demoscene production course structure input
category: offtopic [glöplog]
I'm in talks with a local computer arts group who offers classes at the friendly neighborhood hacker/makerspace about doing a demoscene course.
Interested in folks' input vis a vis structure, although of course the group I'm working with and I will make the final decisions.
Facilities: We have access to a computer lab, network, etc.
My thought is to bring in lecturers I can find near where I live, both sceners and not-yet-sceners with applicable skills. They've already got Ableton and Advanced Ableton classes, so I was thinking maybe a class on graphics coding, maybe a class about trackers, or maybe a team-based class where the project is to make a demo and different people in the class choose different roles (project-based classes are already going on at this place and also through this group in other subjects -- one of the robotics classes is building a rideable hexapod atm). Not sure I can squeeze this into their one-class-a-week one-month usual format, but the hexapod class is longer, for example.
Any suggestions? Already have some useful reading material to fling people at courtesy of ryg : D and a few others.
NA sceners close to Boston who might be interested in teaching, ping me. I already have a few thoughts on this . . .
Wondering also if it would be a sane place to try and use a recently released demotool in the interests of training wheels, or not.
Ultimate goal: churn out a prod or two, and some sceners who will keep producing.
Interested in folks' input vis a vis structure, although of course the group I'm working with and I will make the final decisions.
Facilities: We have access to a computer lab, network, etc.
My thought is to bring in lecturers I can find near where I live, both sceners and not-yet-sceners with applicable skills. They've already got Ableton and Advanced Ableton classes, so I was thinking maybe a class on graphics coding, maybe a class about trackers, or maybe a team-based class where the project is to make a demo and different people in the class choose different roles (project-based classes are already going on at this place and also through this group in other subjects -- one of the robotics classes is building a rideable hexapod atm). Not sure I can squeeze this into their one-class-a-week one-month usual format, but the hexapod class is longer, for example.
Any suggestions? Already have some useful reading material to fling people at courtesy of ryg : D and a few others.
NA sceners close to Boston who might be interested in teaching, ping me. I already have a few thoughts on this . . .
Wondering also if it would be a sane place to try and use a recently released demotool in the interests of training wheels, or not.
Ultimate goal: churn out a prod or two, and some sceners who will keep producing.
I think your big problem with that is that making a demo requires a musician, graphics guy and coder ideally - unless you want the course to be about demo coding.
If you go with the group approach instead of the coder-only approach, you'll need to keep the music / art people involved - meaning you need to support standard graphics (png/3d object loading etc) and audio (midi or mp3). You need that in there early too.
I'd say a tool is the way to go - probably werkzeug on PC or quartz composer on mac. This way the whole group gets to understand what's going on and how it works (they can all help build the actual demo too), the gfx/music people can plug their stuff in straight away, and the coder can sketch stuff out in the tool or go code new stuff to plug into it, depending on ability.
If you go with the group approach instead of the coder-only approach, you'll need to keep the music / art people involved - meaning you need to support standard graphics (png/3d object loading etc) and audio (midi or mp3). You need that in there early too.
I'd say a tool is the way to go - probably werkzeug on PC or quartz composer on mac. This way the whole group gets to understand what's going on and how it works (they can all help build the actual demo too), the gfx/music people can plug their stuff in straight away, and the coder can sketch stuff out in the tool or go code new stuff to plug into it, depending on ability.
yeah, my thought was to get an instructor for each role . . . and I'm increasingly thinking the team-based approach is best . . . someone suggested rotating or trading off, but I think that's undoable. Just getting one set of skills moving is hard enough.
And it would be Werkzeug I believe, as iirc the classroom computers are PCs.
And it would be Werkzeug I believe, as iirc the classroom computers are PCs.