Can anyone tell me what is missing in this plan for teaching character design to beginning high school students?

Students are told to draw characters and environments on paper. Teacher does demos of process. Students draw and then scan images into computers. Students then elaborate images in Photoshop.

Character design isn't the basics of art. With high school as the target, a huge amount of your students will have no idea how to draw and yet will think they could still take a swing at making characters.

You would need to have lessons teaching the basics and anatomy before you start with teaching character design.

The other problem I can see is that learning to draw characters takes a lot of time and very little theory. Lips for example is very easy to explain but requires days of practice if not weeks.

You can teach theory but they will still need to practice before the lesson can continue.

Okay. But if they are spending two semesters learning how to draw the figure while simultaneously creating characters, is there a problem?

I'm wondering more about industry standards. I know Photoshop is used for a lot of things, but isn't only using it all year, as opposed to exposing students to game-oriented free software for animation and rendering not very beneficial?

Can anyone tell me what is missing in this plan for teaching character design to beginning high school students?

Students are told to draw characters and environments on paper. Teacher does demos of process. Students draw and then scan images into computers. Students then elaborate images in Photoshop.

It seems highly simplified and focused on the visual arts and visual design of the character rather than the game, but if that's your aim then it can work.

Although many people equate the words of the story and the visual descriptions of the characters with the game, they are actually one of the smallest elements in an actual game.  The same fundamental game mechanics can be used to tell an enormous number of stories in a wide range of ways.  Swap out the words and a few animations but leave the mechanics unchanged and your story can be about nearly anything.  In one instance it is a rescuing the royal princess kidnapped by a dragon-like monster, with some slight changes it is hunting down for revenge of a secret society, with other slight changes it becomes rescuing their long-lost love, or even hunting down a fugitive whom you intend to murder yourself when they are finally caught.  

Character design and their visual appearance is important in telling a specific story, so be mindful about the difference between game design and storytelling.  Many modern games do both and both are important in a story-based game, but they are different things.

But isn't it a little one-dimensional to only teach this? Aren't there a lot of programs out there that can teach character design FOR GAMES in ways that are more instructive about the craft?

Also, I wonder if what you are saying doesn't support the idea that students should be getting background learning in game genres and other game-specific topics to have context for their drawings. Otherwise, how is it different from just a digital drawing class that simply uses the theme of video games, as opposed to say, drawing characters for graphic novels?

22 hours ago, gameteacher said:

Can anyone tell me what is missing in this plan for teaching character design to beginning high school students?

Should work in theory. The one problem I see is interaction.

When training green artist at work I a sign a hour or so each morning where we just talk about their progress. Because if just tell someone to ask questions when they don't understand, you might as well tell them to sit quietly.

Maybe have one lesson a week dedicated to answering questions. If they don't have any then ask them questions on what they learned. Something like that.

On 4/1/2018 at 2:59 AM, gameteacher said:

about industry standards. I know Photoshop is used...

Teaching Photoshop is probably a good idea. Some artist who start with software like Krita and Gimp have a tough time learning Photoshop, unfortunately the reversed is also true. It would be nice if you could teach them all.

22 hours ago, gameteacher said:

Students are told to draw characters and environments on paper. Teacher does demos of...

Looks like a good idea.

The second thing you wrote is particularly relevant to hs kids. Asking them if they have any questions as you go around the room often doesn't get much response. I've always found this strange!

To be honest, the method of teaching character design I've described is not my own. It is a colleague's, whose curriculum I really believe to be falling short of really teaching an important component of game design. I state this so you don't think you should spare my feelings and so you can go at tearing that kind of curriculum apart if you feel that's needed. This teacher used to teach essentially the same class, but perhaps more generalized. Now what they have done is simply give it a video game theme, but the approach of just having kids draw characters based on very little teaching of how characters are developed, and then just having them scan into and color in PS seems antiquated. Again, there are so many tools out there to teach character design for games, that just teaching a few basic PS techniques and having kids just draw all year, with one week dedicated to say, heads, another week dedicated to animals, etc. seems like a bad curriculum.

Meanwhile, in the past when on this forum I have proposed different ways I could teach actual game design, the developers here have torn apart my ideas with arguments about how I wouldn't be going deep enough into the various subject areas, or how students couldn't learn as much as I was proposing in the time frame given or based on their having no prior experience, etc. So it's been a bit ridiculous overall.

45 minutes ago, gameteacher said:

The second thing you wrote is particularly relevant to hs kids.

Personally I think it matters with anyone you are teaching.

I started setting time aside for question after training my first green artist. What happened is he messed up four days of work because of a misunderstanding.

When I asked why he didn't ask me he replayed "I didn't want to waste your time or interrupt your work." And thinking back on highschool there are lot's of instances where I should have asked questions but was scared of how the teacher would react.

45 minutes ago, gameteacher said:

the developers here have torn apart my ideas with arguments about how I wouldn't be going deep enough

No surprise there. Because like I mentioned earlier, it is a advanced topic.

In truth I think every artist that does character design learned the basic in maybe only 2-4 days. Because ALL of art teaches character design. However because character design uses all art principles, I feel it can be through to high schoolers.

Teaching character design is teaching art.

When you explain how sharp shapes and round shapes makes a character mean or friendly looking; you teach shape and form. When you teach how shading from high and low makes a character look like a hero or a villain, you teach lighting and shading. When you teach how a characters stance effects personality, you teach posing.

Even if they walk out of the lesson without becoming character artists, they will walk out better artists.

Really good points on elements and principles of art, and I have factored them into my teaching in the past.

However, what is MISSING from this curriculum? What aspects of character design for games are NOT being taught by this, largely vocational (as opposed to conceptual, or idea-based) curriculum?