SYLLABUS

Course Description:

Contemporary computer animation in art and science is an experiment with dual semantic notions of “surface” and “depth”. Whether through programming or refined visual motion, in scientific visualization and cinema respectively, computer animation demonstrates the congruence between actual and virtual worlds, even if its surfaces or appearances are merely “faking depth”. In this course we will learn how to use three dimensional modeling and animation software, Maya, to create “depth” in appearances through the use of “skin deep” 3D models and through dynamic animation, for a complexity of meaning in communication. In asking, “How do virtual appearances signify complexities of life, of artistic and scientific phenomena?”, students will identify what makes meaning-rich and compelling as well as complex 3D animation using “a collection of animate surfaces”. Through knowledge of the types of production and transformation in 3D, including the qualities of intuitively mathematical form creation, students will become proficient in alternative 3D graphics: modeling, motion, and meaning, in between the filmic and interactive.

Course Objectives:

To learn the procedures of modeling, setting up scenes, rendering images of scenes, and creating animation through a virtual 3D space or component, animation that is somewhere in between interactive art and single channel video.

To explore the potential of meaning in 3D through its intuitive mathematics without formal mathematics knowledge, and to explore other metaphors of surface and depth in virtual and actual environments.

To understand the “play” between surface and depth, which stands in for the “play” between visual aesthetics and meaning rich communication in 3D modeling and animation.

To learn how to use kinematics in animation, both forward and inverse, for character animation or complex virtual activity.

To Learn Intermediate to Advanced Maya 3D Modeling and Animation software, an industry standard production tool.

Week One:

Context, and Depth?: The Cartesian Grid and the Space of Virtual Modeling and Animation. 3D modeling and animation history in the short term. In the long term. Is 3D modeling and animation Descartes revisited, or does it have other distinguishing features? The virtual in any drawing process; the virtual of perspective drawing.

Practice, and Surface?: Downloading Maya Personal Learning Edition. Begin Tutorial One, Maya Foundation Series Chapters 1-3. The notion of visual math and visual intelligence. What is modeling and simulation REALLY?

Surface/Depth: Studio Project One, Mazes of Meaning: Using horizontal and vertical planes and text and image texture-maps, create an animation of viewpoint along a path through a virtual architecture or display.

Week Two:

Context, and Depth?: Taxonomies, Cabinets, Encapsulation, and Disruption: from Space to Non-Space and the Relationship between Knowledge, Environment, Spatial Organization and Movement. The “Space of Possibles” and the contribution of enlarged choices in virtual environments.

Practice, and Surface?: Second Half of Tutorial One, Maya Foundation Series, chapters 4 through 6. Spatial metaphors and orienting users in the Maya environment. The right-hand rule. Clipping Planes, Matrices, Transformations, and Translations. A tool chest of “Platonic” forms.

Week Three:

Context, and Depth?: Virtual Architecture, Complex systems and Hybrids of Image and Environment. Instructor’s Take: Is the architectural metaphor still relevant to paradigms of cyberspace?

Practice, and Surface?: Critique Mazes of Meaning

Week Four:

Context, and Depth?: The notion of dynamics in the history of science. Background of systems for complex motion. The contribution of error systems to science and art.

Practice, and Surface?: Maya Foundations Series Tutorial Two, chapters 7 through 9. The convergence of the traditional and the virtual in Maya Artisan, a model sculpting tool. Introduction to kinematics and simple skeletal setups.

Surface/Depth: Studio Project Two: Robotic Arms and Steam Engines, Metaphors of Dynamics and Kinematics from the 18th century to the 21st.

--Using inverse kinematics skeletons and hierarchical animation, students will build a cross between Early Steam Devices, Our Robotic Future, and Tuingley's Machine that Destroyed Itself. Consciousness of similarities and differences in past and current eras of dynamics is required.

Week Five:

Context, and Depth?: The Concept of Emergence Obtained from Older Physical Models of Motion. In creating a dynamics based upon Newton's laws, how can the virtual quality of such an exercise demonstrate concepts of emergence in artificial life studies. Looking at the whole as greater than the sum of its parts, though organically indebted to only those parts. What we know since we create art from these systems .

Practice, and Surface?: Maya Foundation Series chapters 10 and 11. Refining motion for emergence. Rendering and articulating spatial features.

Week Six:

Context, and Depth?: Modularity and Reuse. Spielberg's AI and why our Artificial Intelligence failed; how it might succeed. Similarities between The Industrial Revolution for machines and The Information Revolution for software.

Practice, and Surface?: Reusing models in your projects. Transforming models through smoothing and through texturing organic models. Maya Foundation Tutorial Three, chapters 12 and 13 Maya Foundation Series.

Week Seven:

Context, and Depth?: The knowledge disclosed by machines as "non" humans. Mute factual structures and the aesthetics of the object, for critique

Practice, and Surface?: Critique Robotic Arms and Steam Engines.

Week Eight:

Context ,and Depth?: Bioinformatics, Scientific Visualization, and the Representation of Genetics and Genomics. Does data exist prior to a model? The concept of data mining and the need for visual intelligence and readability in models of that mined data.

Practice, and Surface?: Using computer simulation for reconstruction. Diagrammatic animation. How to create viewpoints of the non-living, the non-human. Chapters 14 and 15, Maya Foundation.

Depth/Surface: Studio Project Three, visualize a biological process such as cell toxicity, invasion, or multiplication. Explore the notions of fundamental building blocks in physics and biology from atoms to genes, through using spherical and organic forms, transparency, texture mapping and motion dynamics.

Week Nine:

Context, and Depth?: Outer Space and Inner Space, the both Old and New Cinematic Frontier. Character animation versus vast spaces, “outer worlds”.

Practice, and Surface?: Introduction to character-based inverse kinematics, Tutorial Four, Maya Foundation Series, Chapters 16 and 17.

Week Ten:

Context, and Depth?: When Computer Animation became Bi-Pedal: A look at Inverse Kinematics and its Early Utilization in the Cinematic Experience of Jurassic Park.
Practice, and Surface?: Chapters 18 and 19, Tutorial Four.


Week Eleven:

Context, and Depth?: Ode to the Anatomical Postures of Venus de Milo and Apollo Belvedere, Or the Aesthetics of The Nicely Arched Spine and Solid, Forward Walking Motion.

Practice, and Surface?: Open Workshop on bi-pedal characters.

Depth/Surface: Final Studio Project: Using inverse kinematics, cinematic camera movements, and reconstructive animation, complete a 3 minute animation exploring visual information and the invisible information whether the latter is narrative or research or both. Exercise control of your 3D communication through relations and procedures being developed in conjunction with what we see in the animation, and so that the visuals mean what we don’t see.

Week 12:

Context, and Depth?: The Avatar and the Gendered body: Embodiment and Lyotard's Can Thought Go On Without a Body? The objectification of the virtual subject.
Practice, and Surface?: Time to complete projects.

Week 13

Practice, and Surface?: Time to complete projects.

Week 14:

Practice, and Surface?: Final Critiques.

Grades and Assignments:
Assignments are to be completely finished at the start of class on the scheduled due date. Late assignments will receive lower grades: they will be reduced by 10 percent per day after the due date and start of class.

Attendance is mandatory and will be recorded at the start of class. Late arrivals will also be recorded, as well as early departures. Three absences will result in a ten percent grade reduction; five, in a twenty percent grade reduction. Two instances of tardiness or early departure will result in the equivalent of one absence.

I will determine grades based upon the four studio projects, a four-page topical essay, and upon group and class participation. There are also four quizzes on the Maya tutorials. These factors will determine grading as well as will problem solving ability and demonstration of using simulation to dynamically stake out a artistic or designer position, and a knowledge of 3D techniques. The criteria for all the projects follow:

The student includes multiple levels of fully articulated images and text in his or her animations.

The student creates non-literal meaning with images, information, and dynamics, and if literal, uses the obvious in new ways.

The student’s visual research for the given project is thorough, involving significant contributions to the background of the project.

The student is aware simulation as a medium, while his or her project is adequately researched to have a definite message.

The student’s project includes a thorough consideration of notions of “surface” and “depth”, incorporating what is learned in the lectures. Students do not have to agree with the instructor, but must map out their position in their work.

The student communicates a space of the intersection of creative visuals and knowledge and information, in his or her project.