APD - Week 6 - Play and Force
THEME
Play and Force
Please feel free to play with force yourself~ https://hiyokaygames.itch.io/cat-girl-force (pwd: magi)
Progress video: https://youtu.be/5nPdY7u3O-o
CONTEXT
At the start, I had so many exciting ideas for conventional objects I could make with the forces, (such as a wind simulator that will move the character’s hair and clothes at a different rate depending on how windy it is) However, I tried to force myself to say no to that, and no to every to every other idea that was too similar to what I was used to making.
With this in the back of my mind, I happened to be scrolling through Tumblr when I came across one of those, ‘Put your finger here’ type gifs. These types of gifs tells the viewer to put their finger on their screen creating the illusion that the viewer caused the effect in the gif.
This is a concept that kind of blurs the lines between reality and the screen, and I’ve seen it in many different forms across the internet. According to Paul Clothier, “interactive video has been shown to increase attention, engagement, recall, satisfaction and time spent watching a video.”
I did some research and there are even longer version of this concept with more than just keeping a finger against the screen. These examples by EqualtoAwesome [1] [2] include tapping swiping, tilting you phone to a side.
METHOD
My first instinct was to make a similar gif but I decided to at least try for the less digital option first.
I decided to draw a small cat girl on a notebook page and video myself tapping her with a finger so that something happens.I tried making her fall over on the same notebook page, but it was too unsatisfying. I then tried to make it as if the force of the finger shifted the traditional drawing into a digital drawing.
I wasn’t too happy with this result. I had half a mind to forget this all happened and start over. However, I applied the same concept of applying force in the real world to affect something in the digital world, and made it an actual game, instead of a gif or a video.
RESPONSE / REFLECTION
The video I made was simpler than a few of my previous APD works, because I spent more time on experimentation and less on creation. I’m not quite sure if this was the right way to go about it, but the final product doesn’t look too bad in my eyes.
I think my issue is that I have an aversion to producing things that don’t look aesthetically pleasing and put together. Even though I try to go through a process of experimentation and trial and error, I do have some degree of expectation on what I want the final product to look like.
REFERENCES
Clothier, P., 2013. Interactive Video: The Next Big Thing In Mobile. [online] Learning Solutions Magazine. Available at: <https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1292/interactive-video-the-next-big-thing-in-mobile>
EqualToAwesome, 2013. Put Your Finger Here. [video] Available at: <https://youtu.be/UOKT-rQmS6E>
EqualToAwesome, 2014. Put Your Finger Here 2. [video] Available at: https://youtu.be/DgWmI-uLWSA
#kaykay #kkapdwk6
