 Yes, great. Okay, we start. Oh, hey everybody. Hello. Thank you So I'm Ellie and this is my role our story begins that we met together at the academy we Learned the animation and art together But any we even did our graduation film together, but then our ways split it apart. We went to work in different Jobs we acquired more and more skills and different skills from different areas We worked in the game industry a bit and as motion designers and for the TV shows and Blender a yes brought us together and Then began our journey as a like Specific 3d artists you can say yeah, and we founded our studio Friday lab, which is a built on three columns or three legs we like to say learn create and share and By doing this we challenge ourselves to always be in a learning process okay, we always a find challenges and problems and we look inward and study and try to research and find ways to Make stuff better make better pipeline and stuff like this and As I hope some of you saw yesterday the festival after somebody is learning a lot of stuff You need to speed it out, you know to create something out of it So we animation or something that will take those tools you earn and put it to the test so we create Our own art and we also work as freelancers and we work with game companies and We did some music leaps as well and the last Column is sharing okay We we are very inspired by the community of Blender and we like to give back So we have like a YouTube channel and we share Resources and we share stuff that we learn we also have a courses back in Israel We're from Israel. Sorry, let's say And we have like physical courses and private courses that we try to teach as many people as we can The secret of the freedom of creation. Yes Who is this? Oh, there is a hand there. Yes. Oh, this is gone. We didn't go on He's our assistant and we really like 3d assistants. We didn't invite him. No, he's always jumping in and Interfering so remember here go on stay there. We will meet you later So why we start to teach We felt quite of alone other 3d artists and you generally sit alone at your dark room Creating your stuff and we really want like to share and meet other people and Share the skills we earn and make some small community in Israel that we can Starts creating together It all starts by At Friday Each week we we were sitting and meeting with other friends like here and yeah, what a coincidence today It's a Friday and we are Friday lab We didn't ask for that Yes, we did So we get some we gain some partners and we start like create with other people but at the First moment that we try to teach Blender or 3d tools We immediately understood something 3d software could be boring as hell You open it everything is empty grave full of attributes mathematically and How we will manage to engage those students to Start start practicing a 3d artist 3d tools so We start like investigating in a different approach. We didn't want to learn how will Been touched and we want to make something a bit different. We we want to take it to something more Fun and not so Gray So we think we own to something and today we will love to share it with you some of our experiments Will it play will it play yes games We hope you saw that all the small nice scenes there in the in the video of mini and Playful games. We decided to adapt the ideas of using games Okay, and gone is helping me and telling me telling me the definition of what is a game So basically a game is a set of rules that structure in a way that Help us to get to a winning condition. Okay, we have a goal and we try to get to it but as kids we don't think about Those structures. We just play. Okay, if we use building blocks You try to build the highest tower Okay, you have a goal and you have building blocks and you can only stack them on top of each other you made a world of rules for yourself and by doing this you acquire skills that you are not aware of acquiring like you don't play building blocks and Said say to yourself. I want to learn how to balance cubes No, you just play and this is the same idea. We wanted to incorporate into our Teaching method. Okay, and we know that playing is fun So first of all you want to inspire your students your The people that come to learn to to want to learn more to be engaged to Have those feelings of success, you know when you win the game you manage to build the highest Building you have a rush of dopamine in your head and you are happy and you want more of this You want to do it again and again and again, and this is exactly the method we try to incorporate in our games, so Today we are want to To tell you and show you and take you on a journey with us on how to build Learning game. Okay, how to learn by playing and make it fun and joyful and colorful and so on So we took everything that we learn until now and we try to like simplify it to a three Simple steps. Hopefully it will help you to understand how We as a teacher and reaching to start developing this learning game First thing you need to ask yourself what I'm gonna teach there is plenty plenty of Subjects in the 3d softwares Specifically in blender just name it you have like a sculpting modeling Scripting everything just look at the workspace up there and you see how much of a specific Approach or some specific roles you have there So you need to understand what exactly you want to teach But you need to ask yourself who You're gonna teach. Okay, if it's something with just a very minimum of skills or something that are already familiar with 3d software and just need like to gain his knowledge specifically in blender and You need to clear destruction for me for him because otherwise and maybe you familiar with that I don't know if some of your teaching or maybe you're familiar when you just learn a blender that you In the beginning you try like to learn everything at once Okay, like I will do rigging I will model everything a little bit from anything from all and we try like to Focus the students to specific place for example If it if it will be like totally beginner, I probably will start with navigation otherwise if I start like Show him how to model it will be nightmare so the second one is The rules and by that we mean that a good game should have Should be a challenging one. Okay, and we want to make The game challenge a challenge for the student And by that he will gain some kind of winning Feelings by having something that he needs to to accomplish. Yeah We also distract him from the main thing that he learned like let's let's Let's take an example like the tools themselves cannot be The goal or his focus, okay We need to give him something else. He will do and by doing that He will learn those those tools. Okay, if you just learn, okay now I know how to switch between a move rotate and scale. It's nothing. You need to understand What to do with that? And very important again what not Ah, sorry We're not in vain inventing any Game we're not game developers. Okay, so we taking familiar games that we all very know like a maze like Jigsaw puzzle like just name it some game that you're already familiar with and the student could understand quickly The third one and the most creative one is the story In this part we are creating the world that the student will be will take part of And as humans we are connecting Memories with feelings. So Many times our students remember some tools from something That was emotionally attached for them. Okay, if you were looking In the trailer where we show you the video. You will see like we teaching nodes like Shaders and we show we teaching them on a cat at a cow in cow when we do those those Spots everywhere and they always remember that from this cow. They talking about the cow that they made at ramp and noise and everything So we Put a story and we give the student a role inside this story Who is he as a player? What is a purpose inside this game? And then we got a better engagement so More you talk too much and we like to play okay If you already download the link and you have computers You can play one of our games and if not we are going to Show you okay more is going to show you. Yeah, and Ellie gonna challenge me by doing it From there from there Okay, so we are back to gone's world and we have this game. Sorry be here. Okay We need to help gone is very very hungry and he wants to have a Leak of this amazing beautiful cheese. Yes Okay, go back to the code Control that the code Yes, no back. No. No. No. Yes. No. Yes Stay there. Okay, so we have this maze and if you open the file, you will have All the explanation there our goal is to help gone get to the cheese. Okay, but we can only Help him with his tongue. He's too short and we need to Extend it and what better tool to extend a tongue then? Extrude of course, thank you very much. So we will use the extrude tool to get to the cheese Can we begin you already? Okay, you're playing with us. Yes, we hope so. Okay, so Ellie move a bit Sorry, yeah, sir first select the tongue of course and we need to understand Okay, try to get in the mindset of a student that's maybe started yesterday and learned about navigation You know how to get around but still like we are in Kind of a 2d space simple area and we want to teach him the first Modeling tool and extrude region is the best one to start with so more got into edit mode You have a tip down there how to get into edit mode And with the tool of whoa with the tool of extrude he starts to extend the tongue Oh, no, what happened? I think I will Pick this edge and no, no, no, you cannot do that in a maze, right? So we have a problem and it's a One that we put there on purpose Because a lot of time when you use the extrude tool You also not need another tool that goes with it. Which is the cut loop tool? Okay, you can use either the shortcut or go to the side and select it and you can add and slide an edge And now you can continue playing Say more can you get to the cheese in two minutes? Yeah, but if I start like using shortcuts, I'm not like that Okay without shortcuts Okay, and we see that the student more he's here is extruding again and again and again and Plane but I hope is only focusing on how to get to the cheese I'm focusing of achieving it on stage as quick as I can Help me if you if he's doing something wrong. Tell him. It's a very it's excellent time to talk about If you noticed it's in a 2d world not 3d world Okay, you noticed it so you can go around but it we found out that at the beginning it's really helpful to stay Simple and 2d is already Like the tools are already enough complicated. So if you stay like at the beginning only in 2d world It's a little bit more a helpful and easy and again We want to create the feeling of success at first. We want our students to want to learn more to be more Happy, oh, no, I think you were just sorry in my way. I Don't know what are you doing? So someone I already finished it before me. Yes. Yes. Oh, we have a winner Oh Very good Maybe should I learn blender? Yeah? Okay, we're almost there. We're almost there Be ready It's like when I was young looking at other Friends playing a game and see all the mistakes they do. No. No go to this area. Yes. Yes almost there like that Well almost there go. Yes We did it. Yes go back to the presentation presentation right so We found out that There is a lot of emotions going on when you're playing a game you feel frustrated you feel success you feel a Happy, it's maybe funny story. Maybe it's like a disgusting story You don't want to get to this cheese and it's a helping our students to forget that they're Learning like boring tools. Okay. Why boring? Okay more? Extruded again and again and again and again He practiced it a lot. He developed a master memory of Doing this extrude operation But his main focus was on how to get to the cheese and he just played a game As we said with the small kid that's building with building blocks He just want to build the highest tower and by doing this he acquired skills and that exactly want we what we want to do and Also notice that we only talked about the extrude tool and maybe the cut loop tool But also more practiced the 3d navigation Okay He's in a 3d world and he needed to zoom in zoom out. He needed to manage Edges and faces and look about the geometry and plan ahead. So we Already developed a lot of more skills than just extruding Okay, okay, so we finished that and now It's time for us to practice together and we will create a new prototype. Okay, prototype. It's the fast Things to do like it's it's the first thing we need to do so If you have laptops, it's good. If not, it's also good and we will do it together and by that you will see how our mind Follow while doing that Okay, so we will reconstruct construct the same game. Just that's you just so now And I will open a blender file And I don't know how exactly we're gonna do that. We're gonna do it like this. Wait, wait Sorry for the technical problems So the first the first here As before the first step is picking the subject. Okay, we need to understand what we want to teach and in the I'm like the wide world of 3d. We need to be as specific as we can. Okay, so for example our We define our students. He's as we saw before is a beginner is already Understand how to navigate in the 3d space. Maybe A our student is not like a beginner in the 3d world. He came from other software, then we will start in other place Okay, so you need to be acknowledged like a know your Student your audience So in our example, it's a beginner. He knows how to navigate and we want to teach him modeling. Okay. Yes, and in Thank you gone Modeling and in modeling. We want to be more specific. What's in modeling? There is a lot of tools. There is a lot of ways a lot of methods and we need to pick some kind of a Subsubject, okay, and we decided to start with extrude. It's not the basic tool. It's a It is used a lot and the first thing we do we go to the software and try to play with it to start and see where the problems are and Yeah, and what? Maybe other tools we need to use okay You remember maybe you encountered this that a friend ask you how I do something and you tell him Hi, it's very very simple you click on this and then you go to the second menu and you click on the left You go up trees and again again, and then you have it Okay, and suddenly it's not that simple, but you remember is as simple things. So again, we need to Go to the state state of mind of a student that's first learning something and we need to slowly Figure out what tools and what problems he's going to encounter The main idea that now I'm really doing it and not just thinking about it So I already can see that I will need like to show him some other tools like the Cut look at all because I understand that it's a crucial to this task So I'm immediately know that I will need to add it in the game that I'm developing Okay, making so we go back So we look a little bit closer when we saw that we are not teaching only the extrude tool It always come together with some other tools for example the edit mode the slide edge tool and the look at tool that you saw and against try to be as Dance and as specific as you can because of course we can teach with a lot more tools, but we try to be a Focused we try to focus our student on each game to have simple and very clear task. Yep and The second step is the game and more said before We we borrow open source. Yes games and rules and we are not game designer We are not trying to invent new tools and teach the student new rules of games We use games that all one everybody knows okay amazed we know that we see a maze We know that we need to get from a to be we see a jigsaw puzzle We know that we need to connect all the pieces to a picture, right? So use games that we already know because there is enough difficulty in learning the tools So for this example, we saw that it's really fun to create a path with by extruding So we decided to take a maze. Yeah Most of the time we're starting also by putting some text and give like some kind of ad Like here we will start with gain from a to be and then we know like the the rules Now we don't know what is a and what is be but later we will know and also which tools we gonna use not a tools Okay, so we need the extrude And it's not for us. It's later for the student and the loop cut Too many peas Look look loop loop and we'll just give it like that and also Just look that I was taking the toolbar extended that the student could could Connect those words those those names to the tools that aside And we want a maze. Yes. Yes. How should we do a maze reference? We can just because it's prototype without it We don't need like to model in the best apology way the maze We just need like something that will be Guidance, but I'm gonna cheat. Yes cheating is good and I'm gonna bring The object object object I'm gonna bring this maze generator By a Simon Thomas, of course. Thank you, Simon. And and now I'm gonna generate a maze Evie, thank you Evie okay, and like that it will be very easy to To see if I need something very hard or it should be easy because it's a Does it look hard enough? Too much time. It's okay. Maybe it's too easy too easy. Okay, so like seven. Yeah, look good. Okay like that Okay So we have that Something else No, we have the rules. We have the game. It's pretty clear and we are ready to the most creative part the story Okay, here. We want to Give the player his role what he need to do. Okay, because to get from A to B. It's fine. It's enough, but it's not Engaging it's not a you don't feel that you are part of this world. So Can you help us? Can you know time? This is your time like we did Tongue that need to get to a cheese. Nice. Not very funny. Now. It's soon Halloween, right? What will be the a what will be the B you choose something we need to extend Yeah, it could not be. Yeah, it's me. You say Maybe they don't know they don't want to help us. We have a tough audience a warm that needs to get to an apple Okay, oh sounds good. Sounds good enough. No. Yes. Okay. Yes. We have an approval. Yes, okay It's not funny enough, but we can check it later. Worms are very funny. Worms are funny. So I need to apply that and Just move everything from here Bye-bye Bye-bye No, no Okay, and I'm gonna do it really really rough. Why because I Have no time. No, because it's a prototype and it doesn't need to be really Pretty it's just need to be functional Hey, we want to test our idea to see if it's working if the student is Getting the task getting the game. Where's the ending point here? Shouldn't be So the one will start here. Okay, and here we will have the apple Nice apple And we take this nice Amazing it's a tutorial If you ever want to model an apple This is your time now more is a Over to is overdoing it. It's doing too much effort into the prototype. This is the one one It's always happening. Yes Okay, don't don't give too many time to the prototype. It should be a fast dirty use shortcuts And we have an apple. Yes. Oh, no The warm inside the apple Okay This is a warm. It's look like a warm a bit. Yes. Good enough Okay, so and now we can Clean a bit the scene and make it ready for our students. Okay, as I said before we need to remove any distractions to help our Player to Understand on what he needs to click and when so for example, I don't want him to select the maze right or the text so I can organize everything in a Collections and make it unselected and remember that like in different from a Movie or an animation that you render the final scene and nobody will see your files and know what happened in there Here we are giving the files to our student and they are going to explore and touch stuff and search And see what we did there. So We need to be organized. We need to be tidy everything need to be as clean as possible to set a good example Yeah, for example if we We need to lock everything that he doesn't need to touch. It's better He to not touch like everything except the warm. Otherwise, he will click in Many places and it will be a nightmare. So we take everything else and put it in a new collection and we call it lock don't touch ever ever and Now also here I can move some things that are not very Important for him like he will not render it. He doesn't need to hide it But I want this select tool to be unselected this Collection and now you cannot mistakenly choose other stuff Okay, we're ready. Yes. Yes So we are ready for the play test time, okay in games There is like also in art when you look at your work and you need to see it in a new fresh eyes Sometimes we flip it one 100 degrees 180 degrees minus 90. Yeah Okay to see it in fresh eyes and in games we played with it We build it but we doing it the same way. We need to see the problems. We need to see in What areas our students is going to have problems and they will need Help or maybe we should be prepared for it. So this time we take like a random person from the corridor and ask him To play our game. So we need a volunteer. Please someone volunteer. Don't be afraid Yes Thank you What's your name? Okay, this is the wall. Are you ready? Okay, we tell maxim the game as we said before maxim, but wait wait wait a second before we start We need a role playing. Okay. Okay. We all know those students maxim is going to play one of them Yes You want him to be fearful technophobic He knows it all already Help us. He knows it all. Okay. He knows it. He thinks he knows it all. You ready? Do I really have to use the touchpad for this horrible software? No, you have a mouse No, no, it's more like It's inside the role. Yeah, he fooled me already. Yes. Okay. Maxim you need to use this swarm. Okay And get to the apple. Okay by extruding. Okay, and to get to the extrude tool You go to edit mode as we learned yesterday. Okay. Okay. You remember how you go to the extrude Um, I remember I go into the edit mode by tap. Is it right? Yes. Okay. Well, yes And now you need to get the worm to the apple by extruding its edge By extruding the edge the edge. Yes. Oh, okay. So I have to select the edge, right? So for us we write in our mind like I'm looking here. Okay. I need to tell him to select the edge I need to write it somewhere not the point. No, what not the point not the point Not the point. No, the edge. Okay. Ah, yes. I remember it's up here, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. Great. Great. You're doing amazing That's great encouragement. It's very good. Very important And now I can extrude by E. Yes. Okay. Wow. No, you cannot go through the walls Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. Uh, things complicated, right? Let's try it. This is only level one, you know. Oh, okay It's okay. Great. Amazing. First extrude of his life. Okay. And now you need to extrude the second time Okay, but I first have to like I can't I can't extrude like this, right? Oh amazing, right? So we need to teach him another tool. You see in the tips you have like lop-up cut tool Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I think it's um control R. Yes Ah, and now it's like this yellow thing, right? Yes. Okay. I see. It's incredible Amazing. It's such it's such an easy learning experience. I I don't feel like I'm learning anything new Okay. Thank you very much And now again. Yes. Yes So we here look at our Tester sometimes if we build it together I will be the build the game and give more to test it and some are sometimes otherwise So it's very important to uh to have a fresh eyes to see to give somebody that never played this game before To tell you what's wrong to show you the problems and what you need to clarify. Yeah, okay As you can see he's always a lock in uh is extrude. Uh, it's a specific X Uh, and that's something that we didn't teach. So maybe we should oh, yeah, and also And also for us like uh lately we start to teach with the tool with the toolbar and Back then when we just started we always teach the Shortcuts, but in the beginning, uh, we we understood that it's easier for the student to understand Sorry, thank you very much. Thank you, Maxine. You're amazing So We did it. We did it. He did it again. Thank you very much So we have a prototype and it's working and we need to go through our checklist to see that everything is ready for the next Step if something is unchecked is not ready. We go back and refine the game Okay, adapt the difficulty change the subject. Maybe the the game. It's not amazing should be a puzzle game We don't know. Okay. This is the time to check if it's all fits and we can get to the next step So did he learn how to extrude? Yes Yes If this is like a complicated question for you, we will talk about it in the question. Yes. Yes. Thanks, but it's a good question And so we go through the checklist of our prototype and we start to answer to ourselves Okay, is the subject was clear the game was Clear enough he understand the goal. Maybe I need to add more text Maybe I need to change the game and I need to adapt the difficulty. Is it too easy? It's not interesting for him It's boring. Maybe it's too hard. It's too tedious. He's doing it too many times We don't have half an hour for a game and uh, of course the story was it funny. Did he enjoyed it? Did he Felt engage and have a role in this game or he's just was go from a to b Okay, and if everything is checked correctly We have a working prototype Thank you. Go on. Thank you very much. You finished the prototype And now what? What's next? Now it's time to wrap it up Okay, because the prototype is the most important part because then you know if it's really worth it to continue and make it pretty and make it to make everything tight together so Just you take what you already gained in the prototype and make it As good as you can and it's taking some time. So be prepared for that We do a prototype in 10 minutes now. Yes, it will take you more time to make it complete but be aware that you have to To make sure that the prototype is working before you try to make it pretty we have an archive of Games games we made they are beautiful, but they were nothing. Okay, because At the end of this game we understood that the student doesn't really Gain nothing out of it. Okay. It was so far from the purpose of the tools You're talking about one of our examples, right? Yeah. Okay. Not about this game. No, no, okay No, I want that now lying down in the door It was so far from the from the the actual Purpose of the of those tools that it's worthless So pay attention to that Okay, so we got to the final step of the final round And we hope that we enlightened you and we showed you a new way or maybe Help to refine already stuff that you know and we would like to go one last time of about this method about this presentation so by Using games we make the learning process much more Fun and engaging and when something is fun and we want more from it We are more motivated to learn and learn more and we like to do it again and again and again It's much more memorable. We put those tools to our hands to our like muscle memory And we simplified it to those three states like you need to very carefully carefully match subject to the student and clear all destructions You borrow some rules from games that are familiar and the player can immediately understand and take part of And you put you build a world and you give a role to the player inside Engaging him to have emotions to laugh to feel something when he's learning and and it's very important and That's it. If you like to ask us something if you Want to challenge us challenge us with more examples or if you want something else You we can make you a coffee if you like Yes, thank you We had a question and we yes To go on in blender, which they are like for very simple things you can do very different approaches And how do you go on about explaining all these different approaches without overwhelming the student Um Say the question again, so yeah the question if if I'm not wrong if I understood How we are managed to focus the students in some specific area and and not Not letting him to get lost inside all those multiply options. Yeah But specifically like workflows Like the tool bar, yeah We're testing a lot a lot a lot of those those games and like using those tool bar the tool bar aside We figured out that it's easier also to the students to practice with but also The student to look at what we are doing By me choosing and have those gizmos when I'm choosing something and there is some kind of Communication of you gonna there is this a plus yellow thing we you you're gonna now Extend more data here So it's communicate better in the first learning learning steps And I think it's not a coincidence that blender did that And introduce those tools lately Another question here Yeah, so the question was How do we deal with different levels of students in the same classroom that can be It can be very difficult We don't want one to be bored and want to be extremely challenged. So One way is to have like multiple games Like there is the basic game that all should do and then like more advanced one for the one that already Did the easy game we use scenes like we really like scenes in blender files So you have multiply multi Scenes that each one of it is a game. So one of it could be a Harder game or more advanced game So we send him like go to scene six. You will find something more challenging for you specifically And more like the tools are the same, but the level you use them is a bit different So here like when you have multiple games It's can help Like the more advanced student to understand more things you can do with it when the more Beginner student needs only the basic level and feel comfortable with it Yes Yes, we we try to adjust Like the learning to the student Okay, when when there is a student that wants to learn more he will learn more We cannot stop him. We can only help him Okay, but the basic level that we teach we will Make sure that all the student will get to the basic level if someone exceed and go beyond Amazing we will help him on his journey But our main focus is to help first especially if it's a beginner a course or a Or a class we we want them all to get to the same level at first Yeah, the the advanced Student will not satisfied with what we do actually And he always and it's a good thing. We'll start like to Search in outside the course and he start like to see advanced tutorials and Go back to us and ask us some advanced questions And he's like the students that probably Gonna really take what we teach To the next level to the next level and use it in his own career Yeah, yeah our in our last you asked about What kind what age of students we are targeting for In our last course we had a 14 year old Kid And 72 year old Designer a pens pensioner Yeah, okay, and they both enjoyed it the same and learned all the new tools So there is not like for games. There is not a specific age We all like to play and it's helping in all the levels It's easier of course when the class is more like in the same level and same age It's easier for them all but we are not We are not defining like by age And 80 percent of them probably will keep it as a hobby So That's it. Thank you again very much for listening to us Again, we are friday lab and we are We'll be happy if you contact us and ask us questions show us Your projects and prototype and ask us what we think we will love to help and That's it. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much