PRESS RELEASE

NMAT degree provides skills for video game creation

KOKOMO, Ind. — As an artist, Z Fanning chose an unusual medium as his focus.

Video game design.

As he prepares to graduate from Indiana University Kokomo in May, he’s completing his senior thesis project, designing a game using skills gained while earning his degree in New Media, Art, and Technology (NMAT).

“NMAT as a whole has a slew of classes that can help toward anything in that field,” said Fanning, from Fort Wayne. “The art program covered everything I wanted to learn, and I could apply it to a greater field of study.

“I took some sound design classes and a handful of illustration and graphic design classes that helped me figure out how to create the environment and the characters. I took a video editing class that helped me understand how to place cameras. I can get up on my soapbox about how video games are an encapsulation of art.”

He plans to exhibit his game in the Thesis Exhibition, which runs from April 17 to May 15 in the IU Kokomo Art Gallery.

His interest in creating games goes back to his childhood playing Sly Cooper, a series of stealth action-adventure video games in which the player controls Sly, an anthropomorphic raccoon, or one of his companions through many missions.

“It was my first connection with the idea that games are more than pressing buttons on a screen, this is a story,” Fanning said. “For everyone who connects to a movie, this is connecting to an interactive movie. That led me down the route of wanting to do something to give back to this community.”

He worked for a web development company before enrolling at IU Kokomo, which made the skills gained in his NMAT class more valuable to him.

“I had the technical skills, I just needed the artistic skills,” he said.

Fanning credited Michael Koerner, associate professor of new media, with helping him improve as an artist.

“For the majority of my college career, I felt like I wasn’t up to snuff with my peers in terms of my illustration skills. For the last year and a half, I’ve taken almost all his classes. I feel like he’s speed tracked my skills. He really offers a good set of assignments that lets you show what you can do creatively while pushing you to put forth your best work.”

His game follows a robot that has been abandoned in a laboratory, with the players helping it through the horror landscape left behind. The story is multilayered, he added.

“It’s an analogy for those who are struggling with gender identity,” he said. “When you get through depression, there’s this feeling you’ve lost yourself and you don’t know where you are.”

His journey to graduation hasn’t been easy. Fanning said he wasn’t ready when he first enrolled and ended up being academically dismissed for a semester. He took the time to decide on next steps before successfully petitioning to return.

“I came back and have been raring to go since then,” he said. “I understood what I needed to do college wise. That time helped me understand that going to college is not just going to classes. It’s understanding the work and being able to talk to professors and putting forward your 110 percent self.”

Fanning is excited to graduate after seven years working toward his degree. He has a job at a graphic design firm and plans to earn a master’s degree in the future. His goal is to join IU Kokomo’s faculty to teach classes related to game design.

“I’m a big proponent of the tech-based arts,” he said.

Education is KEY at Indiana University Kokomo.