1. What Game? (7-8)
Build a game, using Game Maker. Consider what makes a game fun and learn how to design a game world and the characters that inhabit it. Will they be rocks, ghouls, or fuzzy, radioactive rabbits? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Learn about the basic logical concepts used to create believable characters in computer games and explore the social aspects of character development. Art and computer scripting will be used together in order to give your creations the ability to interact with you.

2. Ultimate Web Comics (7-8)
What makes a good web comic? What makes comics like “Beaver and Steve” and “Calvin and Hobbes” or Will Eisner's work? Share your favorites and inspire each other. In this workshop, you will create two different comics — one traditional comic and one experimental comic using a digital camera. Learn the tricks of the pros as you experiment with language, color, and styles to affect the overall meaning of your comic. Find out how to create storyboards, panel layouts, and design characters. Transfer your work from paper to digital using Photoshop techniques to ink, color, texture and add special effects, and Dreamweaver to build your website and post your comic online. Wow your friends. Your awesome comic will be posted on the web.

3. A. Square and his World (2nd session only) (7-8)
Journey into a mathematical playground and explore life in alternate worlds. Consider the dull existence of two-dimensional creatures living in a flat world, restricted to moving right/left, backward/forward but NEVER up or down. Or imagine the dreary life of a creature living in a one-dimensional land moving only back and forth. Or the bleak nothingness of a point in a one-dimensional world, moving not at all. Why should we settle for three directions of movement? Let’s move ANA/KATA! We’ll explore these ideas as we discuss Flatland and other SF stories, maneuver hypercubes through computer simulations and model multidimensional worlds with the construction of a four dimensional house. In this workshop, fiction, myth, fantasy and science all converge to dazzle your brain.

4. Game Development: From Smart to Finish! (Flash) (7-9)
Have you ever wondered what goes into making a Flash game? Develop a video game from the concept stage up to the finished product. Learn about character animation, keyboard and mouse control, point systems, high score, power ups and sound, then tie it all together into a working Flash game. Imagine the cast, create the characters, and learn how to bring them to life in your own vibrant game world of super race cars, witches and wizards, or alien invasions — the possibilities are endless. By the end of this workshop, your game will be playable online for the entire world to see!

5. Photoshop Fakery (7-9)
You can't always trust the pictures you see. Digital artists everywhere use Photoshop tools to alter our perceptions of the world. Even the famous Reuters news agency has been fooled by manipulated photographs! Unleash your imagination, and learn the tricks cunning artists use to bend reality. Want to document an alien invasion, Photoshop yourself hanging out with your favorite actor or turn your pet into a super hero? Just a wave of your magic tools and you will become a digital wizard!

6. Splat! Bang! Boom! Character Design and Animation! (8-9)
Do you find yourself doodling, drawing crazy cartoons, or awesome characters? Do you want to make them jump, dance and soar through the air? In this class, you will develop the skills to make your characters come alive and make short animated sequences of your characters in action. Create a world where safes and pianos fall from the sky — or a world of swashbuckling pirates, stealthy ninjas, or super-powered heroines! Learn the basic principles of animation and the tricks of the trade: exaggerate movement, squash and stretch, special timing techniques. Use Adobe Flash and Illustrator to breath life into your characters. When you are done, you will have a fully imagined character with a dash of personality, a trademark walk-cycle, and a supporting cast in an exciting action-packed animation!

7. Building Virtual 3D Models: Designing Game Levels, Virtual Theatre Sets and Imaginary Worlds (1st Session only) (8-9)
Interested in computer graphics? Would you like to design your own game level, imaginary world, or virtual stage? Investigate the fusion of art and technology as you create your own 3D space. References from photographs, paintings, or movies will help you lay the foundation for your design. Then develop techniques to model, light and texture what you have made, as you become skilled at using the Maya 3D computer graphics and modeling software package. Once your setting is built, textured, and lit, you will render images to exhibit in the RIT Digital Studio Gallery or load your world into a game engine and navigate through it.

8. Animated Shorts (2nd Session only) (8-9)
Use characters and backgrounds developed by a team of faculty and students at RIT — meet Rita, who loves math, Isabel, a basketball player and BFF of Rita, Roxy a musician, Chang, Leroy, Melna and a wide cast of others — to create your own animated short. Start by developing a story and then a storyboard. ‘Cast’ your animation from the characters that already exist. Choose your settings from preexisting scenery. Animate and capture motion in our state of the art facilities, using Maya and the Organic Motion Stage Motion Capture System, then render the images and record to DVD. Take your movie home to show your family and friends.