Lesson plans and notes from our Babycastles Academy public education programs
This repo contains the Babycastles Academy Manual for workshop teachers and individual lesson plans for each workshop.
Babycastles Academy events are weekend afternoon workshops (and sometimes game jams or talks) on topics related to artist-focused game development, world-building and the intersection of art and technology. Workshops can be experienced individually or as a series to learn a broad range of skills and techniques. Our audience is a broad community of creative practitioners from visual artists, musicians, sculptors, programmers, dancers, performers, poets, writers and those who may not self-identity as having any particular relevant skills but are interested in learning.
Rather than the approach of professional game production companies, our focus is game design as an artist creation process akin to the handcrafted process of building zines, paintings, art films and theater. We see game creation as a medium synthesizing visual design, sound, sculpture, programming and performance. Never one to be boxed in by hard definitions, our workshops include topics, skills and techniques that go beyond strictly games. Past workshops include skills in setting goals, workshops in Python, and more. Traditional game-design workshops or classes diverge greatly from this approach, and are pricey, inaccessible to the diverse community we aim to serve.
While we’ve found success as an artist-run space dedicated to games, we’ve always been proud to be representative of a broader community that is not always represented by the Game Industry. Our workshops aim to serve this broad community of individuals of many intersectional identities across gender, race, class, age, ability.
Recordings of Babycastles Academy workshops on YouTube
- Experimenting with Digital Zine Making in Electric Zine Maker - June 13, 2021
- Making Rhythm Games in Unity and Wwise - May 16, 2021
- Making an Audio-Reactive AI-generated Video: RunwayML and TouchDesigner - April 25, 2021
- DOOM Modding - April 11, 2021
- TiddlyWiki: Getting Started with digital gardens, networked thinking and non-linear research - April 4th, 2021
- Being the GameMaster: How To Run Compelling Tabletop Roleplaying Games - March 21, 2021
- Make Your First Video Game with Pico-8 - February 28, 2021
- Building 3d Worlds in Blender by Seamus Edson - February 14, 2021
- Introduction to Audio Synthesis with Machine Learning by Allan Pichardo - January 17, 2021
- DIY Scene Design and 3d Modeling by Daniel Lichtman - November 22, 2020
- Email! by Char Stiles - November 1, 2020
- The Software Blues - Agonies and Ecstasies of Creating Ambitious Artwork by Tyler Etters - September 20, 2020
- Strike The Earth: How to Play Dwarf Fortress by Crezno - August 23, 2020
- A Friendly Introduction to Writing Proposals and Grants by Lee Tusman - August 16, 2020
- Here Be Monsters! Creature Design 101 by Cicada Carpenter - August 9, 2020
- Making Your First Website: CSS as a Design Tool by Stefan Pelikan - August 2, 2020
- Making Music with Found Sounds by Hyacinth Ramsay - July 26, 2020
- How 2 Chip2une by Crezno - July 19, 2020
- LiveCoding w/ TidalCycles by Dan Gorelick - July 12, 2020
- Intro to Livecoding w/ ORCA by Max Neely-Cohen - June 28, 2020
- Street Smarts: Security Mindset for Activists by Grey (Cypurr Collective) and David Huerta (Free of the Press Foundation) - June 21, 2020
- Stay Safe, Stay Secure: Practical Security for Protesters and Organizers by Ana Valens, David Huerta (Freedom of the Press Foundation), Matt Mitchell (CryptoHarlem) - June 7, 2020
- Bamboo Unicorns: Asian-American Game Design by Charles H. Huang - May 31, 2020
- Intro to Godot by Francisco Rojo - May 17, 2020
- Generative Text in p5.js by Hyacinth Ramsay - May 2020
- Building a Custom Film Finder with Python by Drew Katsikas / Vampire Computer People - May 3, 2020
- Make a Flatgame in Unity by Lee Tusman - April 19, 2020
- Pixel Scene Design: Monster Babe Hangout by Phoenix - April 5, 2020
- Setting Goals by Lauren Gardner, April 2020
- Empathic Listening by Claudia Kenny - March 29, 2020
- Learn Hydra - June 23, 2019
- Houdini is Easy by Chris Rutledge - May 26, 2019
- Livecoding with SuperCollider by Jessica Garson - May 12, 2019
- Art on the Commandline by Drew Katsikas and Karl Hohn - April 28, 2019
- Platformer Workshops in Unreal and Unity by John Bruneau and Prashat Thapan - October 20, 2018
- Game Engines for All: Node-based Materials in Unreal by Prashat Thapan - September 2, 2018
- Game Engines for All: Rendering Video with Unity and Unreal Engine by Prashat Thapan - July 22, 2018
*This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.
Babycastles Academy is also supported by workshop participants and by the members of Babycastles. For more information on donation or to become a member, visit our page on withfriends.