Encouraging the Acquisition of Drawing Skills in Game Design: A Case Study

Undergraduate, interactive, computer games design courses offered by technical universities in the UK, are usually designed to produce graduates who have the knowledge of both the technical and aesthetic aspects of creating interactive computer-based games. These students, unlike students in Art and Design Departments are not required to have art or design backgrounds. However, they need to be able to represent their creative ideas to fellow team members, managers, budget holders and to the audience for the games. Observations by the course team and student module evaluations at the University of Gloucestershire have shown that, although many students have creative ideas about the games that they want to design, they find difficulties in expressing these ideas in a visual manner as they perceive that they do not have adequate drawing skills. Some of these students focus on coding and some eventually get frustrated and withdraw from the course. This paper investigates the links between game design and drawing skills, examining concepts of creativity and education. A longitudinal case study is reported which has identified the problems reported by students and the impact of these on students’ attitude and motivation. A variety of tutor-led learning interventions have been trialled. The research has identified criteria to assess the quality of storyboard communications and proposes the design and implementation of an e-learning tool based on game-play to develop storyboarding skills.