#bct2017

This is a shot of Alleylight inside the Unity Editor. On the right is what the player sees, minus the water texture. On the left is how the scene actually looks, outside the bounds of the screen and with added perspective. In the middle is the island, which is a two-dimensional with a three-dimensional black capsule embedded in it. On the same three-dimensional plane, you’ll see the many vertical bars, each one spawning a specific floating object in a specific direction at random intervals. Each of those objects are also two-dimensional. This was done so that the workflow was easier on the artists, but also because we wanted the artstyle to be simple and understandable, so we made everything two-dimensional. The reason there still is a three-dimensional aspect, however, is purely technical, and partly because I was too lazy to deal with two-dimensional layers when it was just as easy, and perhaps even more organized, to fake layering in three dimensions.

Surrounding the spawners is a large grey border. That border is the “killbox”, and it deletes anything that strays into it. Essentially, this makes sure that anything that floats out of the screen doesn’t continue to exist and slow the app down. Instead, it gets deleted and makes way for new objects to spawn.

Finally, the grey plane behind everything is the “screen” that the water texture is displayed on. It’s translucent, so that the seaweed objects behind it show as if they’re underwater. Again, this was the cheap way to make the water texture layer correctly, in such a way that the island and floating objects appeared above the waterline, and the seaweed appeared below. This also all made for some collision failsafes, as all the collisions between objects are still calculated as if they were three-dimensional (albeit with movement on the Z axis locked, ensuring that objects can’t float into or away from the screen).

Alleylight Interactive is a project about illuminating the dark alleyways around Aotea Square more specifically the one down the side of the Auckland Town Hall and by the entrance to the underground car park. During the evening, this area is essentially pitch black and there is a lot of foot traffic which could make it a potentially unsafe area. We wanted to make this part of Aotea Square less frightening and more accessible to people walking through at night. We want to achieve this by projecting onto the wall of the Town Hall with bright and friendly colours.

Concept

We wanted to make this project because we feel that the walkway is a dangerous area especially during the evening where it is nearly pitch black. We found that more illuminated walkways in urban areas make people feel safer (Sunderstrom,1996) as well as reducing crime rates in those areas (Loewen, 1993). The feelings of uneasiness are something we wish to alleviate with Alleylight as these feelings can cause stress and anxiety especially if you can’t see anything ahead of you (Grillon, 1997).

In my team, I was set at designing all of the art assets for the projection. We originally wanted the art to reflect the Waihorotiu stream which used to run underneath the square itself. Since Aotea square was a bog we could have reflected that by making all of the plant life bleak and muddy but that would conflict with the bright and bubbly theme we wanted to achieve. I also feel that that sort of art style wouldn’t draw many people in as it might not look too inviting and friendly. We decided to go with a colorful and tropical theme with tick borders and high contrast to make the images less busy and clearer when projected onto the textured wall.

Art

First vector designs of a shark and seaweed.

These were the first set of assets that we used for the project which were designed in Adobe Illustrator. The designs were intentionally simple as if they were too complex they would be more difficult to see against the textured wall of the Town Hall. There were some initial problems with the overall aesthetic and design of the objects and my art was different to James and Charles’ art assets. The inconsistency's included the stroke weight around the objects. Those numbers varied between all of the artists which made all of the objects look out of place when presented. The overall designs were well received as they were clear as to what they portrayed. 

Art style inspiration: Kingdom Rush (2011), Scribblenauts (2012), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).

After the critique session, we decided to develop more of a clear art style so James and I researched certain video games which have clear and colourful graphics. We also made the art more consistent by using the same stroke weight in the assets. The art style was also heavily criticized but we wanted Alleylight to still have the crisp and coloruful aesthetic to make sure the dark alley is illuminated. The context of why we chose these objects was that a colourful tropical getaway theme could be more fitting for our idea of making people feel safer as they travel down the alleyway.  

Quinn's drawings of seaweed, bones, wood and fish.

The new objects were first drawn up by Quinn and then I used Adobe Illustrator to make them into vectors. The same sort of theme was decided by James and I because it was quick and simple to accomplish in a short space of time. We also don’t have the skills to make more complex images and we don’t have the funds to hire a professional artist so we made do. In the new images, the stroke weights of the lines across all of the vectors are the same (4 pt) so it is more consistent. The colours were also changed to be much more vibrant as you could hardly see them under the water overlay texture we used. I also made the smaller fish more colourful for the same reasons. The skull is the only image which I don’t really like as it could potentially make people walking by uneasy and that is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. I could have made the skull more friendly and cartoonish to fit the mood of the project. 

Vectors made from Quinn's drawings.

Teamwork

Overall, the whole team worked well with each other. Using tools such as Facebook Messenger to communicate with each other and transfer files was super simple and helpful. I feel as if Messenger is an underutilized tool for team management as people mainly associate it with Facebook and how its seen as a time waster. But with Messenger, if used correctly as a communication tool you can communicate quicker with your team because everyone has Facebook. I found it useful transferring Adobe Illustrator files to the other members. We were all communicating with each other well which makes the project so much easier for everyone.

I think my skills with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have improved over the space of this project. I have learnt a lot of key skills with both programs. There is a definite improvement in my ability from my very first vector designs earlier in the project compared to the newer assets. I played around with animating the fish briefly in a GIF format through Photoshop. I have never attempted this process before but it was intuitive in the end. If I had more time I would have liked to make cleaner animations for the fish and seaweed as I would think it would add more character to the project.

A quick GIF of one of the “cool” fish vectors.

There is quite a bit of room for development with this project as it can be expanded to other mediums such as interactive instillation's or for use in alleyways other than the Town Hall alleyway. The overall theme of what is being projected is very flexible and isn't bound to this tropical theme that we have chosen, so there is an amount of creative freedom that comes alongside using Alleylight.

Conclusion

Alleylight Interactive was overall a fun project to be a part of as well all worked coherently as a team and produced a really cool project that worked relativity true to what we wanted to achieve. 

References:

Waihorotiu Stream. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waihorotiu_Stream

Sunderstrom, E., Bell, P. A., Busby, P. L. & Asmus, C (1996). ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. Annual Review of Psychology.   http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.47.1.485

Loewen, L., Steel, G., & Suedfeld, P. (1993). Perceived safety from crime in the urban environment. Journal Of Environmental Psychology, 13(4), 323-331. doi:10.1016/s0272-4944(05)80254-3

Grillon, C., Pellowski, M., Merikangas, K. R., & Davis, M. (1997). Darkness facilitates acoustic startle reflex in humans. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 453-460. Crossref, Medline

(2017). Ironhidegames.blob.core.windows.net. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://ironhidegames.blob.core.windows.net/upfiles/original/Games/751ffc46-cf39-4b01-ab82-39673627c11c.jpg

(2017). Wired.com. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2011/10/scribios.jpg

(2017). Blogs-images.forbes.com. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://blogs-images.forbes.com/olliebarder/files/2017/05/zelda_windwaker.jpg

How to Create an Animated .GIF in Photoshop CS5, CS6 & CC How to Create an Animated .GIF in Photoshop CS5, CS6 & CC. (2010). briandalessandro.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from http://www.briandalessandro.com/blog/create-an-animated-gif-in-photoshop-cs5/

For my final submission, I developed the image further because what I originally wanted was something that wasn’t still. So rather than trying to work on a video or a gif, I tried to turn my image into something that captures the aspect of moving in a still image. And while deciding the layout of my final submission I saw that the image turned portrait resembled my videos of dropping coffee into a glass of water. So this is my Final Refined Outcome:

SETUP FOR MARKING IN STUDIO

These are the bagged birds of Myers Park. Despite all their looks, they are made of solid metal through and through. The boxed birds are on the main sidewalk of Queen street and the park, while the other two are nearby in the park proper.

Why are there statues of bagged birds in Myers Park? Nobody knows.

They have been a mystery to myself and Charles Johnson for around a year now. We’ve looked them up, tried looking for artist’s names, and even went on a search of the park for more hidden bagged birds. Nothing. Just these three bagged birds.

The thing is though that nobody else bothers with this. Barely anyone even knows they exist, despite them being in plain sight. I’ve seen people stare right at them and just walk past, not once questioning why there is a bird in a bag and birds in boxes along the path. And that’s what sparked my studio idea.

There are things in this city that everyone has seen, but no-one has ever questioned. Whether they’re landmarks or just signs on walls, there are things hidden in plain sight that only a few people will pursue and unravel. So I thought, why not make an ARG around that?

So that’s what my studio project is. I’m scrapping my previous VR ideas and focusing on this - pure storytelling. It’ll be based on little things that will be hidden everywhere, but will only hold true meaning to those who pursue it.

This is the core of our project, and it needs to be convincing enough to be chilling. But how do you store a name, personal details, the answers they give to questions, and whether or not they’ve visited the exhibit before, while keeping their data seperate from the data of every other participant?

Well, let’s do the math.

First we will need a unique ID given to every loop of the exhibit. This is stored as a floating ID and an Actual ID, where the floating ID can be changed, but the actual ID is always a unique ID incremented by one for every new loop. I’ll describe why it needs to be two discrete values in a bit.

Next we need the name we’ll be storing. Because some smartass decided that surnames such as Anne-Marie-Clarke-Jordi-Wilhelm VII are valid, as long as we are storing the full name of someone, we cannot store that full name as a single string, or else we’d never know when, say, the middle name ends and the surname begins. We’d need three seperate entries in three seperate lists, which sounds unnecessary but follow me here.

We will also need to store the answers each specific user gives to our questions. Now there’s two ways of going about this. There’s the quick and dumb way that I’d normally do, which is sticking each individual answer in a list and calling that as necessary. It’s quick, it’s dirty, but it’s slow and ultimately completely pointless. Then there’s the elegant way, which is giving each different person a single integer, and storing the answer to each question as a digit in that integer. For example if there are five questions, then the answers given to each question would be inserted into a five-digit integer, where a one represents answer A, a 2 represents Answer B, and so on. This keeps a participant’s answers in one single variable, which can then be stuck in one list.

Now here’s the part where it all comes together. Both the lists and the ID start at 0 and thus will read n - ID-number n in the case of the ID, and Entry n in the case of each list. In shorthand, entry(n) = ID(n) = entry(ID). This means that for every new participant, as long as there is only one entry per list per person, their answers will be stored as list entry n. Now here’s the fun part. Because each variable will always be stored at entry n in their respective lists, and because n also equals their session ID, I can easily take the ID, search for entry(ID) in every list, bring concatenate each user’s data into one data packet, and proceed to do whatever I want with that packet, be it show it on screen, analyse it, modify it, or, if I wanted to, legitimately sell the data (maybe). Moreover, if I run a search of the surname list every time a participant enters theirs, I can see if that surname (not the given name, because surnames repeat less in European naming convention) has already been entered into the database before, and if it has then I can compare that surname’s attached given name with the given name also just entered, and if those match then I can fetch that name’s ID through entry(n), fetch the answers they gave previously, and either call them out on coming back, or throw them back to where they were if they left early.

Finally, I’d need to seperate the ID into a floating ID and an actual ID because, in the event that I ever need to change the floating ID to an ID number that already exists, I need to know which ID numbers have not yet been used so I can change floating ID back to it later, or else I risk overwriting data. Thus, assuming I never need to skip ID numbers for any reason, I can be sure that the actual ID is pointing me to fresh new database space every time it increments upward.

I’ve got some ideas about how this project will actually look design-wise, but a lot of it is inspired by stuff I’ve seen in the past. I want to create an atmosphere that is clean and informative, but also clinical and inexplicably creepy, and to that effect, my mind immediately shoots to this video.

Ubisoft, & VG247. (2012, June 04). Watch Dogs E3 Announcement Trailer. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIupDnWk0ko

Notice how the background is always a solid colour and a void, while all the text is sans serif, high contrast, and most of it is bold. Moreover, the audio is smooth yet off-sounding. It all feels like an infomercial about something that seems very serious and professional, but also stark and intimidating. Moreover, notice how the camera almost never stops moving, and there are no cuts. It’s all one smooth transition into another smooth transition into another, and it all feels slick and modern as a result. Since I’m working in Unity, and Unity is a game engine, I can easily do that by flying the camera through each asset arranged in 3D space, as opposed to normal video editing software where I’d have to keyframe a whole massive timeline or something.

Another similar example is this:

IO Interactive, & Square Enix. (2016, February 03). Hitman World of Assassination Trailer. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkrUJJgQAaY

A bit less creepy than the first one, but still an example of the style. It just exudes professionalism, yet it’s cleaner and simpler than almost anything else. Depending on what theme we end up going with for the story, a sense of being controlled by a very professional superior force could be pivotal to making the viewer feel intimidated enough to willingly give sensitive data.

On the other hand, there’s this style:

Blackbird Interactive, & NASA JPL. (2017, February 20). Project Eagle Trailer. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y8EcA92YFA

This style’s still clean and slick, but not as creepy, and far more technical-feeling than the previous style. This one doesn’t really fit my ideas that well, but considering some of my groupmates’ ideas involve stuff like hackers and AI, this could come in handy as a style to work off of.