Animated Narratives Week 11

By Harry Hughes

This week I made a video prototype/ proof-of-concept of a video game about dating based on the premise "What if a person could modify their own body parts like modules in robots?"

I very quickly thought of characters swapping arms and legs and heads, and in the iterative workshop in class I came up with a character who has been accused of a crime who has to escape police by swapping body parts quickly and ends up throwing away their head in a comedic ending. I often find I'm coming up with worlds that are much too complex for the scope of my software ability and of this class, so I'm trying to simplify everything. From simplifying, I came up with this cute game where a character - Green Guy- is in love with White Guy and walks around a big room asking other characters for advice on the best combination of body parts that will win White Guy's heart, and swapping body parts accordingly. The trick is that the only way to win the game is to go straight up to White Guy without altering any body parts, the obvious lesson being to Just Be Yourself.

The reading this week by Paul Wells, "25 Ways to Start Laughing", talks about cinema being the first place where we could see the human body doing impossible things- illustrating the breakdown of "social order as it is located in the physical world"- and making us all burst out laughing. Humour is an integral part of my work so I definitely wanted to include some element of this- though I'm not sure I successfully made this element "funny"....

I had also just seen Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In and was trying to include some element of the debate of "when altering your body, at what point do you become a completely different person". And the whole thing really reminded me of a very early internet game, the sort I used to play on Ebaumsworld.

Again this week I really enjoyed generating ideas by setting a timer for fifteen minutes and just writing ideas down without judging them. This works really well for me and it's a skill I'll use forever. I also am enjoying making multiple shots in the same Blender project to add some dynamism to them. I am so excited about Blender and feel I have so much to learn which is slightly daunting, but being able to make video prototypes like this one is hugely exciting.