Centennial College: Animation & Game

Marco Bucci painting demo

02Dec11

Marco Bucci is one of the top concept designers based here in Toronto. He recently visited our Game Art+ Design students and did a portrait demo in oil for them. To say that Marco is a talented artist would be an understatement. Over the years he helped create visual development, art direction, and matte painting for film, television, and video games. Just take a one look at his website and you will right away get a sense of his masterful command of design and colour. His imaginative concept work is complemented by his fine art skills in landscape and formal portraiture.

Marco was very generous in sharing his methods and insights with our students and we are all very grateful for his visit.

Thank you Marco!

Filed under: Game Art & Design, Guest speaker | Leave a Comment

Learn to draw.

16Nov11

Drawing is more than a tool for rendering and capturing likenesses. It is a language, with its own syntax, grammar, and urgency. Learning to draw is about learning to see. In this way, it is a metaphor for all art activity. Whatever its form, drawing transforms perception and thought into image and teaches us how to think with our eyes.

101 Things to Learn in Art School, Kit White

Filed under: Digital Animation, Game Art & Design | Leave a Comment
Tags: gesture drawing, life drawing

Guest Speaker: Mario Azzopardi

26Sep11

Today, September 26th, 2011, Mario Azzopardi gave an impassioned talk about his experience and perspective on the future of Gaming and the role of storytelling in digital media. An attentive audience of Game Art & Design and Digital Animation students listened, and spoke with Mario about his experiences in television and film production, and his work with KOEI Canada on “Warriors: Legends Or Troy” . Mario is very excited about the convergent possibilities of leveraging digital assets for multi platform/multi purpose production.

Mario Azzopardi addresses students from Centennial College's Game Art & Design and Digital Animation programs.

As a traditional film maker he also welcomes the freedom that working in animation provides, no longer is the director/filmmaker limited to the physical restraints of what is physically possible with camera angles or elaborate costumes. “What would Zeus look like? Is it Laurence Olivier in a Toga?

Mario sees an exciting future full of possibilities for students involved in animation and game. He believes that the medium of gaming is in it’s infancy and the use of avatars, digital animation, motion capture will revolutionize and set story telling free. It is up to us, as the developers of media to use our skills to envision, and create, the digital culture of the future.

Mario shared and discussed his work on the cut-scenes found in “Warriors: Legends of Troy”, work produced in the Toronto studios. These scenes can can be seen on Vimeo.

Mario was a very engaging and motivating speaker with a great vision and a wealth of experience.

Condensed Biography:

Mario Azzopardi was born on the 19th of November 1950 in the village of Siggiewi, on the island of Malta.While still at university he joined the Atturi Theatre Group, Malta’s national repertory company. Soon after his graduation he became the company’s resident director.Perhaps one of his most significant achievements during his university career was Mario’s work at RUSCA, The Royal University Students Cinema association, which he founded and under whose auspices he directed the first Maltese full length feature film, called GAGGA (The Cage), which he adapted from a novel by Frans Sammut, and directed at the age of 21. This film has been recently restored by Studio7 productions and presented at the 2007 EU film Festival held this march in Malta with great success.In the early 80s American TV production was non-existent in Canada. Today it is a billion dollar industry. Mario was one of the early pioneers who together with GROSSO JACOBSON, a New York production company, ventured in the then untested experiment of producing American programming abroad. The test show was called “Night Heat” to be aired on CBS. Of the Hundred Episodes produced, Mario directed 23 and was nominated twice at the Gemini Awards for achievement in directing. The show was not only a resounding success with the audience, but it gave birth to a new co-production formula between the US and Canada which has flowered into a national, world class, production infrastructure.Mario was entrusted to direct several TV pilots, all of which went to series production, among which the highly popular “ENG”, “STARGATE”, and “TOTAL RECALL”. As Canadian companies availed themselves of established Co production treaties, Mario found himself directing episodes and films in Germany, England, Hungary, Mexico, France and last summer back in Malta, where he was instrumental in bringing an DISNEY/HALLMARK production to Malta.So far Mario Azzopardi has directed over three hundred hours of prime time American television for world renowned production houses like WARNER BROS, UNIVERSAL, MGM, PARAMOUNT, HBO, ABC, CBS, NBC, TBS, SHOWTIME, HALLMARK, FOX etc etc.

His latest film, “Savage Messiah” (2002) earned seven nominations at the Genie awards, Canada’s version of the Oscars, winning three of the nominations.

Last year Mario wrote and directed KOEI Canada’s “WARRIORS: LEGENDS OF TROY” a major video game, released in March 2011.

Filed under: Digital Animation, Game Art & Design, Guest speaker | Leave a Comment
Tags: Centennial College, Digital Animation, Cuppa Coffee Studios, Boadcast & Film, Guest speaker, Game Art & Design, koei, Mario Azzopardi, Warriors: Ledgends of Troy

Aw’ Shucks! ~ Fall Corn Roast

23Sep11

Aw, shucks, it’s true, we’re really, really glad you’re here!

We thought it was time to get everyone together to have some fun! On Wednesday, September 21st from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. the Centre for Creative Communications held a “welcome back” corn roast in the courtyard for all new and returning students.

Eveyone enjoyed fresh-from-the-farm roasted corn, grilled up by faculty and staff, and washed it down with hot mulled apple cider. We roasted over 500 cobs of corn, spread eight pounds of butter on the cobs and washed it down with 50 liters of cider.

Keep a look out for the Pancake Breakfast coming in January!

Filed under: Digital Animation, Game Art & Design, Student Life | Leave a Comment
Tags: Centennial College, Digital Animation, Game Art & Design, Student Life

Game Jam!

07Sep11

On the Labor Day weekend, Centennial College’s Game Art and Design program hosted the first ever Full Circle CS Game Jam. It was a three day meeting of graduating and incoming Centennial students as well as professionals from the game and animation industry and game enthusiasts. The purpose of the weekend was to collaborate to brainstorm, conceptualize, design and ultimately produce a game within the time allotted. The energy was great and every night was a late night. We gave ourselves a time limit to finish brainstorming and conceptualization on the first night, the second day we spent creating all our game assets. Which was a very ambitious 20 something characters (not including props and effects) spanning 3 levels. Many of the characters required animation, fortunately we had a few experienced animators involved. So once all that was done, the final day was spent tying up loose ends and putting the elements into the engine. The game didn’t quite get completely finished, but we did get to see it in action at the end.

Overall the experience was a great one. The best thing was seeing how much can get done when you give yourself time limits and act decisively. The energy was great throughout and it was great making new friends and working on something we all love. It was a huge pay off to see all our hard work come to fruition in a game.

Going forward, the game will be tweaked some more and eventually released as a free app on the iPhone/iPad marketplace.

The main question we got from everyone involved was…When is the next one!? Hopefully soon!

Thanks to everyone involved and thanks to Mike, the creator of Engine001, for allowing us to use his engine and lending his expertise throughout the process, Gavin and Tony for organizing the event and Centennial for allowing us to use the space and equipment.

By Gavin Ball

Filed under: Game Art & Design, Student Life, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: Game Art & Design, Game Jam

Buzzed : short film

26Aug11

The Digital Animation Winter Graduating class 2011 created an awesome short film. Titled “Buzzed” it features an artistic spider, a loudmouth bee and a cautionary ending.

Congratulations guys – it looks great!

Production Team

(in no particular order…)

Jeremy Cole
Debra Pugh
Alex Trush
Rick Jenkins
Richard Mitchell
Becca Timmons
Russel Rehmund
Darryl Ashley
Kim McDonagh
Sean McDonagh
Karen Lu
Sajid Sookram

Faculty Advisors

Special thanks to our faculty Laurence Cymet, Dalibor Dejanovic, Wade Howie, Joe Kim, Philip Krueger and Bohdan Ruzycky.

Music by Alex Khaskin.

Filed under: Digital Animation, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: Animation, Centennial College, Digital Animation, short film, Student Life, Student Work, toronto

Game Art & Design: Second Semester work

30Apr11

Here is some great work from the Game Art & Design Program. This second semester work is from the Architectural Design I, Character Design I and Digital Painting I. It was created using a combination of 3DsMax, Maya, ZBrush and Photoshop. Great work guys!

Filed under: Game Art & Design, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: Centennial College, Character Design, Game Art & Design, Student Work, toronto

Game Art & Design Demo reels

18Feb11

Below are some examples of demo reels from the 2010 graduating class of
the Game Design & Development program (we changed the program name
to Game Art & Design for 2011!).
Excellent work and congratulations to all of you!

Serj Kazar – check out his blog

Massud Sarahi – gallery here

J. Lee

Francis Lee

- Game Art & Design: Program Demo Reel -

Filed under: Game Art & Design, Game Design & Development, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: 3DsMax, Centennial College, demo reel, education, Game Art & Design, Game Design, Maya, modelling, Mudbox, Student Work, texture, ZBrush

Digital Animation: 1st Semester Modeling

21Jan11

The Fish-Tank is a first semester Digital Animation modeling assignment. All assets were modeled in Maya 2010, original textures created in Photoshop CS5.

These are two pieces by current students in the Fall 2010 class – great work, you gotta check ‘em out full size!