective of the individual student, including visual narratives with character animation movies, or the analysis of mico-scale physical environments or larger scale architectural and landscape architectural settings.

Enrollment: Registration is by instructor permission. It is open to all graduate students at any level and to all undergraduate students (typically second year and beyond) with some weight given to statements of interest on SIS. There are otherwise no prerequisites. The instructor has a background in moviemaking that includes film/video production and computer graphics animation.  

Technology: The principal software is Maya, a professionally used product in computer animation and movie production. Other  related products may be introduced this term as time allows for animation, including special software focused on sound editing and production, movie editing and motion capture.. Maya provides an advanced set of animation techniques, such as instantiated motion, inverse kinematics, compositing, fluid dynamics effects, hair and clothing simulation and other special effects. Also used in the term will be software for digital video editing, compositing, morphing, creating human figures, sound capture and editing. Maya will be available on Apple and Windows computers throughout the school. Free educationally restricted copies of Maya are available for students who have access to a personal computer on the Apple and Windows platforms. The required text is free and online to members of the UVA community (see below). We will also introduce inertial motion capture equipment for full-body motion capture. Most classes will meet in Campbell 105. Other locations will also be used for tutorials on additional equipment as will be announced in class.

Grading: Each of the first four projects counts towards 10% of the grade. The final project counts towards 50% of the grade and class attendance counts towards 10% of the grade. Due to the sequential building block nature of the topics covered, full attendance is expected.

Schedule:

The schedule below is subject to modification.

Note: As will be further explained in class, the required text/tutorial reading is available on-line through the UVA Virgo System.  

Required Text

Maya 8 for WIndows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide) by Morgan Robinson, and Nathaniel Stein, Peachpit Press, 2007 ± § -see on-line version of this textbook

Recommended Texts

Animation: 

Moviemaking:

Arnheim, Rudolf, Film as Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957.*
Cocteau, Jean, Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film. New York: Dover Publications, 1972.
Greene, Graham, The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, Penguin Books Ltd., 1977.
Murch, Walter, In the Blink of An Eye, A Perspective on Film Editing, Silman-James Press, 1995.

Philosophy and Perception:

Arnheim, Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974.
Goodman, Nelson, Languages of Art. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1976.
Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987.
Putnam, Hillary, Representation and Reality. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1988.
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sarte, Edited by Walter Kaufmann, The World Publishing Company, 1956 (Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge", 1910)

Notes:

± This is the primary text with paced readings and straightforward tutorials tied to the syllabus and week to week developmental progression of the class. It is also available online at no cost to members of the University of Virginia community.
§ An online version of these books are available to members of the University of Virginia community only. See also Maya on-line textbook links. 
A° This is a more up-to-date introduction though less compact than the Robinson and Stein text.
+ These texts include greater focus on more on specialized topics. Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015  has over 800 pages, covers significantly more features and special effects than the primary text we will be using in the class.