APD Week 10 - Abstraction

Theme:

Abstraction is an interesting concept to me, particularly when considering its meaning in different contexts. In academic writing, an abstract is often more like a summary of a larger body of writing. Abstract art seeks to remove all unnecessary detail from a work and present only the components which are essential to convey its purpose.

Key Questions:

• How can I represent a player’s movement in its most essential  form?

Context:

In thinking about abstraction in games, I wanted to consider the abstract representation of a player’s movement. I considered a few different possible representations of player movement and I ended up using simple line sketches to give the impression of the player walking around a space.

Method:

• I sketched some simple footprints, which I found were still too literal.
• I cut down the footprints to just simple ovals and found that the impression of bipedal movement was not lost.
• I created 3 sketch objects to represent the world space. Without these objects there was no way to identify the movement of the player within the world.

Reflection:

This exercise felt a bit self-evident. I would have liked to create something more interesting if I’d had the time. I think a world like this could be interesting if it had a bit more in it, perhaps some kind of direction or purpose. I found myself feeling like I wanted to explore or discover what more the space had to offer.