Summative Assessment
Research Question
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How can I create strangeness using the space between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms in a game landscape and space to create new experiences for a player?
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Design Practice Two has been an insightful experience. During my practice in undergrad and even during personal projects, I never considered the constraints involved other than perhaps the deadlines. Seeing what I can create and my processes when I have been given specific limits have tested my abilities in a good way, even if I might have felt otherwise during the making of the artefact period.
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In week one, we were tasked with choosing three words from a list that would describe how we were planning to make artefacts. Out of the list, I decided on the words solid, standardised and processed. I chose these three words as I felt that since I was thinking of working with predominately paper and I was going to be keeping the imagery relatively flat and geometric, they would work the best.
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I had trouble initially deciding how much work I would make physically and how much would be digital. Due to the time constraints, I ended up with the decision of making the majority physically. I tried to keep it simple by using paper to create my works, focusing on cutting them and folding them to create my different ideas. For example, I wanted to explore how I could create 3D effects using 2D and paper, I started with folding paper to give it depth and black lines along the edges as that is the type of aesthetic I am going for. I trialled various ideas and attempted to play around with optical illusions. One of the artefacts that I found worked the best and was also received well during the feedback sessions was my shadow box artefacts.
Figure 1. Kate Giles, Folded and creased paper with black lines. 2021
Figure 2. Kate Giles, Folded and creased paper with black lines. 2021
Figure 3. Kate Giles, Drawing with
window cut out. 2021
Figure 4. Kate Giles, Paper pop-up with black lines. 2021
Figure 5. Kate Giles, Tree paper shadow box. 2021
Figure 6. Kate Giles, Shapes paper shadow box. 2021
Figure 7. Kate Giles, Lines paper shadow box. 2021
When it came to the digital aspect, I wanted to create pieces that took ideas from the first set of works and expand them in a digital setting. For these processes, I used Photoshop, Maya and Unity. I wanted to work with mediums that I was familiar with as I aimed to test out various ideas that I could then use in the further weeks and my main project. I mostly explored drawing 2d elements in photographs to try and offset the balance between 2D and 3D, which I was continuing from the original work of the paper drawings that merged with the natural life scenery.
Figure 8. Kate Giles, Photo with 2D bird drawing. 2021
Figure 9. Kate Giles, Landscape photo with 2D window drawing. 2021
From the first week, I wanted to start working more digitally.
Feedback for week one was for everyone to try and guess the three words we chose by looking at the artefacts we made. I found it interesting to see the words that others chose when they looked at my work, as for the most part, I didn't initially see how they could fit. Three people had guessed all three of my words, which I found surprising as I felt my chosen words might have come off as obvious. I struggled to see how certain such as sticky and porous fit within my artefacts, but understanding that this is how others have viewed my works gave me new perspectives to think about.
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We had to choose 2-3 more words from a list for week two to aid our creative practice further. I chose the words delaminate, layer and subtract. When creating, I tend to work to bring pieces together to form something, usually based on a small idea I have had or something I have been inspired by. The works I have created have all been based on my idea of combining the 2d and 3d forms in a single space. As I can do this in many ways, I wanted to start exploring the different views and perspectives that I could then expand on. Using various methods of cutting and combining, I began building the idea of strangeness and how I could use different perspectives or forms together. These ideas are all working together towards creating my main game project and how I could bring the physical creations and explore them digitally that follow my 2d and 3d ideas. In week one, I focused on creating physical works rather than digital ones, so I wanted to make everything digitally for week two. The constraints for this week were that we needed to showcase our artefacts within A3 size. So I decided to show my work in a collective video that I played on a computer. I found that this was the best way as it meant it could be seen all in one place and fit within the space constraint.
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I found week two significantly more manageable than the first week, as I managed to create all 16 pieces of work. Rather than working down the list of constraints and starting from the shortest time to the longest, I found it best to create without bounds. I had reasonable estimates on how much time particular works would take, but for the most part, I used the time to see how long it would take me to create a piece of work. If I found specific experiments would fit into the time constraints well, I would continue working under the conditions until I did all. I think what helped was that I had a much more solid starting point as I wanted to create works from week one digitally and work on certain parts of my project that I have been interested in doing for some time.
Figure 10. Kate Giles, Digital 3D tree shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
Figure 11. Kate Giles, Digital 3D shapes shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
Figure 12. Kate Giles, Digital 3D lines shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
One of the primary artefacts I wanted to create was the shadow boxes within Maya to then use them within my game. As a base, they worked well and showed the advancement from physical paper to a digital medium.
At this point, I was in a good place for my project in terms of the various ideas that I could start exploring that would help me further my game and trial the aesthetics and level designs I was interested in. From this point, I had decided to continue working on combining the previous artefacts and experiments into a more cohesive and playable game.
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Based on the feedback for week two, I successfully brought my first week's physical iterations to life in a digital way, which I was pleased about as it gave me a further interest in developing the works. Regarding some questions that peers asked, such as what my contexts were and if I will involve narrative, these are all aspects that I am working on but are hard to bring in alongside my work. Previously, I mentioned a few times to different class peers that I have been looking at 2d cafes and the game Antichamber as some of my primary contexts. However, I've been struggling to bring in those contexts without the need to show my inspiration when I showcase each artefact constantly. The narrative has always been a crucial part of my game, specifically interactive narrative. And I have been planning to involve more story narrative within my game, but I will add it after the main aspects of my game have been explored as I see story narrative as something to aid in my project rather than being a key factor. I will be trying to take in the feedback to help for what I plan to go with in the future artefact making.
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Week 3's creative practice focused on bringing together pieces that I had created through the past weeks into a more cohesive game. I started my practice by looking at the words solid, standardised and processed. Then, by forming iterative work, starting from physical papercrafts to creating digital versions and finally attempting to combine all pieces in a single space, I tried to carry those three original words throughout my work.
I have been trying to reconstitute what I have created, such as the tree shadow box being an interactive picture like I have done for the street photo.
Figure 13. Kate Giles, Small tree photo frame. Unity. 2021
Figure 16. Kate Giles, Tree shadow box with a pathway through them. Unity. 2021
Figure 14. Kate Giles, Tree shadow box in-game. Unity. 2021
Figure 17. Kate Giles, Textures added to ground and pathway. Unity. 2021
Figure 15. Kate Giles, Tree shadow box with textures. Unity. 2021
Figure 18. Kate Giles, Trees and bushes placed around shadow box. Unity. 2021
Using the works that I have made this week in different ways with each constraint has helped me start seeing all the directions that I can take for my project. Working with layers or pieces and building them to create more or new experiments has been the process of how I have been developing my work, especially for this week. Taking apart previous artefacts and bringing them into a cohesive game was my intention for this week's creative practice. As my work is all digital and is supposed to be interactive, I worked with the words situation and interpret as my contexts and virtual and participate as my distribution. During this time, my work was not suitable to be officially interacted with, so I thought it would be best to video the gameplay. This way, the audience would all get the same interaction and situational awareness as if they played themselves.
The time constraints were a lot more open this time as we had to create limitations for ourselves. As I had the idea to start bringing some of the artefacts I had made so far into a game space to trial, I wanted to leave the constraint open and see how far I could go within the total time we had. This way, I could see if I was using all the time to its potential and if I could do more next time. I also wanted to use the time restrictions to explore trials within my game that would generally take a fair amount of my time, and I couldn't fit in during the previous weeks time restrictions. I wanted to focus on only working within Unity and Maya, except for a few concept sketches, to produce my work this week and fully push working on the start of a cohesive piece.
As I finally started showing more of a game rather than bits and pieces of work, I started gathering more feedback around what people see when they view my work as a complete piece. A few questions were surrounding the strangeness in my game, so I wanted to try and explain. The type of strangeness that I wish to envoke is uncanny and unfamiliar. Hopefully, creating an environment where a player can feel comfort and familiarity and then have the aesthetics and space around them changing will help do this. As everything is currently in very early testing stages and most of the artefacts I have made only have a small aspect of the game in mind, it is hard to show the extent of strangeness I plan to create. Unfortunately, I was seeing an expectation that what I will be finding out through the final research year and the final project would be shown in some of the weekly artefacts. Due to time, I can only test minimal and limited aspects that I will extensively develop but may not show the true potential currently. There are a few things I needed to look at a bit after I got this feedback, but I think I am still on the right track for what I am creating. I was struggling to fit all that needs to be there in such a short time. If it were not a weekly assignment, I would have brought in a test game that would hopefully showcase all the basic ideas I am looking at. Instead, I planned on making a test game in the last few weeks of this class to show more of an iteration process.
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Week four, I further explored my project using the artefacts I had already created and built a more cohesive game environment.
Figure 19. Kate Giles, Full house layout. Unity. 2021
Figure 20. Kate Giles, Full house layout. Unity. 2021
Figure 21. Kate Giles, Full level layout. Unity. 2021
Figure 22. Kate Giles, Full house level layout with trees. Unity. 2021
Figure 23. Kate Giles, Full black and white house level layout with trees. Unity. 2021
I still have long to go in building the base of my game, but I felt I was at an excellent point to start showcasing some of the initial trials I had created that I will be expanding on. As this week ties into week 5, the artefacts I made this week were part of the created action plan. Initially, I believed that I hadn't done enough work to show this week, but after working through a decent amount of my action plan, I think everything I have done up until now has been a good amount following the time constraints. As this week's work is also week 5's work, I will plan my next steps and look at the work needed for the final week and summative.
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So far, for design practice 2, I had created various works, and for the most part, I was happy with what I had made. As each week had required a maximum amount of work, I could not keep up with what was expected, primarily due to the mediums and programs that I use that took an extensive amount of time to use. Even though I had missed the amount needed occasionally, I believe that the work I had created has still showcased the total effort that I was putting in.
As I am currently in a test phase of working, failures are pretty prominent. Usually, the failures involve time constraints and the restraint on making my work better to present. This comes from part perfectionism and the want to continue working without restraints. I have been trying to overcome this by working through the restraints in my own ways, and I believe this has helped me do suitable work that has been helping me improve with each week. I used the first three weeks as an iterative style process, starting with collecting majorly physical works and using traditional drawing and cutting methods and then transforming them into digital for the second week. In my third week, I wanted to start bringing these more into a cohesive game; I placed a few experiments that I had so far created, but they were now in a playable environment. Week three was also the catalyst for the rest of the weeks, as it was then that I started to build an official setting of where my game will be in. Taking small ideas and working through them from a concept stage to having them playable has worked well. Using physical methods that are not just traditional drawing was an exciting experience that allowed me to explore my ideas more extensively than I initially thought. Taking these ideas and transforming them into digital has also been different due to typically creating 3D assets without concepts. The various works that I have made so far will be instrumental from here to continue working on my game as I can continue to explore different ideas and push the limits of what I can do with them.
In the beginning, when there were specific constraints, I followed them to a tee. However, in the first week, I quickly found that forcing myself to work within time limits and increasing with each stage was very stressful and almost pushed me into burnout. To work around this, I started looking at the time constraints in a less linear sense and used them in a way that worked well for me. An example of this is how I focused more on what I wanted to create and worked the time constraints around that in week two. I was also not too focused on how much time I was spending as long as it was not over the deadline. Working with the constraints this way took the weight off me and allowed me to work to my fullest and create all my works up until this point.
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Week 5's work was a reflection on practice. Everything created for this week is from Week 4 due to week six being dedicated to the summative. This week was also the week we were tasked with creating the degustation of our creative practice. Because of this, I spent this week planning and organising my work to prepare for the degustation in week 6. We had to bring together a collection of successful works or that we liked the most; I had a fair amount that I had initially wanted to go with. However, I thought it would be best to use the works that I had created in week one but had continued into my final weeks. ​
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In the first week, one of my artefacts that was regarded as successful was my 2d spinners which I wanted to include in my degustation one of these pieces as I had advanced on the idea in the second week by turning them into animated 3d works. I liked the idea of showing the progress of my works from the first to final weeks, so the primary artefacts I wanted to include in the degustation was my shadow boxes/paper theatres. Each week as I progressed with the shadow boxes and started to involve them within my game, they were a solid talking point, and I noticed a large part of my feedback. My photos for my paper versions of the shadow boxes were not as good quality as I had liked, so I wanted to retake the photos, they came out better, but I wish I had a better way to take photos of them. The last pieces I wanted to include in my degustation was screenshots of my current game that I had shown this week. I wanted to include my game as I felt it had showcased much of the work that I had created through the weeks in a more official setting. I also wanted to include it as it helped to show the entire process of pieces I have gone through over the six weeks, as I had started from physical papercrafts to simple digital artefacts and then finally to a more cohesive game.
Degustation
Currently, a few works have been the primary influence in how I create my project and the ideas behind it. Dear Esther and The Witness are games that revolve around the concept of a non-euclidean space. I have been looking at how they use interactive narrative and try to involve the environment in the story. Aesthetic and style play an integral part in how I am attempting to bring 2D into my game. I have been looking at the games Antichamber and Sacramento and how they involve the two-dimensional form with the third-dimensional form. As these are all games that will help me immensely in creating my game, I have also been researching physical works that have brought the two dimensions together, such as the 2D Cafe in Seoul.
Figure 24. Kate Giles, Paper circle spinner full-circle side. 2021
Figure 25. Kate Giles, Paper circle spinner squashed circle side. 2021
I started by creating physical pieces in my initial test phase, primarily using paper and pen in different ways. Optical illusions have been around for a long time, and I wanted to use that as the context behind my physical works. I wanted to experiment in this way, such as the spinners above, as optical illusions have always been around to create a feeling of strange or bring 3d into a 2d space, challenging the perspective.
Figure 26. Kate Giles, 3D circle spinner full-circle side. Maya. 2021
Figure 27. Kate Giles, 2D circle spinner full-circle side. Photoshop. 2021
Figure 28. Kate Giles, Tree paper shadow box. 2021
Figure 29. Kate Giles, Shapes paper shadow box. 2021
Figure 30. Kate Giles, Lines paper shadow box. 2021
Figure 31. Kate Giles, 3D tree shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
Figure 32. Kate Giles, 3D shapes shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
Figure 33. Kate Giles, 3D Lines shadow box. Maya and Unity. 2021
Figure 34. Kate Giles, Small tree photo frame. Unity. 2021
Figure 35. Kate Giles, Tree shadow box with trees in-game. Unity. 2021
Dear Esther is a first-person exploration game with minimal gameplay as the only objective is to explore the island while mysteries around his wife's passing. I have always liked to create games involving minimal gameplay where the player is left to their own devices and must figure out what to do themselves. The type of narrative Dear Esther has and how the game explores it is how I would like to test my ideas around involving 2d and 3d in a 'familiar' environment as it can create its own 'strangeness'. Part of the gameplay within Dear Esther and The Witness revolves around unravelling interactive narrative and it is what I have started to trial within my game through the walk-in photo frames and the open world replication in a 3d view and more 2d view.
Figure 36. Kate Giles, Inside view of the house. Unity. 2021
Figure 38. Kate Giles, Full view of the house scene. Unity. 2021
Figure 40. Kate Giles, Full view of the lounge and kitchen inside the house. Unity. 2021
Figure 42. Kate Giles, View of the inside of the black and white house. 2021
Figure 37. Kate Giles, Inside view of the hallway. Unity. 2021
Figure 39. Kate Giles, Full view of the black and white house scene. Unity. 2021
Figure 41. Kate Giles, View of the exterior of the house and deck. Unity. 2021
Figure 43. Kate Giles, View of the tree shadow box from the players' experience. 2021
Overall I found this practice very valuable as it allowed me to start experiments without the worry stress of everything needing to work or be perfect for my final research project. Before I started creating my artefacts back in week one, my ideas were limited as I believed that I could do a lot with very basic ideas. Through each week I have found new ways to experiment with strangeness and 2d mixed with 3d then I originally thought. The artefacts I have created over the last six weeks have provided me with a significant amount of starting points and ideas to continue on with in the future. The feedback I have gotten throughout this process has also been very valuable as it has given me an insight into how others have viewed my work as well as giving me new perspectives I could approach.
Bibliography
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Briscoe, Robert. "Dear Esther" Accessed April 2021. https://littlelostpoly.com/dear-esther
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The Chinese Room. "Dear Esther". [Video Game] 2008.
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Demruth. Antichamber. [Video Game]. 2013
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