Week 3 — Tuesday, September 8

Consultation · Structural analysis critique · Census date

Focus

First real critique of Project 1 work. We check that your structural understanding of the source is correct before you invest four more weeks building on it.

Due today — before 9:00 AM

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

One combined PDF or Canvas page: career self-audit, portfolio review with gap statement, track statement, and optionally one saved job posting.

Weekly progress report — the standing one-page report required every week. What I completed, what I got stuck on, what I want critique on, what is next.

Bring to class

Breakdown boards, structural analysis, or first-pass build work — something visual
Your source, for side-by-side reference
Your process log so far
Notes from last week's direction, with what you did about each item

In class

Progress reports. Both students, briefly.

Individual consultation and critique. The focus this week is structural, not aesthetic. Did you correctly identify how the piece is built? A wrong structural read in Week 3 becomes an unfixable problem in Week 5.

Technique instruction. Based on where each student is stuck. This is the week the do not have it list usually produces its first real obstacle.

Portfolio gap discussion. With the reviews submitted, a short conversation about what each student's Project 3 is likely to need. It is early, but planting it now means Week 11 is not a cold start.

Supervised production.

Before next week

Build toward the first draft. It is due Week 4 — next Tuesday — and it needs to be complete at rough standard, not partially polished. Every section present.
Act on this week's structural notes. If your read of the source was wrong somewhere, fix that before adding more on top of it.
Log the techniques as you learn them. Note what confused you and what fixed it. This becomes Project 2's most valuable section.

Note — census date

Today is the census date for the Fall 16-week session. Enrollment is locked as of today for reporting purposes.

The last day to withdraw with a W is Friday, October 30.

Note — "complete at rough standard"

Next week's first draft is the milestone students most often misread, so to be explicit:

Complete at rough standard means every part of the piece exists, roughly. All the beats are timed. All the shots are blocked. The whole mechanic works with placeholder art. The full greybox is walkable.

Not: the first 20% polished and the rest missing.

The reason is diagnostic. A complete rough version lets us see whether the whole thing works — pacing, structure, readability — while there is still time to change it. A polished fragment tells us nothing about the parts that do not exist yet, and those parts are where the problems are hiding.