Month: November 2017

enwandu-Looking Outwards 12

For my final project, I am interested in creating something generative, and perhaps includes some elements of user interaction. With that in mind I looked at the work “Black or White or More or Less” by Lia, and the project “Messa Di Voce” by Zachary Lieberman, and others. The first project I looked at, is one in which cascades of sliding line segments alternately hide and reveal black and white surfaces, opening and closing apertures into spaces that expand through and behind the virtual canvas in a mesmerizing, infinitely varying interplay of dark and light. Lia’s project is generative in nature but allows for the immersion of the user into the space beyond the canvas. Lieberman’s project is very much interactive because it requires the sound generated by the user; transforming every vocal nuance into a subtly differentiated highly expressive graphic. The audiovisual performance is one that creates a cycle of interaction that fully integrates the performers into an ambiance consisting of sound, virtual objects, and real-time processing.

I admire both projects for the way they created an immersive environment, but in two completely different ways. While Lieberman’s project takes a more direct approach by utilizing the user, Lia’s work indirectly accomplishes this by allowing the viewer to get lost in the work due to the shifting spatial perception caused by the play between dark and light.

 

ssharada-project-12-proposal

For my final project, I wanted to take inspiration from my looking outwards and create some minimal graphics that alter slightly according to certain types of music – so from one beat to another the graphics look like they are moving to the beat but as soon as a different music type comes in, it can be that a completely new graphic comes in. I al also playing around with the idea of using these graphics to create a small animation story – like a really simple story that is represented using no facial expressions but rather how really simple graphics interact with each other and having these small interacting graphics heighten their ‘expressions’ using small sounds.

What I know for certain about my project is the type of graphics that I will be using and coding, that there most likely will be sounds involved that relate the situation and that my graphics will be telling a small story using these animations. My aim is to create some very simple motion graphics work.

^some of the simple graphics that i could use and play around with

jdperez Project 12 – Project Proposal

For my final project, I’d like to propose a generative landscape at a more detailed and complex scale than our prior project. Specifically, there are a number of aspects that I’d like to implement into this animation.

One, I plan on using L-systems to generate some of the shapes implemented into the terrain. Perhaps most obviously plants, but also on a more abstract level, L-systems could be used to generate interesting backgrounds/horizons.

Two, I want this project to be distinct from our prior project in the sense that the program will generate a singular landscape that the “player” can roam around in. I like the idea of creating a space that is constant, since then there can be much more attention to detail by the audience. Also, with a scrolling generated landscape, there is no stillness…  and I think stillness is a quality I enjoy in artwork, and look to implement in my own.

Three (though this is more of an optional aspect), I am considering making my landscape a sort of collage, or mixed media landscape. I mean this in the sense that I would create physical objects that I then take pictures of to implement into the animation. This idea was largely inspired by Samorost 3: an artistic video game, actually largely renown for its soundtrack.

A screenshot from Samorost 3, showing the main character interacting with some kind of anteater
A stylized turtle sitting on the edge of a comet that is actually a root system of some sort of massive tree.

mjeong1-Looking Outwards-12-Section A

“Swipe Brick Breaker” by Monthly 23 (Yoonsup Choi)

In research for my precursor project, I decided to compare different app games that have been popular among my friends. First game, Swipe Brick Breaker is a simple and very addictive game that I recently fell in love. Swipe Brick Breaker is a mobile app game developed by Monthly 23. Monthly23(Yoonsup Choi) is independent one man developer who release game every month. He makes addictive minimalist game for all ages. I like how he creates interesting game with simple geometry and simple rules. The rule for this game is simply swipe to shoot balls to break bricks. When the ball hits the brick, durability is reduced. When durability reduce to 0, brick breaks. You should get the green circle to increase the number(power) of balls. When the bricks reach the bottom line, game is over.

link to appstore for brick breaker

“Ready Steady Bang” by  The Cowboy

Second game that I looked into is “Ready Steady Bang” by The Cowboy Games limited. Ready Steady Bang is a simple shooter game, perfect for gamers who love the minimalist approach.This black and white cartoon-like dueling game has players tap their side of the screen as soon as the countdown is finished. The twist? The “bang” happens at random intervals, meaning you have to wait to hear it before you can pull the trigger. This game relies on pure speed and reflexes and is perfect to play with a friend. Although, it does have a single-player mode that increases difficulty as you progress further.

link to ready steady bang

Key part I like the most about the first game is calculating reflection angle with the bouncing wall. Second game is interesting because it requires perfect timing when the shooting is required. I like how both of them take minimalist approach to its design and  operation. I also like how they rely on simple “tapping” or “pressing” instead of complex control keys or mouse control. For my final project I want to combine two project to create minimalist shooting game. I initially took a idea of shooting and aiming method from the ready steady bang. Like brick breaker game, I want to create a game that people have to aim precisely at target object and calculate the reflection angle with the edges of the canvas to make a shoot.

LookingOutwards-12-Chickoff

“On Feeling Melancholy” by the YouTube channel, the School of Life, is a video and animation (done in collaboration by animators  Hannah Jacobs and Lara Lee) that I absolutely love and appreciate. This video struck me when I first saw it, and though I can go into a longer discussion about its contents and themes, I’ll focus on the music, sound, and art for this post.

“THE ARROW” by Emilio Yebra, an animator from Valencia based in Edinburgh, is also a great example of something I would love to implement into my final project. I love the rhythm of the music and sound effects and how it is quick, smooth, and matches the visuals.

I find that both of these projects are great examples of rich feeling and substance, particularly because of the way sound and visuals combine to strike the viewer or listener with feeling. I would love to create something along these lines in my final project, in that I give someone a unique feeling by stirring their senses.

jamieh-final-project-proposal

I want to incorporate my architecture studio final presentation work with this class’s final project. My plan is to develop an interactive artwork that shows the kinetic energy within a site based on circulation around buildings. I am thinking of using the mouse like an attractor point that would cause a shift in movement to the static objects (maybe lines or circles), so the mouse would be the energy that trigger movements. Instead of just simply drawing lines to depict circulation, I wanted to show movement real time. Then when the mouse is not pressed to guide movement around the site, then the objects will slowly move back to original position. (My looking outwards 12 post has examples of the effect that I would like to explore and create for this final project)  Below is a very simple drawing of the mouse going around the buildings.

ikrsek– Project 12- Final Project Proposal

I had two ideas overall:

The first idea is a bit ambitious, but I was thinking that for the final project I would like to create a video game. I’ve been thinking a lot about sexual assault considering all of the events and exposés that have occurred even just within the past two months amongst celebrities and stars – and in thinking about that I also was brought to ponder the way that we teach kids or even explain it to adults. The game I wanted to create would explore how to explain the idea of it and what it is/what it feels like in a subtle and sensitive way while simultaneously not trivializing it – as someone who has experienced it, I know it’s not an easy topic to discuss. I would use P5.js, and a combination of sound and animation to make this an RPG. It’s a very serious and touchy topic, but I also feel that it’s important to think about and playing through the perspective of someone who experiences it, can create a gateway to being able to sympathize if you haven’t experienced it first hand. I think that is the power of games. Obviously this is a tough subject and needs a lot ofthought and consideration, but I am invested in exploring this idea.

The second idea is somewhat more simple, though also a interactive game – and I wanted it to act as a code-based, explorable/episodic moving painting of the nightmares I experienced through my freshman year. To give some background/context – from the months covering end of fall semester in freshman year to the begging of the spring semester – every night I woke up periodically from a series of terrible nightmares, and it got to the point where towards the end, I tried to avoid going to bed at all – so as to avoid having the nightmares – I also wrote extensively about the dreams I would have since they were always so vivid. At the time I was going through some traumatic things at the time and the 3 months of nightmares that ensued were partially a result of that. Now that some time has passed I think I would like to revisit that time from a different perspective, and try to take the opportunity for creating a game out of this experience to try and explore it as well as take some time to understand this situation from my past a little better. It will be made in p5.js with some images/animations pulled from photoshop or illustrator or wherever I decide to make them, and I think that I will include some ambient sound, but beyond that the piece will rely on text (if there is anything said at all in it).

I don’t think I will be collaborating with anyone else for either of these ideas, as these are both such powerful/personal thing – and both of them are of course subject to change. It would be great to get some feedback on each of these ideas and what seems manageable so that I can narrow down the project scope and figure out what to focus on for the final project.

Project-12-Proposal-Chickoff

For my final project, I have a couple of ideas. One is to create a generative landscape with more thought put into the images that are appearing. I’d like to create my own drawings of creatures and landscapes and implement them into a landscape. I’d also like to put ambient sound to evoke a sense of space. There could also be an interactive component where clicking on certain objects or animals causes them to make sound. I am very interested in hand-drawn animations, and so I’d love to see if I could do this through JavaScript.

Another would be to use objects and incorporate sound so that whenever the user clicked them they would have their own unique sound. This could be in the form of animals on a farm, the forest or ocean, and so on. I would like the user to be involved somehow, though I am not quite sure how that will be integrated.

Regardless of which route I take, I would love to hit the user with feeling through the use of music, sound, visuals, color, etc. as mentioned in my LookingOutwards-12 post.

Example of possible drawings to use in a generative landscape

hqq – LookingOutwards – 12

For our project, Rachel and I are working off of two inspirations. The first is a choose-your-own-adventure game created by a group of five students at MIT that allowed players to create alternate endings to the storyline of the Hunger Games. This is helpful to our process because it uses sound effects and animations that could be relevant to our process. Additionally, it was created by a student team that points towards a supremely beneficial exploration of various features or tactics.

^The original Tetris from 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov

Our other inspiration is rather well-known. One of the first “falling block” games ever created, Tetris has become one of the most distinguishable video games ever created. In an interview for the Guardian, Pajitnov wrote:

“Next I put together the procedures for manipulating the pieces: pick a tile, flip it, rotate it. But the playfield filled up in 20 seconds flat. Also, once you’d filled a line, it was kind of dead, so why keep it on the screen? So I made each full line disappear, which was key. I was a pretty good programmer and it took me about three weeks to get something controllable on screen. I pretended I was debugging my program, but in truth I just couldn’t stop playing it. When other people tried it, they couldn’t, either. It was so abstract – that was its great quality. It appealed to everybody.”

Our stacking game uses slightly different principles, but Tetris paved the way for determining issues of velocity, instance, and randomness, all of which will be extremely relevant to our final project.

rsp1-LookingOutwards-12

Toca Boca and Stack!

In my search for precursor projects to our final project, I decided to research different apps. From my search, I found an app created by Toca Boca (https://tocaboca.com/about/) called Toca Life and Stack! created by Ketchapp. Because our project is going to be more of a cause and effect based project, I found that the apps that I found followed very closely to the goals that we initially wanted.

Below is an introductory video that gives you a feel of what kinds of products Toca Boca makes.

The apps that Toca Boca creates cater more to younger children and letting them interact with a virtual world while also simultaneously teaching them lessons in a more fun and dynamic way. The apps are simple enough for young children to use while also visually appealing.

 

The next app, Stack! helps as a precursor because in our final project, we wanted to implement a game where particles are being dropped from the top of the canvas onto a platform in the lower part of the canvas. This app encompasses exactly that as it has blocks that fall from the top of the screen onto a separate canvas. However, where the goal in this app is to stack the blocks as high as possible, the goal in our project’s game will be to gather different types of ingredients for a new recipe that the character makes.

iPhone Screenshot 1
screenshot of the app in play