Category: Development Journal S19

1. Project Description:​ 

Project demo: https://youtu.be/E0v61hVvWWA

I created an upside-down living room, in which the effect of gravity still works and can be seen. The aspect of reality that I would like to address is that the gravity and orderliness in the real world have been taken for granted by us and viewing the exact same thing from two opposite perspectives can give audience a total different experience and knowledge of what’s existing around us. It’s also supposed to emphasis the sense of space and gravity – how does the world looks like with gravity when everything is upside-down?

The identity in the alternate reality: gravity, disorder, upside down, broken

2. Process and Implementation:​ 

During the project developing process I encountered some difficulties in terms of technical issues, how to achieve the gravity effect I want, and how to decide the best place to put the camera so the viewer will get the most out of my project etc. In the following I’ll highlight what made me choose the objects to represent my chosen identity, the reason behind my camera positioning and some processes of how I solved some problems.

• The chandelier with chains falling on the ground

In order to embody the effect of gravity in this upside-down world, where the “ceiling” becomes the “floor” in this case, I played around with the chandelier with chains – in the normal discipline when it’s hanging the chain will be straight, but in this case it should be on the ground, which is obvious enough to show the viewer that the gravity does exist in this environment. In order to do that, I downloaded a chandelier prefab and break down the iron hoop on the chain one by one and reorganized them to make it looks like “staying on the ground”, as shown below:

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• The water pumping out of pipes – partical effect

The initial idea was to add the upside-down mug and the water drop coming out of the cup, but taking into consideration of the realness and the time for animation partical, it seems not realistic if there is water endlessly keep falling out of a mug, but the water falling is another obvious way to indicate gravity, so I changed it into water pumping out of the old broken pipes, which also cater the “broken” theme.

• The telephone with microphone falling on the ground

This came from my initial daft, because the microphone on the ground indicated it fells down from somewhere, and it leaves imagination for viewers to think what happened before in this room.

• Messy floor resulted from things falling down: plants, broken wooden boxes, telephone

The design of this scene indicates the things falling down because of the gravity, it caters the broken and messy nature of chaotic upside-down, also leaves space for viewers to image what happened before here.

• Camera positioning and the mirror

It took me a lot of time to decide where to put the camera so the viewer will see most of my design of the room while feel comfortable viewing around. I tried to put it in the middle of the room first, but it takes effort to have a clear view of what is right below or above you. Then I figured the best way to have a comprehensive view of a room is to view the room from a side perspective instead of being in the middle of it. So I moved the camera to a corner of the wall. Surprisingly I happen to placed it under the water falling effect, so when I looked up I feel the water is about to falling on my face! That was such a real experience, so I decided to keep the camera that way so when the viewer look up there will be this kind of “immersive” feeling. However, doing this means I give up the sight to the the pipe, because the viewer is right under it. Then I added a mirror which can actually reflect, I put the mirror across to where the camera is, so the viewer can just look ahead into the mirror and she/he will know what’s going on above him/her and why there’s water falling down. The mirror helped me solve the problem of lack of sight so I decide to just keep the camera in the corner.

• Adjust the scale of texture

This is a difficulty I overcame with the help of Sarah. When I was doing the design of the overall layout of the room, I put wall paper and wooden floor to make it look more like a living room, however, when I applied those textures to the materials, it’s been stretched so much that it didn’t look real at all (shown as below). But later I solved it by changing the tiling parameters.

3. Reflection/Evaluation:​ 

This project pretty much satisfied all the expectations I had before I started: in order to show the gravity effect and the sense of being upside-down, I made the partical water falling effect, I designed the chandelier with the chains falling on the ground, the upside-down photos on the wall etc. And during the process I added the mirror with actual reflection to tell the viewer what’s happening above you, since I placed the camera in a lower corner of a wall to make up the lack of light since it’s in a corner and achieve a better effect of immersion (viewer standing under the water fall and can see it falling down on you).

However the things I will consider to improve the project includes adding sounds effect, like the steel lander cover of the chandelier rolling on the ground, the sound of water pumping out of the pipe, and something hanging in the middle of the room and swing around to show the gravity etc. Overall I think I’m satisfied with this project and it achieved what I expected.

I’ve been having issues positioning the camera – no matter how much I change its position, it goes back to default when I press play in Game View.

After much experimentation and going back and forth, I realized there were a few causes for this, including having more than one camera and the fact that the player’s position can be moved around – this is essentially what you see when you hit play, not the position of the camera.

So after setting the position, I’ve been moving things around to make sure everything is visible from this single point.

I’ve added a new texture in the shade of purple, blue and white that runs all over the hilly terrain. It creates a lava-like effect and makes the mountains pop out more, thus adding more to the mystic atmosphere.

I’ve also built in a big tree on the top of the hills, which almost looks like a “mother tree” to this place. The leaves are light-reflective and very different from the other trees in the place.

Things I need to keep in mind:

• decide on the camera position and make sure the environment is fully visible from there (make sure nothing is hidden)
• test run to see the VR space is working 360 degrees

For the first project, I bounced around two ideas. The first was a beach environment abstracted such that when you moved around in a circle from your vantage point you would see a change in the beach as a result of human activity, a gradual transformation. The second idea was a mystical forest, inspired by the Forbidden Forest. Perhaps because I watched Harry Potter over the weekend, I leaned towards the latter.

Though I do have a bit of experience with Unity, I don’t feel very comfortable with lighting, fog, or aerial perspective. Since these are critical to creating mood and a sense of place, I hoped to specifically work on these aspects while making this project.

So far I’ve found some assets I really like from Fantasy Forest and I am experimenting with the color of the fog as I think that could make it more of an alternate reality by giving it a tinge of magic. I struggled a lot with making the trees have the scale that I wanted, but I realized that that had more to do with the perspective of the camera than the size of the trees themselves.

I’ve been messing around with the density of trees I put into the scene and the fog. The difficult thing about the fog is that it requires a precise density…too small and the fog will be barely there but even if you increase it just a bit, your scene will become consumed by fog.

I think the scene could do with a tad more fog, but this is about the tone I hope to convey. The blueish tint of the fog gives off an aura of mystery. I really hate the ground currently. Nothing I do looks natural! I’ve tried adding rocks and different textures to the ground, but it doesn’t help the trees fit into the ambience. I think I shall experiment with terrain to see if adding more levels makes the forest look better.

Actually, adding a different lightbox helped a bit. But definitely gave it a dark forest vibe.

Here I just increased the fog density by .01 and the difference is staggering.

Experimenting with a moonray directional light:

I had envisioned having a pond with mushrooms and magical fauna surrounding it. I wanted the mushrooms to glow, so I tried to add an emission to a new material but these made the mushrooms neon blue and far too bright. Thus, I adjusted the prefab by giving the shader a blueish color to give it a slight glow.

I think I will try to make a meditation forest now. I have a lot of trouble sleeping at night, so usually I end up listening to music to block out all the darting thoughts. But, my imagination usually tends to run wild all the same, so I wonder if having something visual to focus on would help me concentrate or sleep.

I think I shall keep my skybox and fog as is as I hope to still convey a nighttime ambience to remind myself of sleep. But, I now need elements that signal peace and tranquility to balance the darkness and barrenness of the trees. I did try putting leaves on many trees, but it didn’t support the aesthetic I was aiming for.

I experimented with a few things: waves, swaying flowers, mist, flying birds, and flying orbs of light. I wanted to keep my environment as uncluttered as possible, so I only chose my two favorites: the orbs and the waves.

With the orbs, I had to play around with the particle system to get the aesthetic I desired. Specifically, I played around the the color, the spread of the system, the size, speed, and direction of the individual particle, as well as the emission (glow).

For my assignment, I’ve started creating some hills using the terrain function. I’m trying to build mountains that build up towards the center to create a grandiose atmosphere. I added a sky background to make it look almost like this place is floating in mid-air.

It took me some time and test runs to build this base as I was experimenting with different textures and different heights for the mountains.

Moving on, I’ll work on how to emphasize the ‘grandiose’ aspect more. I want to make this environment somewhat mystical and other-worldy, suggestive of some kind of mysterious forces within.

Blog 1: February 11, 2018

For my 1st attempt at creating an alternative reality experience, I want to create a peaceful environment. Ever since I was a kid, looking at a picture or listening to a song that emanated peace would make my day better and would make me forget of whatever I was stressed or worried about. I believe I can create a similar type of experience in this project, and I want to achieve such through an activity I am personally connected to: camping. I believe that nature has a way of making humans forget about worldly concerns as it provides perspective and makes us look at the bigger picture: why worry about the menial job-related, school-related, or anything-related thing that is worrying us when there is a bigger,captivating  landscape we can draw our eyes to. The complexity of nature and how simply it can make me forget about my worries is a juxtaposition I want the users experience.

As seen in the picture, the user would be set in the middle of the tent. The user would be  able to look outside and see the night stars and then look at the tent from the inside if they do a 180 degree turn. Inside the tent I would have a sleeping bag and some snacks(as seen in the picture, I am obsessed with doritos, coke and oreos as they are the staple cuisine of my camping trips). I also hope to play music in the background that emulates the sounds of nature (crickets chirping, sound of the wind, and the sound of the leaves being hit by the wind).  However, given that I haven’t explored the extent to which I can use Unity in order to create such environment, the three main things I want to portray in my environment are: self-discovery, nature, and isolation. I am open to create an environment that does the aforementioned in a more technically feasible way, but I thought that the tent environment was a good starting point.

Blog Update February 18:

After experimenting in Unity, I was able to learn a little about changing the sky, working with the terrain asset, and importing the tent asset. I imported a sky asset that makes it looks like its night and it has a moon on it, which is something that took me a while to accomplish. I also learned about importing the terrain asset, but I am having problems editing it. I wanted to extrude the terrain so I can create mountains, but for some reason my laptop is unresponsive to this command. I am also having problems synchronising my laptop and the Google VR SDK for IOS, but I am hoping to fix this in the time coming.

Blog Update: February 20

As I continued to play around with the terrain, I realized that for my purposes the terrain wasn’t necessary, and I could achieve a similar result using a terrain composed of a cube object. This proved to be extremely fruitful and easier to manipulate and play around with as I added new assets. After creating the terrain and setting the camp site in the middle, I decided to start adding trees around my campsite to create the illusion of nature. As I did this, patterns emerged, and I was able to create clusters of trees and duplicate them to populate the entire terrain faster. I then added extra elements to the campsite to make it more relatable and believable, like tree chunks located in a circular pattern with some axes stuck in them, torches, bushes, and rocks to surround the site.

As a final step, I wanted to fill the viewer’s sight with something as you could steel see the blueprint of the Unity IDE far in the horizon. My original idea was to play with my initial concept a little by creating an enclosing environment surrounding my terrain in order to create a juxtaposition between the openness of the nature that is near you and the enslavement of the box that covers it. However, after realizing that the box surrounding the terrain dims the lighting in a way that prevents the user from seeing the nature and the campsite that surrounds him/her, I decided to populate the horizon with mountains. As a final touch, I added music to the environment to further cement the illusion of nature. The music is composed of a mixture of wind sounds, animal sounds, and dry leaves cracking, which I hope makes a better experience for the user.

Another problem I encounter was to build and run the environment on my iPhone. Xcode couldn’t run the code and it was requiring some form of “provisional file” from my iPhone. As a result, I resorted in running the application on Android, and after installing the necessary software, I was able to make an apk file that can run on any android phone.

As a camper with over 10 years of experience, I can attest that this environment really makes me feel like I am back home in one of my usual camping outings, secluding myself from society and just letting the openness of nature enclose me, revitalize me, and inspire me. I am happy that I was able to create a peaceful environment through my campsite environment, and seeing the beauty of the final result definitely obliterated the copious amounts of stress I accumulated as I made this project.

For Project #1, I was thinking of re-creating a scene from the film Escape Room since it reminded me of my experience with my friend at the escape room, but I just realized that the idea was already taken by Yiran, so I changed my mind. Last semester for Mashups, I gathered the Air Quality data of my home city during the past 5 years and created an online simulation of how it feels going out on a specific day with a certain level of air pollution. Here is the link to my project: http://yg1262.nyuad.im/airqualitysimulation/simulation.html

My idea for Project #1 is to build upon the aforementioned project and make a game that teaches players how their life choices influence the Air Quality. The environment I will be creating is a crossroad of a city, and players can look around at see how the air quality is. Then by making several choices (such as whether taking cabs or walking to work), players can see how their choices affects the air quality on a larger scale.

After talking to Sarah, I realized that my understanding for our project one was not accurate. Instead of having the possibility to interact with the scene, we, as represented by the camera, will just be standing still at some point within the scene and looking around. Thus, rather than designing the interactive experience in my scene, I should just be focusing on the layout of the environment.

During this winter break, I watched a Chinese Sci-fi movie called The Wandering Earth. The scene looked like below. The whole story was based in 2075, where the Sun is gradually dying out. The people of Earth are trying to build giant thrusters to move the planet out of orbit and sail to a new star system. I was really impressed by this movie, not only because this is the first legit science fiction movie produced by China, but also because its theme which differs from most Sci-fi movie. I do not want to ruin it, so I will stop talking about the details.

So I decided to create a apocalyptic scene for my first project, which kind of connects with my original idea about air quality simulation: if we keep polluting our nature, we will end up entering apocalypse without any uncontrollable factors (say, the sun dying out). However, rather than a recreation of what’s currently happening on the planet, a preview of the future which human beings might witness within the next century should serve as a more effective warning to trigger concerns about our environment.

After deciding the theme of the project, I started to search for sets of skybox materials online that resembles the scene in The Wandering Earth – abandoned city covered in snow. At first, I used “abandoned city” as the key word, because I thought I could always change the color tone and brightness of the image. So I found the following material and modified it a bit.

Then I started to think, what I should add to my environment. Where should the user be, when they entered the apocalypse?Or put it in an extremely pessimistic way, if I come to the end of the world, which place do I want to see before I die? A place that brought me happiness, for sure. A place that I usually went to. A place that could trigger my memories. Thus, I decided to put the user at the center of a community park. When I was a kid and before I entered middle school, I went out for a walk everyday with my mom after dinner. There is this community park we usually went to where I called “home”, because the first time I went there (when I was three or four I think), I was reluctant to leave and said to my mom the park is where my home is. Although we moved to a new community when I entered middle school, my mom and I still joked about that whenever we passed by the park.

So, I started to look for pre-fabs online that could make up an abandoned park, and I found the package: “Apocalyptic City 2”.

As you can see, Apocalyptic City 2 has assets for a video game of zombies, and after adding the assets to my scene with the background of an abandoned city, it looked just like a city invaded by zombies, which differed from my original idea. All the assets somewhat blended in with the background, so that you couldn’t really tell which are the objects I added. Plus, I failed to change the color tone of the image to a level that resembles the snowed city, so I decided to change the skybox material to snow, and the conflict between the color of the assets and the color of the background worked out quite well.

As I entered play mode, I was disappointed to find that my skybox looked like a box: there are edges between each side. It was because I didn’t change the “Wrap Mode” of the image from “Repeat” to “Clamp”.

Also when I planned out the layout of the assets, I didn’t take into consideration the angle of the camera: in fact, I thought I should be able to see everything because its in 3D. However, because of the height of the camera and the scale of the assets, some assets might be blocked by something behind it so that I couldn’t really see it. After testing in the play mode for several times, I moved objects around so that everything can be view clearly.

At last, I added a background music to my scene, which sounded to me had a mixed feeling of sadness & creepiness, and happiness from the past.

For my first project, I would like to create a “Word World,” which is an environment made up of words. I was recently reading a book, which talked about using various senses to memorize new vocabulary, facts, and information. For example, when trying to memorize a new word, let’s say, “table,” by visualizing the actual object and associate it with the word “table” allow the human brain to remember the word for a longer term.

I’ve always struggled in memorizing new vocabulary, whether that was SAT vocabulary or words in an unfamiliar language. Currently, I am trying to memorize new vocabulary for the GRE, and so I wanted to create this environment through the use of virtual worlds.

I got my idea from the following portion of the article, The Science of Memory: Top 10 Proven Techniques to Remember More and Learn Faster by Melanie Pinola:

5. Create a Memory Palace

“The number one technique that we top memory athletes use is still and will always be the memory palace. If someone were to learn one thing, it should be that.”- Nelson Dellis, four-time USA Memory Champion

The memory palace is a mnemonic device that’s as tried-and-true as it gets–and deserves a section of its own. Invented by orators in ancient Roman and Greek times, the memory palace (or mind palace or “method of loci”) technique is both effective and enjoyable to use, whether you’re trying to remember a speech you have to give, details of a case you’re working on (a la Sherlock Holmes), or your grocery list. In fact, four-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis–who claims to have an average memory–says that “The number one technique that we top memory athletes use is still and will always be the memory palace. If someone were to learn one thing, it should be that.”

With the memory palace technique, you associate a location you’re familiar with–such as your apartment, the block you grew up on, or the route you take to work or school–with the items you’re trying to remember. It works because you’re visually pegging (or “placing”) representations of what you want to remember in places you already have strong memories of.

To use the memory palace technique:

1. Imagine yourself standing your memory palace. Your home is a great one to start with, even if it’s not a palace.
2. Mentally walk through this palace noticing distinctive features you can use to store things you want to remember. Each stop on that path is a “loci” you can peg the idea or object to. For example, your front door might be one loci, the table in your foyer a second loci, a lamp in your living room another. Commit those features to memory so when you think of your palace, the route and objects in it will be imprinted in your mind.
3. Associate what you need to remember with the loci in your palace. If you had a grocery list, for example, at the front door you could picture milk flooding over the door from the inside, like a waterfall of milk. Then you get to the foyer and the table is buckling under the weight of all the chocolate chip cookies stacked on it to the ceiling. And instead of a lightbulb in your living room lamp, you see fluorescent yellow bananas.

Here’s a video from 2016 World Memory Championship winner Alex Mullen describing in great detail how to “attach” words to objects and locations in with the memory palace technique. You’ll find yourself remembering these 20 words long after you watch the video:

Source: https://zapier.com/blog/better-memory/

My Sketch:

For my first project I wanted to create an environment where the experiencer would feel imprisoned. Instead of focusing on the prison itself I wanted to create the feeling of entrapment by creating the sense of a vibrant and flourishing world outside.

This is an alternate reality where the experience is held at arms length from the world. Able to see the briefest glimpses of light and life while unable to see them clearly or experience them completely.

The prison itself resembles a cocoon or a nest with a smooth, curved surface. The walls are of smooth concrete and impossible to climb. The curved surface is also what makes it impossible to get out of like the inside of a pitcher plant.

Through an opening far overhead the experiencer can see a sliver of sky and some overhanging branches. Some vines spill over the edge and dust dances in the sunlight. Shadows of birds flitter across the opening. The experiencer can also hear creaking branches, twittering birds and rustling leaves, but muffled and in the distance.

I built the main structure in Maya, a 3D modeling software I am familiar with. It took two tries to get it right. The first one I made looked strange when I imported it into unity and placed the camera inside it. I ended up going for a simple shape, taking a sphere, elongating it, deleting some surfaces and extruding the sides.

Importing the .fbx file of the object into Unity, I placed the camera inside it, facing upwards. I imported assets from the Nature Starter Kit 2 to play around with the vegetation.

I placed the vegetation based on how it would look from inside the trap. Looking at it from the outside is pretty strange since some of them are floating in mid air.

I found a free skybox seires from Avionix that had a wide variety of skies to choose from. I decided it was a little strange to have clouds that weren’t moving so I decided to go for one that just had a gradient and some lighting as if dawn was just breaking. Perhaps this could create the feeling that the user just woke up in this strange trap? I may hunt for some animated skyboxes as well, however.

I added a concrete texture to the main object using an image I found.

The main components of the environment are ready! My next steps would be to experiment with lighting and perhaps add a sun object overhead. I would also like to add some sound and movement to the environment. It also remains to test the environment out with Google Cardboard.

Searching through the asset store, I managed to find a bunch more assets that I could use to make the environment more lively and make the contrast between the vibrant outside world and the dingy space inside more apparent.

I found an animated prefab of a moving sky to create the feeling of the passing of time. I found another useful asset that took the form of animated beams of light that shine into the space from time to time. I introduced a little, animated butterfly, hovering in the bushes. I also introduced a little bird flying overhead. The bird was a little harder to add since the asset did not have an animation attached to it. I had to attach the animation to the model of the bird and create a script that would keep the bird looping in a circle. It appears over the mouth of the trap for the briefest of moments before it continues on it’s loop, allowing just the right amount of a delay before it appears again.

Here is the script I used to make the bird fly around in a circle:

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>using System.Collections;<br>
using System.Collections.Generic;<br>
using UnityEngine;</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>public class Oscillator : MonoBehaviour<br>
{<br>
    float timecounter = 0;<br>
    float speed;<br>
    float width;<br>
    float height;<br>
    // Start is called before the first frame update<br>
    void Start()<br>
    {<br>
        speed = 1;<br>
        height = 10;<br>
        width = 5;<br>
    }</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

// Update is called once per frame
void Update()
{
    timecounter += Time.deltaTime*speed;

    float x = Mathf.Cos (timecounter)*width;
    float y = 2;
    float z = Mathf.Sin(timecounter)*height;

    transform.position = new Vector3(x, y, z);

}
}

Finally, I worked further on lighting, changing the skybox and adding other light sources. I wanted it to be sufficiently dark inside, in contrast to the brightness outside. The extra light sources I added cast interesting shadows through the leaves on the inside surface of the space.

Finally, I added some audio to have the sound of distant birds constantly playing in the space.

Here is a link to the final product…. enjoy!

Inspiration:

So for my project I want to do a very peaceful and calm space that is also pretty in an unusual way. My goal is to do a view of someone standing on a glowing disc in the middle of space, surrounded by stars and ‘space dust’. This would allow me to lean in to the idea of stylized stars to accommodate for my lack of experience with Unity. I also think experimenting with color paletes and different background music could give the space a lot of character. I found two TV shows to look at for inspiration. One is called Final Space, and I love it because Fred Armisen (<3) is one of the voice actors. And they have an alien space cat named Avocato, which I love animal puns so I’m obviously in love with this show’s cuteness. It’s about a prisoner in a spaceship who joins forces with a motley crew to save the universe from a weird evil green bean thing played by David Tennant weirdly enough. The other is one that my cousins love called Steven Universe. It’s about a group of rainbow aliens adventures in space and on Earth. I think the idea of looking out over space and ‘feeling small’ has been pretty socially engrained by tv and movies at this point in time. And because very few people have ever actually been to space, this setting will give me more creative control and allow for an acceptance of more imaginative design choices. It’s also such a weird scaling effect so I’m able to make very simple shapes for stars as an artistic choice versus as a limitation. I like the smudgy-halo effect that was in the Steven Universe stars and my main goal is to try and figure out how to incorporate that into Unity. I also love the big shots of Final Space, so I want to be able to make the user feel small in comparison.

Here are some sketches of what I would like my ‘space’ to look like. Get it? Because we did all those readings on spaces and I’m making it look like space???

Limitations: The biggest limitation on this project is that I’ve never used Unity before, so I need to create stars using very simple shapes. I also am using professional animation as my aspiration/inspiration, so I will need to temper my expectations. I would also like to learn how to make it look as if my stars are illuminated, give them halos, something like that. And since that will complicate things, I need to budget more time for a learning curve.

Colors: I would like to use soft pinks and purples, maybe some deep blues, white, a lot of blush colors.

Research: I looked up the art teams for both shows, perused their blogs, watched some interviews, etc.

Steven Universe:

Rebecca Sugar(creator) : official show blog: http://stevencrewniverse.tumblr.com/ Sugar’s Insta: https://www.instagram.com/rebeccasugar/ . Random blog about background art: su-aesthetic.tumblr.com

Jeff Liu(storyboard artist/composer): http://jeffliujeffliu.tumblr.com/

Joe Johnston(storyboard artist/supervising director): http://joethejohnston.tumblr.com/

Colin Howard(storyboard artist): http://colin-howard.tumblr.com/

Aleth Romanillos(storyboard artist, designer): http://aromanillos.tumblr.com/

Danny Hynes(lead designer): http://dannyhynes.tumblr.com/

Elle Michalka(Art Director for 44 episodes): http://ellemichalka.com/

Jasmin Lai(Art Director for 44 episodes): https://twitter.com/_jasminlai

Liz Artinian(Art Director for 28episodes): http://lizartinian.tumblr.com/

Ricky Cometa(Art Director for 18 episodes): http://www.rickycometa.com/

Kevin Dart(Art Director for 12 episodes): http://kevindart.tumblr.com/

Sue Mondt(pilot Art Director): http://suemondtportfolio.tumblr.com/

And looking all these people up, I was surprised at how much overlap there was. Apparently Rebecca Sugar originally worked on Adventure Time and brought people from that show to Steven Universe. And then several people from the Steven Universe crew left and started a new show called Craig of the Creek which is pretty cute. And the art director from the pilot worked on another show for the studio called We Bare Bears, which I then found out my favorite Youtube song writer(Louie Zong) also works on. Which leads me to another aspect of this show. My cousins are OBSESSED with the music videos for this show. So I also want to get background music that gels well with my environment as a sort of omage. I like how soft and fluffy this show is aesthetically. I’m going to embed a few music videos below whose colors, shapes, and sounds I liked after watching about a billion of them. I also found that this show has a MASSIVE adult following and has so much content about it online. There was a wikipedia blog entirely devoted to it, reminded me of the Hamlet on the Holodeck reading in that every single detail of this show is posted, discussed, and evenly hotly debated. There were also a lot of Youtube accounts with fan art and theories I found, some people obviously devote A LOT of time to this kind of stuff. Finding all the stuff people were so passionate about made me think a lot more about the backgrounds of this show and gave me a lot of stuff to comb through. I think because there’s such a high demand, the creators of the show have a lot of blogs and information out there about it, so starting to look into this show particularly was like stumbling across a treasure trove of Internet obsession almost.

Final Space:

So since I watch this show on Netflix, I can’t take screenshots of the scenes I especially like. But each episode starts with a view of Gary, the main character, floating through space as he slowly runs out of oxygen. Just seeing his tiny body in front of this huge backdrop of millions of stars is very calm and serious and doesn’t really fit with the overall tone of the show. It’s like things start out super dark and serious and beautiful and then turn crazy quirky goofy. I don’t want my view to be sad and death-y but I do want to try for a ‘wow’ factor of I’m so small in comparison to this massive universe.

Devin Roth(Art Director-who also worked on my favorite TV show of all time, Bob’s Burgers, and worked with some of the Steven Universe animators too, I’m getting the vibe that animation with Disney is a small world-pun intended): http://www.dvoart.com/

Alan Huynh(Backgrounds and Storyboards): http://www.alanink.com/final-space.html

Liza Epps(background design, also worked on Bob’s Burgers and Bojack Horseman, what is this industry????): http://lizaepps.tumblr.com/

Hedy Yudaw(Background Artist, also worked on Rick and Morty which can’t believe I didn’t think about for inspo): https://www.hedyudaw.com/final-space.html

Allison Perry(Background Artist): https://www.allisonperryart.com/background-design/

Olan Rogers(Series Creator): apparently he’s a youtube star who posted the pilot in 2010, it didn’t really go anywhere until Conan O’Brien found it and got him a one season deal, which I think is a nice nod to the IM Internet new media culture we’ve been reading about https://twitter.com/OlanRogers?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Dan Brown: this guy worked on the original pilot with Olan Rogers, then came back and helped with the animation on the show, but I cannot find any blogs or accounts for him. There are two Dan Browns working in animation, but neither one listed this show in their portfolios so idk