I was going to update this thing with more about transmediale but without copying and pasting from the website, there’s not a great deal more to say on it. I kind of wished I’d taken more notes, but conveniently forgetting a pen and more conveniently not being able to buy one anywhere, this wasn’t to be.

Touching down in Germany me and Colin decided to do what any other British person in Germany would do (if they were fans of the Izzard that is) and stand at the top of the steps, pride in our voices and sewage smells in our nose, and say “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”.. which means “I am a doughnut”

Hotel Transit was actually very awesome, but I’m cheap and easy and they won me over with there 24 hour bar that you can smoke in. They had me at “hallo, ashtray?” Given that I have been smoking since I was 13 (16 if my dad asks) I couldn’t smell the wonderful smog of nicotine and chemicals. Upon lugging my suitcase (mostly empty for extra fags) I was greeted by everyone else excitedly telling me we were allowed to smoke there. That was giddy knickers moment one.

That night also taught me, when drinking huge beers with the lads to always, always lace your stomach with food. I was one of those great people that decided to inform everyone else how completely fucked I was. But the main thing was, I wasn’t sick. I also earned the respect from the boys for downing what was practically a pint. I say practically a pint because the quantity increases every time I tell this story.

The rest of the night’s sort of blur into one of beer, fags and early morning bed times. I earned extra cool points for staying up till 7.30am and waking up at 9.30am strolling into breakfast looking as fresh as a daisy or a crazy Romanian bear.

Other noteworthy points were walking for hours before finding anything of interest, esp. the trip for the magical panorama bar. Stoneman’s look of terror and not being able to go will haunt my dreams forever. We did find it, but I buggered off home, deeming it to look shit. Glad I did because I got the early and restful night of 3.30 am that I needed.

Last noteworthy point was our film. I can’t put down all the details here due to legal reasons and I don’t want to really upset people, but let me say it was MY idea. It started with ME saying to other people equally as drunk as ME… “if we were all in a horror film, who would die and who would survive?” No one survives. Looking back this was at best an in joke that passed a few hours of boredom, although Me, Chris K, nice Pete and Zach were thoroughly convinced it was going to be a masterpiece and a new generation of wiki-movie making. Really all it is is being able to pin point the exact moment I got completely and utterly pissed just based on my handwriting.

As for the rest of the trip.. what happens in Berlin, stays in Berlin.

berlin and transmediale

Just a quick post to note down all my thoughts and experiences in berlin before i forget most of them.

overall i found transmediale a bit hit and miss, there were some aspects of it i really enjoyed and came away with a lot, the things i didn't really like were probably just the ones that didn't apply to what i want to do or am interested in.

Embedding Fear. The Internet And The Spectacle Of Hightened Alert:

4 speakers about the internet's 'open system' and terrorism. From the program it says that the open system makes it not only the worlds most powerful tool of conspiratorial narrative generation but also creates the broadest 'extranational' platform for the creation and dissemination of political, military and corporate propagand. Sounds interesting, but you'd be wrong. Only one of the speakers engaged the audience through storytelling and animations. The others just really talked at the audience, and while some people liked this conference i found it incredibly dull and disagreed with a lot of it. This was probably the only thing i really didn't like out of the whole event.

Constraint City - The Pain Of Everyday Life:

'Constraint City' is a critical performance in urban space, which stands as a scarcastic contribution to the discussion of 'locative' and 'wearable media' linking into a tradition of psychogeography, the philosophising of pleasure and pain.

I really enjoyed this talk. To sum it up very quickly, Gordan Savicic has designed what looks like a corset and tightens when there is a lot of wifi signals being sent in an area. Interesting use of something wearable interacting with newer and increasingly popular technologies and the elements of control the wearer has. At first i thought that the wearer had little or no control but thinking about it more, the wearer can change route, walk away or towards strong wifi signals and therefore controlling the amount of pain they are in. I thought of this film and talk as being representational of the pain and pleasure technology can give. I suppose just relating it to mundane pc use, the pleasure comes from playing games or chatting and the pain elements from slow connections, crashing and losing work?

When You're Strange:

A group of different films

Stranger Comes To Town:

Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the us. Each then designes a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Jacqueline Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one's own sense of self and view of the world.

Really enjoyed this film, and interesting how we can relate to avatars and sympathise with them and get a feel for their identity and story even though they are animations and computer graphics. What i liked about this film was that we would hear the persons voice before we saw their avatar which may have helped more in creating identity. Humourous in places too and reminded me a lot of the creature comforts adverts Nick Park did.

Arameans:

Video questions the mobility of the Arameans in the Lebanese social context. The film tells the story of an Assyrian Woman who experienced bombings. I'm not sure this film got its point across that well and felt a bit forgettable to me. Not really applicable to what i'm doing or interested in.

Bilder aus dem Tagebuch eines Wartenden:

This is a search for the lost, or to be more exact wasted time spent during obligatory military service on the edge of Schengen country, which is embodied by the absurd micro-performances of the young showoffs and in banal, everyday monologs about the sense (or lack thereof) of their presence, enlarged to almost Becket-like dimensions.

Probably my favourite film i saw over there and very memorable. Like a video diary and reminded me very much of a blog with the mundane activities of people you don't know. Clever how it was made to be very funny and made you care about what happened to the people in the film, which has given me more to think about for my own work.

Beach

A personal account in the form of an out of tune TV broadcast; an accelerating stream of images, depicting a family on the beach in Tel Aviv, is juxtaposed with a video of a girl running frantically on a bombed beach in Gaza, only about 100 kilometers away.

mmmm.. scotch eggs

DJ Scotch Egg visit:

Found the concept of limitations in the work an interesting concept, and how you can make something quite complex from something so minimal. Comparisons with modernism design and theory that it is about the materials used.

Sentimentality also an interesting point, how he uses a gameboy to create music but not other consoles. Could also link in with nostalgia, as the sounds used were mainly from our own childhoods.

Overall and interesting visit, and some things i could think about for my own dissertation, especially the cartoon like energy and changes which directly references to what i want to write about.

it's only bloody done - part II

ok animation done.. could be better but i quite like the design of it. Thats the project done and never to be looked at ever again.

change of idea

Since the last time I updated this blog I've changed a fair bit of my original idea.

Before the idea was centered around:
- narrative of children's nightmares
- user control and maximum freedom
- different interfaces
- mass collaboration
- more sophisticated or different ways of interacting i.e making the solution to the puzzle instead of finding it

but since tutor discussions it appeared that not only do i have too much going on but also some of the ideas contradicted themselves. For example the idea of nightmares and user freedom were contradictory as when you think about nightmares you tend to think of feelings of being trapped and loss of control.

So i had to edit my idea and take out some points that I really wanted to include. However, the new idea just focuses on one of the above points. It is now a variation on the online point and click games that involve escaping from a room. The difference is that instead of searching the room the interactivity comes with creating the solution on the screen by drawing something.

To give the game a bit more validity there is no real narrative but as I am comfortable designing for a younger audience I thought of the theme of escaping from a school. So one of the levels could involve having to distract a teacher whilst the player sneaks out of the room, and because the user has to create the solution the game gives them more freedom of choice.

There is a brief animation i've made of this which i will post sometime tomorrow.

character design and other thoughts

Bit of a serious post this one

Found some research that's quite interesting and made me think about my own design in a different way. Cartoonist and visual theorist Scott McCloud wrote about the abstract nature of cartoon characters and how the "lack of details in characters allow viewers to identify with them (more than they would with more detailed, photo-realistic characters) because it encourages the viewer to see or position "himself" in or as the character."

This makes sense to me because i've also looked at Chris Crawford's word where he states that "graphic realism stimulates the imagination, but it must leave room for the imagination to run free." I took this to mean that the imagination is stilted when films, tv, games etc are presented as ultra realistic, where as if the elements or characters lack detail and realism the viewer and user has to piece things together and use their imagination more and this could also relate to ellipses in Manovich's "Myth of Interactivity"

"ellipses in literary narration, missing details of objects in visual art and other representational "shortcuts" require the user to fill in missing information"

The argument is from a guy called Steve Poole who believes that "players are more attracted to recent, almost lifelike characters such as 'Lara Croft' ... over the abstractions of Pac-Man, but because these characters aren't "too real" either, the player comes to care for them and feel badly if they die"

I can't agree with the above statement as i found an online game called Interactive Buddy, which although it has little to no detail I think it still produces an emotive response from the player due to the character being anthropomorphised by cowering or shaking when hurt or showing a smiley face when happy.


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SLightly more intense online games usually involve the player maintaining that characters and advancing them causing a greater deal of identification (Gary Fine). He also found that players would cheat to prevent the deeath of a favourite character or refuse to play with other gamers that would not help protect the group, World of Warcraft springs to mind.

This has given me a lot to think about, especially the thoughts on realism vs less detail, when designing my game. I personally agree more with the identification and ellipse process of less realistic and detailed design as it seems more plausible, i think that imagination is more powerful than merely taking something that someone else has created and immersing yourself in it, with little thought on your own part, as well that also links back to the navigational systems and mistaking someone elses thought process for your own, as i mentioned in a previous post.

I think that's all for now, need to just carry on with what i'm doing which is adding colour and neatening up my sketches in photoshop then animating it to show how the game would work.

Also need to do that rationale thing or before I do, note down the specifics of the game, how it works and what i want it to acheive, and then post it here.

what's that coming over the hill..

..is it a monster

hurrah, i'm at the drawing stage. I've really got bogged down with a lot of theory work, which has been really helpful especially with fine tuning my idea. There's been a lot of umming and aahing about the more precise elements of the game and how much control to give to the user and what, if any, limitations to set. During my research i've looked more into the control the user has and the control the designer has and certain navigational methods that the user has to follow to get through the game, even though there seems to be a lot of choice the way the game is played and the conclusion is still the same.

"... we are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations. Put differently, in what can be read as an updated version of French philosopher Louis Althusser's concepts of "interpellation," we are asked to mistake the structure of somebody else's mind for our own".

From what i'm thinking at the moment, my game will possibly challenge the way it is navigated so the creator has little control over it. As users can create and upload challenges it seems likely this will probably be quite endless, but there will still be a narrative set to the game to still rein in some degree of control, otherwise the project would seem pretty pointless if my idea was that gamers can do whatever they want.

Explained the narrative in a previous blog, so i'm not sure there's much to add. I'm gonna post some brief sketches of some monsters (yay monsters) which are works in progress, so hopefully i can take them into photoshop and have a muck around with colour, shading at that bloody pen tool.



weird zombie type thing that was inspired by some halloween mask or other







everyone loves clowns

ooh, also found something that has a similar element of game play to what i want to achieve, design isn't fantastic but it doesn't pretend to be, guess the clue is in the name "crayon physics" but the whole drawing on the screen, using a pen/touch screen is relevant to my project