Video Game Design Schools In Japan

Digital Creation Course

Creating fun with digital skills and ideas

Video games, websites, apps, computer graphics, animation, social media. Using digital tools such as these to move and thrill people is the aim of the Digital Creation Course—to create fun mechanisms digitally and make the world more exciting. Technology is necessary for this, though the most important thing of all is to have an idea that inspires a response. In today's digital era, by everybody responding, participating and sharing, contents can be more interesting and successful.

Students undertake thorough research into the ways to create responses—surprise, laughter, fear—as well as thinking of original ideas, and then turning them into results online or actual events. For example, this may be an online service solving people's personal problems, or a compelling video game as yet never seen, or an app that is convenient for daily life. Students may also be involved with operating a restaurant, acquiring the know-how and faculties to run a business and attract customers.

In the future, digital media will be indispensable not only for transmitting information and entertainment, but also selling products, gathering people together, and connecting individuals. The abilities and skills students acquire on this course will prove immensely beneficial in this new era.

Facebook and Twitter—these too originated in a flash of inspiration. Your dynamic design could create fun that exhilarates the whole world.

Four Years in the Digital Creation Course

1st Year

How to make design that elicits a response

In the first year, students learn the foundations of visual design alongside students from the Graphic Design Course. Over the year they take modules in Drawing and Material Expression, Type Composition and Lettering, Character Design, Idea and Presentation, Communication and Internet Literacy, and Sensory Design.

The Character Design classes teach how to create original characters. Communication and Internet Literacy looks at communication tools today, and how to utilize SNS and so on for self-promotion. Sensory Design, meanwhile, teaches students how to brainstorm ideas from senses other than the visual. The teaching staff is comprised of leading designers and directors—professionals from whom students acquire the foundational knowledge and techniques required in the actual design world. There are also optional modules looking at digital tools, such as for photography, online videos and websites. In this year students learn both analog and digital techniques, and how to create ideas, all of which will become the foundation for future creative work.

1st Year Goals

Learning about not only digital skills, but also how to create ideas and conceptual design.
2nd Year

How do you make people excited?

The second year's modules are specialized ones for the Digital Creation Course, divided into the three key areas of film, planning and interaction, refining the skills necessary for producing design that exhilarates and evokes a response.

The units on film teach skills such as hand-drawn animation, 3D CG animation, motion graphics, and so on. The classes on planning, deal with how to elicit responses through work for corporate clients or planning events, as well as polishing presentation skills. Lastly, the classes on interaction explore skills for creating "fun" for users, such as in online content, apps or games. Through these, students learn ways of creating ideas that produce reactions.

The digital tools that the course examines are diverse, but each student will discover their particular forte, which will become their own personal means of expression for the following year and beyond.

2nd Year Goals

Studying techniques for digital tools like film and websites, seeking out ways to elicit a response from viewers.
3rd Year

Designing restaurants

In the third year students once again join up with their peers on the Graphic Design Course. A range of professional-level projects are offered, from which you can choose depending on your interests, forming a team of people with different specializations to solve social or corporate tasks through design.

Digital Creation Course students make use of the logos and visual designs created by the Graphic Design Course students and consider how to make people respond, and how to connect people. This is the time when they utilize their own special skills fostered over the first two years in the real world through projects such as creating a restaurant, releasing a smartphone app developed in collaboration with industrial partners, or making a new online service.

3rd Year Goals

Experience diverse and practical projects, experimenting with utilizing personal expertise.
4th Year

What kind of "fun" can you create?

In their final year students engage with their final graduation projects. Such projects on the Digital Creation Course are particularly broad, a rich variety of work seeking new forms of creativity. Examples include a charity donation system that calculates ¥100 for every "thank you" that is said, daily live-streaming from the graduation exhibition via Ustream, an installation in which anyone can convert words into video via Twitter hashtags, and iPhone app games.

The digital skills studied over the four years of this program are the instruments for creating new communication, for changing the world into something more fun. The graduation project is just one step along the way. The places in the outside world where your expertise can be used are infinite.

4th Year Goals

Utilizing digital skills and communication know-how to create a graduation project.

Career paths after graduating from the Digital Creation Course

Over four years of practical learning, students acquire the skills to deal with digital tools that can be applied in the world today, such as project planning, ideation, direction, websites, SNS, apps, games, and videos. The Digital Creation Course produces designers who can use their abilities to create new forms of communication for making the world a more fun and interesting place.

Career choices

Digital designer for websites, computer graphics, film, and so on
Content manager and director
Designer of new kinds of games
Creating new forms of online services

Other career options

Video artist
TV show writer
Web director
Typography designer etc.