Welcome to the UCLA Game Lab Summer Institute’s 2021 Student Game Art Exhibition! Our virtual gallery showcases the wonderful, quirky, surprising, inspiring, challenging, and downright fun games and game art projects completed by our students this year. You’ll find all completed student works presented in the gallery below, organized by course title: Game Design, Character Animation, World Building, and Game Programming.
The UCLA Game Lab Summer Institute introduces high school students to game-making as a form of artistic practice, teaching them the techniques and tools that will help them develop analog and digital games that reflect their own creative voice and vision. As you’ll see from the game art projects exhibited below, our students this year have learned a lot about the aesthetic and technical foundations of making games—but just as importantly, we hope they’ve discovered in themselves a life-long ability and desire to express their own, personal ideas through game-making and game art.
Congratulations to all of our students (and their parents!) for their hard work and can-do spirit. And a big thank you to Eddo Stern, founder and director of the UCLA Game Lab, to our instructors—Sam, Sofia, Lena, Miller, and Nick—and to our teaching assistants—Hua, Ainsleigh, Ivy, Alex and Michael—for their experience, expertise, and dedication. Finally, we also want to acknowledge Co-Directors David O’Grady and Tyler Stefanich for developing, implementing, and overseeing all aspects of the Summer Institute program. We hope you all enjoy the exhibition!
Game Design
Instructor: Sam Malabre, Sofia Staab-Gulbenkian, Teaching Assistants: Hua Chai
About the course
Game Design introduced students to the fundamentals of game design, such as creating playable characters, designing conflicts and choices, and giving players compelling motivations and goals. Students create their own tabletop game with a focus on game systems, game flow, creativity, and aesthetics. Students not only produced an original game, but they also developed an understanding of game design as a creative discipline and as a mode of artistic expression.
About the instructors
Sam (they/them) is an MFA candidate in Design Media Arts at UCLA. Sam works at the UCLA Game Lab where they run and research tabletop roleplaying games. They received their BFA in the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art & Design (MassArt). Sam’s recent projects have taken the form of video essays, computer games, digital publications, and tabletop games. Their work has been shown at MassArt, UCLA, DIY spaces in Boston, University of Pittsburgh, and CultureHub ReFest. Sam currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
Sofia (she/her) graduated from UCLA in 2018 with degrees in English and Design Media Arts. She turns these skills towards various part-time jobs while developing her own games on the side. Her work has been shown at IndieCade, the Hammer Museum, and her own backyard.
Exhibition note: All completed student games are presented here as downloadable .pdfs.
Character Animation
Instructor: Lena Weiss, Teaching Assistant: Ainsleigh Douglas
About the course
Character Animation provided students an introduction in how to create playable characters through modeling and animation. Students developed a character or avatar, which they brought to life through stylized visualization and movement. Students began by learning how to conceptually create compelling characters—and then translate their qualities, attributes, and motivations into visual representation and animation. The final results were animated in After Effects.
About the instructor
Lena Weiss (she/her) is a visual artist, game developer, animator and recent MFA graduate from the Design Media Arts program at UCLA. Lena has taught at UCLA Design Media Arts, and currently creates web content for the UCLA Game Lab. She is also a freelance animator creating music visuals for clients including Steve Aoki, Travis Barker, Fever 333, Yo Gotti, The Used, PartyNextDoor, Wiz Khalifa and Saweetie. Lena’s games have been featured on major media outlets including Dazed Digital, Kotaku, and Rhizome.org, and have received awards at international game festivals IndieCade and the Hand Eye Society Wordplay Festival.
Exhibition note: All completed student character animations are presented here as looped animations.
World Building
Instructor: Miller Klitsner, Teaching Assistant: Ivy Lovett
About the course
In World Building, students developed the ability to create dynamic, interactive 3D game environments. Students used the game engine application Unity and a kit of assets to make gameworld prototyping quick and fun, while still learning how to use professional game-development software. Key lessons included using prefabs, materials, lighting, sound, motion, and level progression to create a navigable game world by the end of the course.
About the instructor
Miller Klitsner (he/him) is an artist and game developer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Having encountered toy and game invention at an early age through his father, Miller’s work emphasizes unique mechanics and tactile interfaces. He graduated from UCLA with a BFA in Design Media Arts in 2018, and has worked in augmented reality in Los Angeles and been a member of the Open Plan Collective, a media art group. Miller has also completed an arts fellowship in Shanghai, where he began developing a simulation of the universe with Shanghai-based Chronus Art Center in a collaboration with Beijing sculptor Yin Xiuzhen. In addition to making games and other digital art, Miller has worked on large-scale multimedia installations, as well as sound-based mobile augmented reality projects. He is currently based in Los Angeles.
Exhibition note: All completed student gameworld projects are presented here as “walkthrough” videos.
Game Programming
Instructor: Nick Crockett, Teaching Assistant: Michael Luo, Alex Rickett
About the course
In Game Programming, students learned the fundamental programming concepts and coding techniques behind making playable, interactive games. Students worked with the game engine application Unity and were introduced to coding lessons using C# scripting to create movement, animation, collisions, NPC behaviors, sound, and text. By the end of the course, students emerged with a complete, interactive 2D game reflecting their own game design ideas.
About the instructor
Nick Crockett (he/him) is a teacher, artist, animator, and game developer from the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Nick has an MFA from the Carnegie Mellon School of Art and has been a long time member of the UCLA Game Lab. He has exhibited games and animation internationally at screenings, festivals, and exhibitions including at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Northern Spark Festival, Minneapolis; Now Play This Festival, Somerset House, London; the GDC Wild Rumpus Party, San Francisco; Amber Platform Festival, Istanbul; and the UCLA Game Art Festival at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Exhibition note: All completed student games are presented here as “playthrough” videos.
You’ve reached the gallery exit!
Thank you for visiting the Student Game Art Exhibition, brought to you by the UCLA Game Lab Summer Institute class of 2021!
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