Here are some samples of student work from across the years. For some personal notes, please check out some testimonials.
Massey University
At Massey University in Wellington, NZ, I was both Programme (Department) Lead and Senior Lecturer. The majority of my work there was setting up a new department in Screen Arts (animation, film, VFX, games, creative technology), including a vast amount of academic development. For more information, please check out the department website.
Courses I directly taught included:
- Animation I
- Game Development I
- Game Development II
- Game Development III
- Intermedia
- Cross-media
- Visualisation for Media Production
- Working with Scripted Material
- Game Production
- Production Planning and Development
- Major Project Development
- Portfolio and Dissemination
For any given year, there were 12 - 18 student capstone teams, each team compromising 8 - 18 students. My role was to shepherd those projects through ideation, development, preproduction, production, postproduction, and delivery. Each team self-formed, and worked with a staff mentor. The projects below are ones in which I was also the mentor.
Best Awards
A lot of our projects were nominated or received awards from the Best Awards, the regional annual design competition.
Brought to you by The Designers Institute of New Zealand, The Best Design Awards is an annual showcase of excellence in graphic, spatial, product, digital and motion design along with three special awards - Value of Design, Public Good and Toitanga.
You can find more samples from our programme on their website, including Blume, The Train of Many Stations, Night Lights, and Smoke and Mirrors.
2021
Black Channel
Sometimes you get a student team that you just have to get out of their way. This team created an amazing demo, worked together seamlessly, and did it in style.
Midnight Snack
A charming demo, using a balance platform as player input. Working with a local physical therapy startup, Swibo, the team overcame the challenges of custom input and APIs to make something special.
Programme Reels
2020
Festimals
This was a little project that could – a tiny team, completely dedicated to an ambitious project to create both a framework for childrens’ game delivery, and a selection of sample games.
Hans & Tweet
Another tiny team achieving a lot. This project was a 2-person stop-motion project completed in one year.
Return to Fable Grove
Psychological horror film with puppets? Sold.
2019
2019 was the first year of students that graduated from the degree I helped to create, so it has a special place for me. The works from this year were proof of the success of the degree, and demonstrated the potential yet to reach.
Lance, What Have You Done
As a faculty, we would discourage solo teams for capstone projects. But this one we couldn’t say no to.
Inhabit
Kiwis Can Fly
Programme Reels
2018
Programme Reels
Art Institute of Portland
For AIPD, I taught the following courses:
- Internet concepts
- Image manipulation
- Advanced image manipulation
- Web animation
- Digital ink and paint
- Introduction to game development
- Game design and play
- Level design
- Advanced level design
- Rapid prototyping
- Game preproduction
- Game production team
- Advances game production team
- Senior studio
In addition, I led the game development capstone projects, year-long team-based projects culminating in a game demo. These projects usually had 25 - 35 students, and carried them all the way through the game development pipeline.
These samples are sparse, it’s been a while!
2014
Super Thrust Busters
2011
Cleaver Fever
2010
Planetside
Created in partnership with Sony Online Entertainment.