TRAINING SPOTLIGHT This month: The Glasgow School of Art
The Glasgow School of Art Digital Design Studio The Hub, Pacifi c Quay G51 1DZ
United Kingdom
T: 0141 566 1478 E:
a.mcallister@
gsa.ac.uk W:
www.gsa.ac.uk/dds
The Hub (above) off ers a variety of student services, coff ee bars and a food court with seating for 400
THE GLASGOW SCHOOl of Art’s Digital Design Studio is part research centre, part commercial games development studio. It has created games and animations for the likes of NHS Education Scotland, museums and visitor centres, as well as clients in industrial sectors.
The courses themselves are for students who are interested in the wider application of interactive technology in society – or serious games, as it’s commonly know.
“We have our own sound dubbing studio, regularly used for fi lm, BBC and network TV,” programme leader Daniel Livingstone tells Develop. “Our animators, programmers and sound production staff provide a range of tutorial and practical support, so students have frequent contact with industry professionals, as well as dedicated teaching staff .” GSoA’s MSc Serious Games programme is for students whose fi rst degree includes
software development. Alongside
programming and theory classes, students choose between medical or heritage visualisation as context for creating a Unity-based serious game. Mo-cap and interaction get students to work with a range of haptic devices and VR systems. While a second serious games project, plus student-selected modules, round out the taught courses, followed by a three-month main project for students to focus on their own games. The other visualisation programmes are more interdisciplinary, with students coming from backgrounds
A render of Rosslyn Chapel (top) and knights in combot (bottom), made for a conservation project
such as life sciences, history, architecture and animation. Livingstone says sound students do most of their work within the DDS, with two selected modules allowing students to extend their studies into other practical or theoretical areas related to sound and fi lmmaking, or to pursue personal interests elsewhere at the art school.
He added that GSoA has
some of the best VR and mo-cap facilities of any university in the UK, with a massive 13m 3D screen and a Vicon motion-tracking suite. And its not short on other tools either, including 3ds Max for animation and a range of data-processing applications for 3D and Pro Tools, Avid and MaxMSP for sound.
Alumni from the course have
gone on to destinations in research positions at other universities,
as well as found work at businesses such as Rockstar, Sony Computer Entertainment, Savalas Sound, Axis Animation and Toshiba Medical
Visualisation Systems. Others have also found work at the DDS itself. “The visualisation courses are all quite young, but we’ve already learned a lot from the Medical Visualisation programme,” Livingstone says.
These renders of the human nervous system and muscles (above) show that DDS is all about great detail 64 | JUNE 2014
He and his colleagues are now making minor changes to improve interaction across the degree courses next year. Longer term, they are looking to developing new collaborations and courses.
INFO
Course: MSc Serious Game Development, MSc Medical Visualisation and Human Anatomy, MSc International Heritage Visualisation, MDes Sound for the Moving Image Established: 1997 Country: UK Staff : Daniel Livingstone (programme leader), Ronan Breslin (sound lecturer), Gillian Moff at (animation lecturer) Notable alumni: Susie Green (SCEE), Tom Bryant (Axis Animation, Interference Pattern)
He concludes: “Whether considering a career shift or looking for an opportunity to refi ne skills after graduation, the postgraduate courses at the DDS off er a great opportunity to build and apply games development skills in diff erent discipline areas while working close to experts in those areas.”
Images created by CDDV (The Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation is a partnership between Historic Scotland and The Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio)
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