Archive for the ‘Prospective Students’ Category

Game Development Program Featured in Biz Journal

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Photo by Vicki Thompson

Photo by Vicki Thompson

Cogswell College proves once again that it is on the cutting edge of educating students for careers in the Game Development field. When the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal needed information about how the video game industry is changing and the adjustments educators should make to prepare students for successful careers, Cogswell faculty, Albert Chen, had the answers.

Social networking, mobile devices and the internet have tremendously expanded the opportunities within the video game market. At Cogswell, students experience project-based classes that operate like an indie game studio in order to prepare them for the work environment they are likely to encounter.

Click here to read the article.

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The Digital Art & Animation Degree – Spotlight on Animation

Monday, January 4th, 2010

MacGuffinDemand for computer artists in communications and entertainment industries continues to grow. Career opportunities in content creation are exploding in entertainment production, animation, modeling, interactive application design, user interface design, product design, game development, audio and video editing, web design, industrial visualization, and a myriad of other visual communications areas.

Cogswell Polytechnical College offers WASC accredited bachelor degrees that prepare students for the fast paced, creative technologies industries.

At Cogswell, the Digital Arts Department coursework spans many multi-disciplinary activities. It includes traditional drawing, illustration, sculpture, graphic design, 3D modeling, animation, video, sound design, story development, storyboarding, storytelling, and media integration. The programs offer technical and applied courses utilized by companies embracing integrated media and are structured to allow students to refine their work and skills in a focused area of interest. Digital Arts and Animation project classes provide many opportunities for collaborations with other programs at Cogswell, including Digital Audio Technology and Digital Arts Engineering. The Portfolio classes provide a format for bringing together all of the elements of the concept to delivery pipeline as students collaborate on multidisciplinary teams to complete real world projects.

3D Animation

The animation program encompasses character, non-character and experimental animation. Character animation fuses acting, performance and the principles of movement to create believable, genuine, emotive characters. Character design, story structure and strong animation fundamentals are used by students to create a short, animated film project in their senior year. Fundamentals and the development of the “craft” of animation are stressed. Students may produce animations fusing both traditional and computer techniques. Non-character animation focuses on visual effects, abstract animation or the motion of inanimate objects. Students are encouraged to combine media to produce original, creative work and content.

Digital Arts and Animation Curriculum – 123 Credits

(more…)

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Cogswell Spring Open House – Save the Date!

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Save the date for the Spring Open House at Cogswell Polytechnical College – Saturday, February 27, 2010.  The Open House will begin at 11:00 am and end around 3:00 pm.  All are welcome to attend, please RSVP to rsvp@cogswell.edu.

Activities for the day include taking a tour of the campus, meeting the faculty, and learning about financial aid and the admissions process.  There will even be a special session for transfer students!  Don’t miss your chance to see Cogswell before you apply!

Cogswell Polytechnical College

1175 Bordeaux Drive

Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Map it!

408.541.0100 x155

www.cogswell.edu

rsvp@cogswell.edu

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What is Video Game Level Design?

Monday, October 26th, 2009

600px-UnrealEd

 

 

We asked Assistant Professor Albert Chen to explain level design

If Game Development covers how games are made and Game Design determines what the game is and how it is played, Level Design is about defining the moment to moment experience for the player. It includes planning and creating the actual spaces that the player travels through and orchestrating heart-pounding encounters and events that happen along the way.

Can students learn level design at Cogswell?

This past summer term, we offered a six-week Special Topic – Intro to Level Design Workshop. This intensive course introduced students to the fundamentals of 3D level design for 1st person shooters. By using Unreal Tournament 3’s level editor to build playable multiplayer levels, students were able to experience the level design process first-hand. They also learned the theories behind competitive multiplayer map creation to control play balance, intensity and flow.

In Spring, we will offer an Advanced Level Design course. Check the Spring schedule when it is released in early October.

Want to learn more about our Game Art, Game Development, or our Digital Art and Animation programs?

Visit the Cogswell College website or better yet, arrange a tour of our campus and see where you can begin your career in video games.

-Michael Martin, Dean of the College

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Where Do Technical Artists and Technical Directors Come From?

Friday, October 16th, 2009

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The next time you watch a feature length film or play a video game, take a close look at the credits. You will notice that there is a large number of Technical Artists and Technical Directors.

Yet, if you try to locate a college that offers a degree for this fast growing job title, you will be hard pressed to find one.

You are in luck — Cogswell College offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Digital Arts Engineering that blends programming and art courses into coherent knowledge sets to prepare students for careers as Technical Artists and Technical Directors. These people are a technically adept and artistically trained visual problem solver. In a video game world they know how the artists and designers want to work and how the programmers want the assets. In the motion picture and animation world, they take on every job that 3D animators and 3D modelers cannot do in addition to pipeline support and tools creation. In fact, there are usually more technical artists on a visual effects team than any other type of artist.

This type of unique problem solver is in increasingly high demand. You can read a recent article on last week’s Gamasutra newsletter

To find out more about this unique engineering and art hybrid degree, visit the Cogswell website or contact Dr Hadi Aggoune, Director of Engineering.

-Michael Martin, Dean of the College

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Short Animated Film “The Offering” Trailer Now Online

Friday, September 11th, 2009

The_Offering

If you have been following Cogswell news, you know that we are close to premiering the Cogswell student-produced short animated film The Offering.

Project X is a one-of-a-kind, project-based class – unparalleled in its scope and study as it incorporates every component of animation film production for the big and small screen. This class, under the direction of Animation faculty member and long-time professional animator Michael Huber, is only available at Cogswell Polytechnical College. Project X has no competition with regard to the quality of instruction it provides or the standards it sets for animation production value. Student participants have the opportunity to integrate all the disciplines of CG production including animation, modeling, texturing, effects, rigging, lighting, rendering, compositing and production management.

Take a look at the trailer, and keep an eye out for more updates on where and when to see The Offering.

To learn more about the multi-discipline project-based curriculum at Cogswell College, visit our website or better yet, arrange a tour of our campus and see where you can begin your career in video games.

-Michael Martin, Dean of the College

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Danish Short Session Canceled this Year

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Michael Grant, coordinator of the annual two-week special program offered by Cogswell to students of Grenaa Tekniske Gymnasium/IT College Denmark, tells us the global financial situation and cutbacks at his college will make it necessary to cancel the program this year. This would have been the seventh year for this international project. Danish students typically take courses in programming, Flash, 3D Modeling and Animation, and a variety of general education courses related to American history and society.

They will be missed, and we hope to resume our program in a year or two.

-Michael Martin, Dean of the College

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