Tree in the wind
THEME: Play and Stillness
CONTEXT:
In a talk given at the GDC conference in 2015 Brian Upton mentioned that “Interactivity is a thing that games can do , It is not what they are”. This led my to thinking about games like Myst and Riven which can be seen as a series of still images linked together with minimal animation and this got me thinking what is the smallest amount of interaction I can have and the answer that came to me was zero interaction.
METHOD:
Using Maya I created a simplistic model of a tree with it’s being blown off.
In Houdini I then created a background image of a terrain and overlayed the trees on top of this
RESPONSE:
The end response was a still image for a background with an animation of the trees playing over the top
REFLETCTION:
It was a interesting process to go through a remove all interactivity from a scene. Starting with a game like Myst I wanted to take a slice of a single view from what we consider a game and play with the expectations with interactivity when we mention games.
References
Upton, Brian. "The Play Of Stillness: Designing Experiential Play Spaces". 2015. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022317/The-Play-of-Stillness-Designing
Examples of Play and Stillness
The Last Guardian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebLJJn1Hhlk
The Last Guardian is a action adventure game designed by Fumito Ueda and released in December 2016
The game focuses on the relationship between a boy and a Half-bird , half -dog creature Trico as they try and escape from where they are.
This work uses stillness as a breathing space between the puzzle and action sequences that allows the players a space to orient themselves as well as serving as a juxtaposition with the next action sequence