Technical Art

B.A. Digital Art & Animation

> Department of Digital Art & Animation

Degree Overview

The Technical Art concentration combines the student’s artistic abilities along with the technical toolkit of the CG world. Traditional technical art college courses like drawing, painting, and sculpting help the student develop an artistic eye. Industry standard software programs are used in 3D Modeling, 3D Animation, Texturing and Lighting courses. Technical art coursework includes computer programming courses which enable the University of Silicon Valley student to customize tools in CG software programs. The technical art degree concentration allows the student to focus on Lighting and Compositing or Rigging and scripting. University of Silicon Valley students can complete their technical art degree program of study by working on one many of the large projects on campus.

Your first three terms begin by building a strong foundation in traditional art which enables you to create realistic pieces when transitioning into the digital environment. Upper-level production opportunities equip University of Silicon Valley graduates with an extensive portfolio of work, an ingrained instinct to collaborate on a team, and the creative and technical skills required to work in a wide variety of digital art careers. University of Silicon Valley students have access to uniquely modern facilities hard to find at other digital art and animation schools, including access to virtual reality and augmented reality equipment and a rendering manager built just for University of Silicon Valley.

Course Highlights

Introduction to Scripting: Python  This technical art class is a practical introduction to programming using the Python programming language. Course topics include the concepts of declarative (“what”) versus imperative (“how”) programming, problem breakdown, and solution techniques. In addition to becoming familiar with computer science basics, University of Silicon Valley students will implement several small programming projects during the course.
Mathematics for Computer Graphics  This University of Silicon Valley course focuses on math concepts and algorithms used in the Computer Graphics field. It addresses mathematical topics and application of these topics in modeling, rigging, animation, texturing, shading, lighting and compositing. University of Silicon Valley students will also be introduced to techniques used in particle and fluid simulation for visual effects.
Compositing and Special Effects  This technical art class explores the digital motion picture production environment as 'illusion factory'. Among other things, University of Silicon Valley students work in teams to create video projects using special effects, match/moving lighting, blue/green screen compositing, color correction, and motion graphics. The relationship of 'pre-visualization' to a finished work will also be explored, and how these techniques are affecting the traditional working approach to movie making.

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