Project 1 // Disproportionate Reality

Post 1 (February 11) – Idea Brainstorm

When brainstorming potential ideas for the first project, I initially tried to draw inspiration from brutalist architecture:

• 

• 

My inspiration was drawn from an indie game which I came across called Manifold Gardens but primarily from my personal preference for such architecture.

• 

• 

Looking through these architecture reminded me of the Howl’s moving castle, a movie which I watched as a child. I think it was due to the brown naked concrete and the blockish characteristics of howl’s moving castle which reminded me of it.

• 

• 

Howl’s moving castle is special due to its ability to move around physically and a door dial that allows the house to teleport to difference spaces. As a child, what appealed to me was how the castle allowed teleportation while being in the comfort of one’s home – allowing the user to bring some sense of familiarity while exploring the unfamiliar.

• 

• 

• 

Based on the color selected, the place would alter with it. Inspired by this, I wanted to incorporate this feature into my alternate world for one of my projects.

However, as this idea requires an interaction, it was not appropriate for project 1. I will work on further developing on this idea for a future project which allows interaction.

My second idea was to create a world dominated by objects of one chosen color. When constructing this world, I would be limited to using objects that inherently of a chosen color and play with the proportions of them to create a surrealistic atmosphere. The lighting of the world will also be adjusted based on this color. I will however, try to add a sense of familiar through trying to construct a natural landscape. For example, I would use an orange instead of the sun or the tip of a pen as a mountain, etc.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Post 2 (February 16) – Progress Update 1

Prior to tomorrow’s class, I wanted to leave a record of the progress that has been made so far. Inspired by few of the surrealist art pieces attached in the previous post, I wanted the focus of my work to give a sense of confusion through altering the proportions of every day objects. In one word, I would describe my world as disproportionate. I also wanted to limit the use of colors for the scene as realism is not the goal for the project. Although the Howl’s Moving Castle idea is scraped for this project, I still wanted to incorporate the aspect of two main spaces – internal (where the player will be located in) and an external space. Although surrounded by a foreign and surreal environment, I want to recreate a sense of coziness through enclosing the user within an internal space.

Having these ideas in mind, I started working on my unity file. I decided to go with a cold shade of pink (#CC00FF) and ultramarine (#3300FF). These colors were chosen through playing around with the color options of the directional light on unity.

As seen in the previous surrealist art pieces, I took prefabs of ordinary objects – those small enough to be held with a person’s hand – and blew them out of proportion. I placed these objects within the terrain, through burying their roots, giving a sense of an abandoned landscape. Although I increased the size of most objects, I made the sizes of the trees and hills realistic to emphasize and highlight the absurd proportions of the other objects.

To construct an internal space, I used the fence prefab object and surrounded the 360 camera with it, giving an illusion of being protected. I also placed grave stones and skeletons right outside the parameters of the fence to give the fence significance and to provide a sense of fear towards the outer environment.

These are some of the screenshots of the progress so far. I still want to implement more changes with adding more depth through either adding fog or increasing the size of the terrain. I also intend to add sound to add to the ambience.

• 

• 

• 

• 

In relation to the readings on the concepts of space and place, and presence and immersion, I realized for this project, there were limitations in both creating the most ideal environment for immersion and presence as

1. Immersion: We do not have the most high-tech gears. As mentioned in the reading, ‘Immersion is how good the sensorial informations are’ which in most cases are highly depend on the gadgets used.
2. Presence: We were limited in one key component – interaction and movement – for this assignment which could decrease the sense of presence in this particular scene. To overcome this and increase the sense of presence regardless, I added a fence around the user to make it indicate that the lack of movement is “normal” in this environment, incorporating the limitation as part of the story and scene.

Post 3 (February 18) – Progress Update 2 

Changes have been made since the last update. These are the main changes:

1. Depth (mountains, fog effect):

One limitation from the first build was the lack of depth. Due to this, it was very obvious that objects only existed within the parameters surrounding the user. To solve this issue, I added a fog effect, to make the background blend in a more subtle manner. I also layered more objects and filled with empty spaces with objects to remove the filling of emptiness. The overall size of the terrain was also increased to provide more space for objects in the background.

2. Story (lighting)

One aspect lacking was a story. I had a clear image of the world, but no clear narrative for the user and their identity. A idea of the story came to me during the development process. I got feedback that the bones mentioned in the previous build were not easily identifiable as bones. Hence, I downloaded a resource pack of a skeleton to replace the bone. While playing with the skeleton, I was also trying to make an escape portal from this alternate world. Combining these two aspects, instead of an escape portal for the user, I decided to give the portal a function – one where if objects go through it, it magnifies (giving more narrative and reason behind the disproportionate world).

3. User Location

Initially, the player was located in the middle of the terrain – again, this made it seem like the world was build for the user which I did not like. Instead of the user, I placed the portal and the skeletons in the middle of the terrain, darkened the overall lighting of the scene, and placed a luminous green light around the scene to bring attention to it and indicate that this was the focal point.

The user was relocated to the side, under the shadows and behind some trees, to make it seem like they were hiding under the shadows witnessing a haunting scene. Through this relocation, they no longer became the focal point of the world. Rather, a spectator who stumbled across this world.

4. Sound

I added sound of an empty room (which actually has a sound) and placed it under the camera rig. I also added portal sound effects and placed it on the portal to add to the atmosphere.

5. Blue adds to cold and haunting atmosphere

The previous build was very pink. I liked the visuals of it, and enjoyed playing around with different tones and tints of pink, but it did not really add to the atmosphere I was intended to create. Hence, I changed the color to a colder one – blue, to give it a haunting atmosphere. This suited the new narrative more.

There are many more little changes made since the previous builds but the ones above are the most significant.

Here are some screenshots of build 2:

• 

• 

• 

•