Past Class Syllabi

Aug 27	Class forms were filled out, many questions were formed and answered. Descriptions of seminars, procedures, locations, etc. were covered. Story boards were assigned.
Sept 3	Travel waivers were signed for UC in preparation for field trips. Students brought and did Story Boards. Many Pixar materials were watched in preparation for the highly unusual Sept 24 Field Trip.
Sept 10	Story boards from students began to appear and a great deal of time was spent going over them and talking about details. Showed ‘Eternal Gaze’ a DVD production from SF Siggraph.
Sept 17	Guest: Alan Tse, Architect, works for Saitewitz Assoc., SF He discussed thoroughly, the Saitewitz exhibit that was in the lobby and displayed, stretched out in an unusually long line. It gave a really overwhelming idea of the business they conduct with remarkable detail of the various aspects. Guest: Waibun Lee talked about DES Architects in Redwood City, the firm for which he has worked many years since leaving UC Arch. His contribution has meant a great deal to the company.
Sept 24	Guest Location Pixar Tour, Guest: Stefan Gronsky Originally he was one of my students who has now worked for PIXAR for several years. It was an extraordinary tour that he conducted showing us so much of the institution. Now Disney is a sizeable aspect of it and we received a complete idea of what is to come.
Oct 1	We saw Guest: Prof Dennis Lieu, Mechanical Engineering He convinced us to visit him in his office where he was located with a super computer. He was sure we would like to be involved with it in preference to a classroom to listen to his lecture there instead because of the quality of his discussion. He was quite right. Class Discussion. We went back to class and looked at everyone’s work from a heavily technical point of view that made it intensely interesting.
Oct 8	Class Animations / Cris Benton with his Air Flight works. Extraordinary. Guest: Prof Cris Benton, Architecture Dept, KITES. Charles C. Benton is a kite aerial photography (KAP) enthusiast and a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches building science. He sees his hobby as a natural extension of his job. Not only can he get a bird's perspective on how a building weathers, but he can exercise that part of the brain essential to practicing architecture: the imagination. "I watch the camera as it lofts into the air and try to frame what it sees," he says. "You form a hypothesis. When you get the image back, you can compare what you imagined with what it actually captured." Benton has been working with a microbiologist on a project called "Hidden Ecologies” that examines the salt ponds in the San Francisco Bay area, documenting change from 10 million meters high—the level of a satellite image—to microscopic levels of one-millionth of a meter. Benton's KAP images hover between 100 meters and one meter high, filling the gap between Google Earth and humans tethered to the ground. "As designers in the building world, we're trained to visualize relationships," Benton says. "This is a way of literally realizing that."
Oct 15	Class showed their animations, at first examining the place everyone had arrived at in their work. Then Penny Dhaemers showed ‘Benjamin Button’ speeded up to get through in ½ hr showing the growth of the principal character growing from old to young. Hopefully the man from the company Mova will talk to us about what it took to do this if he is able to come.
Oct 22	Class showed their work. Guest: Ed Raymond IASTE Computer Union Representative Local 16. Ed Raymond told us of the history of the unionization of the computer graphics business and which companies were unionized and which weren’t and how the effect such a relationship is helpful to each member.
Oct 29	Class showed their work. ‘Day the Earth Stood Still’ Sci Fi 1951 Original movie with Michael Rennie, etc. Very simplified and interesting from that ’51 point of view. To be compared with the ‘upgraded’ and newer version 2008 with Keanu Reeves.
Nov 5	Guest tour: Roger Nelson and Motion Capture in Emeryville The class visited ‘Motionwerx’, Roger Nelson’s business. This man has for some time been involved in Motion Capture. He put his motion-capture suit on Asnavy Sari to demo with all capabilities to show motion. Roger travels all over the US and Europe to become totally immersed in the newest technological matters pertaining to desirable and wished for motions. Students: Nelson made comments and helped with the students’ questions about how they might be able to use such equipment to enhance the reality of their own storylines.
Nov 12	Class showed their Animations. Guest: Jean Paul Bourdier showed us and gave us the details about the making of his book, ‘Bodyscapes’. He gathered the class around a table to examine and discuss in great depth the many individual images that he created to put into his book and the detailed thinking that accompanied the choices that he made. ‘Day the Earth Stood Still’, Sci Fi 2008 with Keanu Reeves; ‘More Action, More Effects, and More Mayhem’ and an incredible comparison to the 1951 version.
Nov 19	Strike on campus therefore there are are two items 1st week in December.
Dec 3	Class Animations Guest: Tim Fortenbury and ILM ‘Transformers’, Star Trek, etc. He has been working for ILM for a long time. Originally as a student he went to Cal, worked in the 4th floor Arch computer section on all of our computers.
Dec 4	Guest: Dennis Martin