Course Information — ARTV 2371

Advanced Skill Development for Animation and Games

Fall 2026 · Tuesdays 9:00 AM – 1:50 PM · Animation & Game Art · Media Arts · Collin College

Insert your official Collin College syllabus header (instructor contact, office hours, room, division information, and required college policy statements) above this content. This page covers course-specific structure and expectations.

Course description

An upper-level course in the development of concepts and execution of assets for 2D/3D animation and games. The student's incoming skill level and abilities are reviewed and areas of improvement are targeted. Includes the integration of aesthetic and technical skills as introduced in various lower-level courses.

This course is part of the Enhanced Skills Certificate, taken after completion of the Associate of Applied Science or Certificate in Animation & Game Art.

Course format

This is an independent studio course with mandatory weekly consultation. Enrollment is small — typically two students — and instruction is individualized to each student's chosen focus area and identified skill gaps.

Each Tuesday meeting consists of:

• Progress report — you present what you completed since the last meeting
• Critique — structured instructor feedback on the work
• Direction — specific, written next steps for the coming week
• Instruction — technique demonstration, problem solving, or workflow guidance as the work requires

Production work happens independently between meetings. Expect to invest substantial hours outside class; a portfolio-standard result is not achievable in the scheduled meeting time alone.

Student learning outcomes

On successful completion, the student will be able to:

1. Analyze professional-standard work in their discipline and identify the technical and aesthetic decisions that produced it.
2. Reconstruct an existing professional piece at a comparable level of execution.
3. Acquire unfamiliar techniques independently in the course of recreating professional work, and integrate them into their production pipeline.
4. Document and communicate a technical process clearly enough that another practitioner can follow it.
5. Produce an original portfolio-quality work from concept through final delivery.
6. Critique their own work and the work of peers using discipline-appropriate professional vocabulary.
7. Evaluate their existing portfolio against current industry hiring requirements, identify specific gaps, and produce work that addresses them.

Focus areas

Students select one primary focus area:

3D animation · character rigging · technical art · game design · game programming · concept art & storyboard · motion graphics · virtual production · other related area by approval.

Two-area combinations are permitted where the combination is coherent and the scope is realistic. This must be settled by Week 2 sign-off. The selected track determines the curated source list from which the student chooses their Project 1 source.

Projects

Project 1 — Deconstruction (30 points, Weeks 2–6)

Choose an existing professional piece in your track — a title sequence, a special effects shot, a game mechanic, a character design, a level, a rig. Analyze how it was made, document that analysis, and recreate it, either faithfully or in the student's own style. The creative direction is defined externally, which removes concept ambiguity and isolates execution. Track-specific curated source lists are provided; Art of the Title is the primary source for motion graphics and title design.

Project 2 — Technique Tutorial (30 points, Weeks 6–11)

Select one technique learned during Project 1. Produce a clean demonstration piece showing the technique, and author a tutorial that teaches it to another practitioner — written, video, or AI-assisted. The tutorial serves both to teach others and to archive the student's own process.

Project 3 — Original Work (30 points, Weeks 11–16)

An original piece taken from concept through final delivery, built to portfolio standard. The piece addresses a gap identified in the student's existing online portfolio, or demonstrates a skill named in a real job posting that the portfolio does not yet show.

Attendance and participation (10 points)

Because the course meets once weekly and instruction is delivered through consultation, attendance carries direct academic weight. A missed Tuesday is a missed week of direction.

Full credit requires:

• Attending each scheduled meeting
• Arriving with completed work to present
• Participating in critique of your own and your peer's work
• Acting on the previous week's direction

Notify the instructor in advance of an unavoidable absence and submit your progress report in Canvas that day.

Career Audit, Portfolio Review & Track Selection (5 points extra credit, due Week 3)

An honest inventory of current skills, a structured review of the student's existing online portfolio, and a written track statement. The portfolio review produces a gap statement that becomes the brief for Project 3. See the Career Audit, Portfolio Review & Track Selection page for components and the rubric.

Résumés, cover letters, demo reel assembly, networking, and interview preparation are covered in Portfolio Development and are not repeated in this course.

Grading

Grade scale: A ≥ 90 · B ≥ 80 · C ≥ 70 · D ≥ 60 · F < 60

Submission standards

All milestones are submitted in Canvas by the start of class on the due date.

• Stills / boards / concept art — PNG or JPG at a minimum of 1920 px on the long edge, plus the source file
• Animation / motion / video — MP4 (H.264), 1920×1080 minimum, 24 or 30 fps as appropriate to the discipline; upload or link to a hosted version
• Rigs / technical work — scene file plus a recorded turntable or demonstration video showing the deformation and controls
• Real-time / game work — a packaged build or a recorded capture, plus a link to the repository if applicable
• Written documentation — PDF or Canvas page
• Every submission includes a short written note: what you did, what problem you hit, and what you want critique on

Files that cannot be opened, links that are not shared, and builds that do not launch are not submissions. Verify before the deadline.

Late work

Milestones are stepping stones — a late milestone compresses the time available for the next one. Late submissions are accepted with a grade reduction; talk to the instructor before the deadline if you are going to miss it. Chronic lateness will be addressed in consultation, because it usually signals a scoping problem worth fixing.

Software and equipment

You will use the software appropriate to your focus area. The Animation & Game Art labs provide the industry-standard suite. Where a tool is available free for students — Blender, Unreal Engine, Godot, Houdini Apprentice, DaVinci Resolve — you may use it, but confirm the choice against your target role during proposal sign-off, since studio tooling expectations differ by discipline.

Maintain your own backups. A drive failure is not an extension.

Academic integrity

Project 1 is explicitly a reconstruction of someone else's work — attribution of the source is required, and the analysis and rebuild must be yours. Project 2 requires citation of every tutorial, paper, or reference you learned from. Project 3 must be original.

Disclose the use of generative AI tools in any project. Project 2 explicitly permits AI as a production aid for building the tutorial — drafting, editing, captions, transcripts, audio cleanup, formatting — provided the technique knowledge is the student's own, every published step has been personally executed and verified, and the use is disclosed in a short note. The course position mirrors the industry's: AI-assisted steps in a pipeline are a legitimate topic of discussion; undisclosed AI-generated work presented as your own is not.

Collin College academic integrity policy applies in full.

Important dates