Week Five
Palimpsest
Reflection
Figure 1. Kate Giles, All rooms in my game. Unity. 2021
Figure 2. Kate Giles, All rooms within my game. Unity. 2021
As I had switched from Unreal Engine to Unity, I only had a short time before the showcase to create works that I would be happy to present. My original plan was to try and implement everything I had previously made into Unity; however, that wasn't entirely possible due to time. I wanted to focus on bringing in the 2D and 3D elements on a small scale. I tried to get my perspective across as much as possible within a small playable game. I started with creating rooms within Unity, creating 3D spaces using textured materials and then 2D versions using white walls and black outlines.
Figure 3. Kate Giles, First room within game. Unity. 2021
Figure 4. Kate Giles, Test 2D room. Unity. 2021
Figure 5. Kate Giles, Test 2D room. Unity. 2021
One of my original artefacts was the street scene. I managed to implement in my game using techniques that I had used previously in undergrad. Since I modelled the scene in Maya, it was easy to import it into Unity. All I then needed to do was add materials and colliders for the player to stop and move around. The street scene worked well, and I am pleased with how it turned out. It is still basic now, but I plan to make it look a lot nicer and a lot more seamless.
Figure 6. Kate Giles, Aerial view of the street scene. Unity. 2021
Figure 7. Kate Giles, First-person view of the street scene. Unity. 2021
I created a 'hallway' space that is three rooms joined together. The first and last room being the 3D rooms, and the middle room is the 2D room. As the player reaches the door at each room, the room gets switched. So it goes the first 3D room changed to the 2D room and the 2D room switches to the final 3D room. I wanted to start playing with how I could switch between the 2D and 3D rooms and how it looked from the players perspective. I didn't plan on the rooms being empty, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to add anything to the interior due to time.
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Figure 8. Kate Giles, Hallway room. Unity. 2021
Figure 9. Kate Giles, Hallway Room. Unity. 2021
I created a second lot of rooms similarly. This time to get between each room, I placed teleporters throughout so that as the player moved around, they would be switched back and forth between the 2d and 3d rooms. I created these rooms similar as I wanted to trial a few options on how the game would change the player and how it would look. I managed to put cubes within the space so that the rooms would be recognisable as replicated.
Figure 10. Kate Giles, Three version room. Unity. 2021
Figure 11. Kate Giles, 3D room. Unity. 2021
Figure 12. Kate Giles, 2D version of the 3D room. Unity. 2021
Figure 13. Kate Giles, Full game playthrough. Unity. 2021
Throughout creating works within Unity and Maya, I was interested in seeing if there were a physical piece of work that I could make that would showcase my ideas and give a clearer view of the type of perspective that I am looking into. Being surrounded by those who were constantly creating physical artefacts or who primarily work within a physical space, I felt that I was missing out on that aspect. Even though a game is already interactive, I started to think of possible ideas that I could make using things I could find at home that would tie into my game but in a different way.
As I have always been creative doing such things as sewing, building items out of recycled objects and creating whatever I could with whatever I had, I had the idea to make a full 3D room with furniture that people could pick up and see. I knew that this would take an extensive amount of time to create on top of also creating artifacts for my game; I didn't see it as feasible initially. Until the week before the showcase, we discussed how we could show our work, and the idea of a small paper pop up room came to me. I thought it would be an interesting take on my ideas and would work well with my game. The hard part was creating it, I have never done a paper cut-out card or pop-up style piece before, and I had no idea how to do it. I watched numerous tutorials on Youtube and still could not understand the process; in all the videos, they had made it look easy and that all you had to do was cut the paper in a few places, and it would work. I got the basic idea, but the only way I could create the final piece that I showed in the showcase was through trial and error.
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Figure 14. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up trials side by side video. 2021
Figure 15. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up sketch. 2021
Figure 16. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up sketch first trial. 2021
Figure 17. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up second trial. 2021
Figure 18. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up third trial. 2021
Figure 19. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up trials and final side by side. 2021
Figure 20. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up closed. 2021
Figure 21. Kate Giles, Paper pop-final. 2021
Figure 22. Kate Giles, Paper pop-final in sunset lighting. 2021
As shown in the images, there is a significant difference between my first trial and my final piece. It took a few goes of figuring out placement, and if the way I wanted it to be presented would work. I don't view the final pop-up piece as being very well done, but I worked best for what I tried to create and based on the feedback from the showcase, my intention of using it as how I want my game to be viewed work as I had hoped.
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I am interested in creating more physical works alongside my game as I think that they can work well together and gives me more freedom in how I express my ideas.
Planning For Showcase
For the showcase, I have limited options for how I present my work. In previous showcases during undergrad, the way we presented our work was using a dual monitor computer setup in the postgraduate room. As I will be using the postgraduate room again for this showcase, I will be using a similar format.
To get as much interaction as possible, I plan to use two computer setups, so a total of four screens. That way, I can have two people playing the game if they wish to. On one screen in each set will have my game; on the other screen, I will be putting the artefacts that I have made in the last few weeks. I am trying to decide if it would be best to put my blog up to view my previous work or create a collage of the best pieces and have that on a single screen instead. I plan on having my holistic statement in between the computer setups alongside my paper pop-up artefact. I hope doing this will make it easily accessible and interactive as time is limited for the showcase.
Holistic Statement Draft
At the beginning of Design Practice 1, the task was to choose five words from a word matrix and explore them. I chose Silhouette, Decipher, Metamorphosis, Shadow, and Mirror as my starting five words. When I decided on words from the matrix, I looked at each with a creative mindset, visualising ideas and thinking about creating with them. When I first started exploring my five chosen words, I wanted to look at them in their most basic form, exploring their synonyms and similar expressions to find those with strong meanings that I could use in experiments. I was interested in doing this as it took the original words and created many new ideas that were all so different and held different meanings while still being tied to the starting word. By breaking down the actual words, I was able to find interesting words to break down even further, such as delineation, unravel, alteration, and imitate.
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At first, I struggled to break up the words and look at them differently. After expanding them, even if I focused on a singular term such as "alteration", I was still too focused on the bigger picture and the original words and how I could use multiple words to mean the same thing. To help combat this feeling, I started to create pieces that I could then use to further my project idea and narrow down the words I am exploring. Initially, I created artefacts with the words I chose in a more literal sense. I started with shadow, metamorphosis, and silhouette to familiarise myself with the terms and bring them together to create new definitions. The methods I used to explore shadow, metamorphosis and silhouette was conceptualising them illustratively and through game prototyping within Unreal. Using the text "Level Design: Processes and Experiences" by Christopher Totten and the game "Dear Esther" by The Chinese Room and Robert Briscoe, I could explore how I involve ideas such as the word matrix into a world that players can see as going against the traditional norm.
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It was a challenge to create at this time; I was learning entirely new software I had not known before, while trying to think deeply and design artefacts. However, through these initial tests and the advice from my lecturer, I was able to pinpoint words that I initially missed but now fit, such as unravel, disentangle, and modify. After looking back at my starting words, I recognised that my mindset of bringing the words together or using only implications to relay what words I looked at meant that I missed out on beneficial words I could have explored. In the end, I was able to narrow down my focus within my experiments to three words, perspective, modify and unravel. Perspective was an interesting afterthought when it came to the production of my artefacts; each time I was creating and thinking how I could explore my original words, perspective was always at the forefront in determining what I made.