Capstone Research
Making this blogpost might be a little difficult for me considering I don’t know what I want my Capstone project to be. I’m going to assume for now that it’ll be along the lines of my interactivity project but extended further. I assume this because my general thoughts about what I want my interactivity project to be are what I want to do for any project (it’ll maybe make sense below). Also, this will provide me a deeper learning process because I’ll have learned from the interaction project and can carry those learning points into the capstone project.
What I imagine I want my project to be is based on creation. I want the user to be able to interact with the project in a way that they are creating something. I also want to pick a specific mood for the project to convey, most likely calm and happy, so that the interaction can be a soothing and memorable experience.
Here are 3 projects that I’m inspired by and wish to create my project off of some of these projects’ ideas (a couple of them are repeated from previous blogposts):
The Little Prince
What I really enjoy about this project is its overall experience. Emotionally, the game very much keeps the innocent cuteness that the children’s book of which it is based. It provides an interactive entrance into a internationally cultural idea and executes it with the vibe that the book is giving off. Aesthetically, the illustrations and animations are flawless. Keeping the hand-drawn illustration remained true to the book and each animation and movement flow well with the style of illustration as well as the interactions that cause them. Technically, the project covers a wide range of interaction, from clapping to mic-blowing to face positioning. It truly immerses the person into the project and, more importantly, the story.
I wish to create my project that immerses the player into the “story” (may it be a story or just a general theme) and gives off the emotion I want.
Your line or mine – Crowd-sourced animations at the Stedelijk Musem
This project is wholly amazing in its root idea. Culturally, it provides a means of communication and collaboration for anyone who visits the exhibit. Aesthetically, I think it could be a little more communicative between each drawing, since you kind of only watch the dots moving back and forth in the video. The idea that everyone’s pictures get put together in a video is nice, but as one of the contributors, I would like to be able to see my contribution for more than half a second. I love that this project is very simple in its technical aspects, but speaks so much with just a scan of an image and a video.
The project fuels my inspiration (and determination) to create a project in which the user is creating something. If I could make it as contributory as this project in which anyone who has ever interacted with the project form one whole creation, that’d be great–but I have to discover that idea first. Nevertheless, I really enjoy the idea of my project’s interaction being the user creating something.
Continuing with my interactive storybook idea, this project very much captures the essence and feeling of what I would like to achieve. I really like the magical feel of what the project creates from just a book being see on a camera. The illustrations and animations themselves are visually spectacular and quite mesmerizing. Technically, it is very simple (in a sense) but makes great moves for what it is.
Another storybook idea, this project shows the other aspect of what I would like to achieve: telling a story. This project is more along the lines of what I’m looking for because the user is able to unfold the story with their interactions. I really want to capture the essence of a story by having the user encompassed by the interactions and uses them to expand the story so it’s as if they are creating it themselves. The animations and illustrations for this project are astonishing and I would like to look further into how they created them parametrically, especially with part where the birds follow and loop around the balloon. Technically, this project starts from a very simple idea of flipping a book right-side up and up-side down (as well as showing its back) and transforms it into a great interactive experience.
This slightly haunting “game” is similar to what I want to create in that the user unfolds the story themselves. Of course this one is just a progression of scenes and only requires the right arrow key and the space bar, but the story was already built before the player got there–they just opened up the story and ran its course on their own.