The Art Institute of California - Orange County announces the launch of a new bachelor's degree program in Visual & Game Programming, designed to prepare the next generation of technical artists for the animation and video game industries.
The program begins with a foundation in art and design. Then students enter into the more technical areas of programming for 3-D animation. Students learn the essential skills to effectively solve technical problems and play the indispensable role between the technical programmer and the creative artist. With an advantage of having artistic talent combined with the knowledge and skills of programming for 3-D development, the students will have an edge in finding a wide range of employment opportunities in the entertainment and game production industries. The curriculum trains students for entry-level positions that include technical artist, technical developer, assistant technical director, 3-D tools programmer, artist wizard, data wrangler, rendering wrangler or junior technical cinematic artist.
The program focuses on student ability to write, extend and modify programs/scripts for 3-D animation. Students will be introduced to the principles of programming, which enables them to enter into the world of shading development, motion capture management, and pipeline streamlining. They will learn programming and scripting tools such as Perl, C++, C-shell, MEL scripting, MAXScript, DirectX & OpenGL and become familiar with various operating systems. The bachelor's degree program is 12 quarters and contains 192 quarter credits, including 56 quarter credits in general education.
"Local video game and animation companies are clamoring for employees with these specific technical programming skills. This major will be a great service to the local industry," said Tom Jung, Art Director at Point-of-View Studios in Irvine, Calif. and Game Art & Design Instructor for The Art Institute.
sa: http://www.betanews.com/newswire/pr/...lifornia/12127