outline
- Josee thought CGL should know a bit about more about what 
  we have been doing with the Fine arts department
- thanx to Josee for suggesting a simplified tech talk!
- will talk about our goals for the fine arts course we
  were teaching, the stuff we covered, the problems we
  ran into
- will probably talk for 5-10 minutes, then show the CGL demo tape

2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
goals
- varying levels of familiarity with computer
  - some had never used a 3 button mouse
  - one taking cs488
- first course
  - learn the basics of Houdini
  - emphasis on the animation aspect (previous courses modelling only)
  - assignments are graded on artistic merit (more during video)
- second course
  - focus on art

3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- this is what we covered

4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
problems we had
- very little time to teach the basics
- especially since we weren't sure what the basics were
  - we taught them how to move the camera in week 2, but wasn't till
    7 weeks that we taught them to move the camera effectively via
    blocking, after one of us learnt about the method
- and then we had to learn a variety of techniques in Houdini and 
  decide which of those we want to teach, and Houdini ain't bug free
- sometimes it isn't easy to explain things in a non technical way

5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
problems we had with the students
- Less is More pretty much became our motto, we even had a contest
  with the less is more prize
- the best assignments (my opinion) was one where we asked them to
  model one object only
- some of the students get carried away by the stuff that the software 
  can do, forget the basics they learn in the first year courses and 
  create complex scenes that are lacking, when what they should do is 
  learn to create simple things well
- also forget details, such as objects having shadows and following
  the laws of physics
- the usual...

6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- will talk about animations as they come
- Bill and Josee will take questions :)