Making Video Games in 8 Weeks: Challenge Accepted!
In Term 3 of the Game Art & Design program, VanArts students work together to create fully playable video games in 8 weeks, from concept to completion. It teaches them to work as a team, solve problems and challenges, and prepares them for their final demo reel and entering the industry!
Our current class of seniors (GAD39) just reached this important milestone in their professional industry training. The class formed into two groups and produced two video games, entitled MONARCH and SOVEREIGNLESS. Each game had a producer and individual students taking on tasks for concepts, art direction, design, animation, modelling, programming, and other methods, building their final product in the Unreal game engine.
Show and Tell
At the tail-end of their production, students got some fantastic opportunities to show off their work to various audiences.
Manfred Fernandes, a graduate in Game Art & Design from 2015, was in Vancouver for a visit and took the time to review the students’ work and offer valuable feedback. Manfred has worked as a character artist at Electronic Arts, IGG Canada, Kabam, and currently at Rogue Factor in Montreal. He took questions from the class about life in the gaming industry and advice for their own future careers. It was awesome to see him and catch up after all these years.
Students also got to show off their games at a career fair for School District 38 in Hope, BC, where youth from Grade 5 to 10 got to sit down and try out the games themselves. Always great to find out how young gamers respond to your hard work!
And finally, VanArts hosted a live Q&A webinar with our students to show a presentation of each game, explaining their various roles, talking through play-throughs, and taking questions from the viewing audience. You can watch the entire re-play here.
Congratulations to the entire GAD39 class for their hard work, hard play, and perseverance through the slings and arrows of making games! All of that hard work is sure to pay off upon graduation, as the industry is growing fast and in high demand for creative people.
Ready to join the next class? It’s time to launch your game career.
Make art your life in September 2022.
