Link:https://youtu.be/Bznn7a2fdro
My response this week is a platformer exploring the transition between rapid movement and stillness. In this platformer, players need to control a sphere avoiding obstacles like usual but when the background becomes green, instead of moving they should do nothing to avoid “die”. When they are avoiding obstacles they are forming a habit of rapid movement. But in this game, they are also required to fight against this habit. The stillness is used as a mechanic working as a opposite status of active and rapid moving.
Context
In this week’s lecture lots of slow games are mentioned including zen games, farming games and gardens. The stillness is explained as a status of slow which is opposite to rapid in those examples. In the article “A Case for Slow Play in Video Games” (2014) mentioned video games rewarding rapid movement.
https://www.museumofplay.org/2014/05/13/a-case-for-slow-play-in-video-games/
Instead of exploring slow games, I am interested in exploring the transition between rapid movement and stillness. A children game red light, green light inspired me on transition between stillness and movement. I decided to make a game about transiting between moving and do nothing.
Method
The game is coding in Unity by few 3d objects and using a random value to decide status.
Reflection
This game could be refined by adding a transition time between stillness and movement. Also when the safetime ended, there will be a situation of inside obstacles which should be fixed. In terms of game play, players do not need to constantly control the sphere. More mechanics could be add in order to make players have to constantly control their character instead of only moving left and right. Then the difference between stillness and movement will be more distinctive
link: https://youtu.be/OIzJ7FIARGo
My response to this week’s theme is an 3d animation using particle system in blender. The aim of it is to test out using 3d animation to convey a feeling to audience. Thus, only basic shape and color is used in this response. I made two clips to convey the feeling of ‘refresh’ and ‘excited’ without any word, image or linear story.
In this week’s lecture, the discussion about abstraction animation attracts my interest on conveying feeling without any specific image. Many 2d animation examples were shown which made me think about if I can achieve the same thing by 3d animation.
“Animation is a visual technique that creates the illusion of motion, and abstract animation is the conceptualisation of pulling the inner meaning out.” (From “what’s up with Abstract Animation?”, http://animaticmag.com/anitech8.html) This sentence inspired me to develop a clip about summarizing a feeling by abstract animation. Instead of telling a story by animation, I decided to explore conveying emotions or feelings.
This response is produced by blender’s particle system. Firstly, I summarize the color and motion of a feeling should be. Then I use the feature of it to visualize the animation. A sound track is also used to make it more clear to audience.
The visualization in 3d looks really good and I believe it conveys the feeling of mine. Although audience could have different interpretations. Rendering it costs lots of time so I could only finish two clips. I was aiming to produce more emotion clips. The shape particle could be enriched for better conveying the feeling like sharp edge or soft edge shapes could give different feelings to audience.
Link: https://youtu.be/Y7fzpR6ANWY
Build: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JjglaRgjKixPZ_UtDVfTMUQbdwkPkxW9/view?usp=sharing
Play and time
In my interactive work, the concept of time is divided into 2 parts – the day and light cycle following the sun and the actual time spent on each activity. The day and light cycle represent the linear time. In this work, a character’s activities are distributed to different location which transfer the linear time to a parallel time. As while as day and light cycling, it conveys a contrast between our normal perspective of time and another form of time. Overall, the options of activities are limited which reflect the time loop – players can arrange the character’s time but still looping in a group of results.
In class, we did an activity about listing words associated with time and play. After that, I started to think about my response to the concept of time and play. I was inspired by an interactive work Possibilia produced by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (2014). It describes a breaking up story in an interactive way – the dialogues are fixed but the video could be switched. I decided to make an interactive work has an overall linear time with switchable activities in different time period. Furthermore, I used locations (up, down, left and right) to represent time periods. Play is also a way of interpreting things (Geertz, 1973) and is classified as the rhetoric of the imaginary by Sutton-Smith (2001). In my response, players could explore the character’s actions in different ‘time locations’ and interpret those symbolic actions in their own ways which makes it a playful interactive work using time as a mechanic.
In practice, I started from modelling the character and stages of different ‘time locations’. I chose 5 activities of daily life which are sleeping, working, walking, entertaining and talking. Then I animated those in a very symbolic way which allows players interpreted them widely.
After that, I programmed it in Unity and added day and night cycle to represent linear time. By that I wanted to convey a contrast between different time concepts.
Sutton-Smith, B. (2001). The ambiguity of play. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. - - - . 1983. Blurred genres: The refiguration of social thought. In C. Geertz, Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretative anthropology. New York: Basic Books.