Since the beginning of the school year, the Animation/Digital Design class has embarked on a mission to design a game from scratch. Centering around a dust bunny, the game follows its journey through the outside world. Animators have been diligently working to craft an entertaining experience for the game’s players by navigating through crafting storylines, character designs, and much more. In addition, with this being the first year of the project, students have been given the opportunity to explore without any reins, learning by trial and error as they do so.
Upper School Media Arts teacher Melissa Myser is guiding them through this process. She states, “I love seeing the students problem solve through it. We have these really funny think tank moments with the animation class where someone will bring whatever it is they’re working on, and we’ll watch it, and that sparks so many other thoughts.” However, the animators faced one major problem—the game’s coding aspect. This was where junior Patrick Longman and the Object Oriented class stepped in.
Having extensive experience with coding, Longman was an ideal partner to help the animators craft their game. Nevertheless, he was only one person, so the idea of collaborating with another class was up for consideration. Upper School Computer Science teacher Theodor Brasoveanu was then asked if he and his programming class would like to get involved in the project, giving the coders a chance to experiment with the game as well as forming a collaboration between the two classes. Mr. Brasoveanu states, “it was a no-brainer to join forces” and that this project challenges his class to “think outside the box” while keeping them engaged by applying their skills to something fun.
Students themselves are responding very well to the project. Senior Allison Zhang in the animation class expressed that “The process of making it is fun, especially getting to see it come together.” In the Object Oriented Class, sophomore Umang Sharma states he enjoys, “problem-solving each of the aspects and in the end, getting each of the parts to come together collectively and have a design that includes multiple different dimensions and looks like a real game.” Now, as the end of the school year draws closer, these animators and coders are running through the final stretch as they work to finalize their project and produce the first game created between two classes in PDS history.
