Ever since I was very little, I always loved telling stories and making animations. The idea of making characters you imagine come to life and have their own life stories and experiences always fascinated me. So, when I was first introduced to the computer during my elementary years, I already self-taught myself the fundamentals of animation and how to publish these animations to YouTube. During the years, I kept on making animations and practicing during my free time, however as I got older and busier, making the animations themselves became a struggle and difficult even for someone who has the passion for it. Because of this, I now search for ways to make animations not only better, but faster to produce through computer programming, rigs, and algorithms.
I propose to make a simple program that allows you to move and save the position of an animated stick-figure rig or shape, move and save a second position, and allow the character to move using those two or as much saved positions as possible. The animation can be played forward or backwards and its frame cycling speed can be adjusted. My proposal sounds both very difficult and simple yet I am excited to give it a try.
One project I really admire is the puzzle game Monument Valley, developed by Ustwo Games. It was based on concept drawings by company artist and designer Ken Wong. Monument Valley‘s visuals were inspired by Japanese prints, minimalist sculpture, and other indie games. Looking at their clean, simplistic visuals makes me happy. I also really love their color schemes, and I like that their game gives people a sense of delight. I also appreciate the game’s meaningful visualization of the relationship between mother and child, and that it illustrates a metaphor for the “ever-evolving relationship between child and parent: one that shifts from reliance, to mutual respect, to a reversal of caregiving.” Monument Valley came out in 2013, and Monument Valley2 came out in 2017.
In contrast to this game of puzzles, I also really like another phone game called Neko Atsume. It was developed by Hit-Point Co. and came out in 2014. This game allows you to play with cats who visit your virtual backyard, and take pictures of them and “collect” all the cats. I like this game because there are simple interactions to allow me to feel delight and become attached to the cute cats, such as feeding them or taking “snapshots” of them. And although there aren’t any puzzles for me to solve like in Monument Valley, I still find myself attracted to the game and enjoying the simple, cute interactions. These two projects also have very different aesthetics, and I find myself enjoying both.
A screenshot of one of the puzzles from Monument Valley. I really like the color schemes and geometric aesthetic.
Since my project is a sound-based DJ-type game, I searched for other games that are similar in terms of building and creating music. I’ve already talked about Patatap in a previous Looking Outwards (my very first one – almost like I’ve come full circle!), but it isn’t as close to my idea as I’d like it to be. So, I searched for other things that were more music-based and had more of a DJ feel rather than something freeform. In doing so, I found Incredibox and Beatmaker.
~~~
A video showing one of the most popular songs created with Incredibox.
~~~
Incredibox is a music app and site where the player can create a song by managing a band of people. You can drag icons – various types of clothing or symbols – from the bottom bar and place them on each person, which each icon producing a unique sound. Each sound can either be percussion, instruments, voices, or sound effects, and combining these various sounds can create really cool and unique mixes. The project was initially released in 2009 by French company So Far So Good, a company composed of a trio of friends named Romain, Paul, and Allan. What I really admire about this project, and what really inspired me was the actual sounds the player can work with. It’s a good range of sounds that includes both music-related (like instruments and percussion) as well as some sound effects, and they all work really well together. Even though you can combine any of these in any order, they are still cohesive and maintain the same rhythm. The one thing about this game is that you can only play a limited number of sounds at a time, and each sound is limited to a select number of options. As amazing as the game is, it is limited in what is available to use (but that hasn’t stopped people from creating really awesome music!).
~~~
A video showing an example of what you can do with Beatmaker. (Sorry about the title of the video, videos were few and far between!!)
~~~
Beatmaker, on the other hand, is exactly what’s named: a beat maker. It is less of a game and more like a DJ-oriented music production site. There are 8+ channels for various types of instruments, and the user can click on each row to fill in space to indicate beats and play the instruments. The user can edit the track, and utilize the full library of samples Splice has available, resulting in an enormous range of possible beats and sounds. I really admire the versatility and functionality of this project. It is easy to use and figure out, and there are tons of different tones and types of sounds you can use to create something really cool. Although it does have this wide range of sounds, it is mostly focused on the EDM/electronic pop genre of music, and I think there’s untapped potential to utilize sounds and instruments from other genres as well! The website was created by company Splice, which was founded by Matt Aimonetti and Steve Martocci.
Loved is a browser based platform game by Alex Ocias, a graphic designer and artist. Written in Adobe Flash and released in June 2010, the game is a slightly sadistic exploration game where the player moves through a pixellated world and chooses to obey or disobey commands from a mysterious abusive narrator on the screen. The game is psychological in nature and thought provoking, and features a minimal landscape which becomes more and more complex as commands are disobeyed (the world gets more colorful). The other project I chose to write about is Limbo, a puzzle-platform video game developed by independent studio “Playdead” and released in July 2010. The game is a 2D side-scroller, and contains a physics system which controls objects in the environment and the character. The players job is to guide a mysterious little boy through dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister. The game was built with the expectation that the player would fail many times before finding the correct solution. The art in the game is made in black and white, and uses many effects including sound to create the eerie atmosphere of the world. I seriously admire these projects for their ability to immerse the player in the world built by the artists. Both of the games contain a sort of sadistic aspect which interests me, and Loved touches on really interesting themes of power and control, and abuse. What is really amazing is that both of these games turn games into a sort of art form, through both sophisticated visuals and complex concepts. People complain that limbo, however, could have had a more complex story line, and while I partly agree, I think the game suffices as one that paints a convincing environment and forces the player to overcome puzzles to survive.
Limbo gameplay
loved gameplay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game)
limbo wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loved_(video_game)
loved wiki
Two pieces of software that are precursors to my project are Google Keep (keep.google.com) and Todoist (en.todoist.com). Google Keep is an awesome program for recording thoughts, but it is not great for organizing, integrating with a calendar, or holding documents. Additionally the interface as a mosaic of “keeps” can be difficult to quickly review. My interface takes a stronger active design voice by following strict guidelines. Todoist is an app centered around productivity. While this is a good approach, the app is still disconnected from a person’s files and internet resources. One dream I would like to include in this project is the ability to pull up bookmarked websites. Although these are not art projects, they are heavily designed computer programs that have the potential to increase the efficiency of working/paper writing. I enjoy this category of product because I am interested in knowledge generation, organization, and research.
Due to the way that my partner and I are planning to split up the workload, I’m more focused on the generation of the quotes. I looked for random quote generators online to see what other people have done. The first one I found, http://www.manythings.org/rs/svoc.html, is a random sentence generator. It was created in 1998 by Charles Kelly for a collection called “Interesting Things for ESL Students”. I like this project because it’s very good at breaking down the parts of speech and being consistent in the generation of words so that the final sentences actually make sense. Unfortunately, the sentences themselves are not very fun.
Random Sentence Generator
The second project I found is http://inspirobot.me/. It is described as an “artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes.” I like this project because it creates funny and unique quotes that still have the special “inspirational quote” flavor. It tends to be more engaging than the first generator, partly because of the random photos the quotes are displayed on. My one complaint would be that pressing the “generate” button over and over is not particularly fun.
I will be collaborating with Thomas Wrabetz for the final project. We want to make a “Maze of Inspiration” game-like program. The person running the program will use the arrow keys to move a small circle through randomly generated pathways in a maze-like formation. During their travels, they will come across other dots, which they can collide with to generate “inspirational quotes”. In order to create the quotes, we will first collect a lot of inspirational quotes and then break them down into separate parts of speech and sentence format. The sentence format will be randomized, and then filled with various random parts of speech.
If we have extra time, we could try to make the program more visually pleasing. We might hang inspirational posters on the walls of the pathways or use representations other than dots. We could also make it more game-like by having a start screen or allowing the player to escape the maze after a certain amount of time has passed or they have generated a certain number of quotes. See illustrations below for early-stage visualizations.
For my final project I would like to make a simple point and click game, with a friendly animated crow as your guide. There are different levels of the project that I would like to accomplish, the basic level being the bare minimum, and all levels after being extras that I would love to implement if I have the time. At the basic level, I will create a scene in an eerie field with a broken down farmhouse in the background, among other scattered objects. Clicking the crow will initiate the start of the “game”. He will give the beginnings of a story(probably a spooky one), and clicking on different objects on the screen will get him to tell you different things. The crow itself will be a series of images that I draw by hand and set to a simple animation. The second level will have the objects make a sound when clicked, and possibly have clickable items light up. The third level will allow the crow to say different flavor text depending on the circumstances of the player, such as time of day, if they’ve found and clicked on every object, or if they’ve clicked on the crow more times than necessary. The fourth level would be to make the scene a landscape that scrolls with the mouse, which would allow me to add more objects and elements to the story.
Here is a simple sketch of how I would like the initial scene to look.
I propose to design an interactive todo list. In a previous semester, I designed the visuals and interaction flow of a desktop app. I now want to take that design, and create a proof-of-concept applet. By creating an interactive prototype, the concept can be user-tested. The app will consist of modules that can contain and display a name, a date, and a matrix of content. The content will consist mainly of notes/thoughts/questions taken by the user, but it will additionally contain other documents like imagery. In the interface, users will be able to add new modules, delete modules, rearrange the order of modules, and stack modules inside one another. The user will also have the option to add a photo to be contained in the module. I am excited about having this project be interactive because it will allow me to understand how to make it better. The video included is digitally animated to showcase the interactions offered by the interface.
![[OLD FALL 2017] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2020/08/stop-banner.png)
