I made a compilation of some movie clips and artwork of my graduation project “Fonn”. The movie clips were taken with a digital photo camera so the quality isn’t great, but it is watchable ;) I will also make a stream player version with interface. You can find the link to the .SWF file here:
It’s been a while since I posted anything on my blog, because I’ve been very busy with finishing my graduation project “Fonn”. Wednesday the 24th of June I did my exam and graduated! The two weeks before my exam were very hectic, nerve wrecking and demanding, but also unforgettable and worthwhile. It was a good thing I could show and set up my installation at the NLGD (Nederlandse Gamedagen) Project Fair in the Centraal Museum Chapel in Utrecht, the 19th of June, because that day I had the chance to see everything in action and discover the response from the user(s) to the interaction and gameplay. Although it took about 4 hours to set up the result was very satisfying and I was really proud of myself and all the people who helped me. The location was beautiful as you can see on the picture below.
“NLGD Project Fair”
The DVTG Graduation Expo was at Huis aan de Werf in Utrecht, 24 and 25 June, also a great location. There were a lot visitors and it was nice to see the reaction of family and friends. Suddenly I could see and especially comprehend what I had created the last five months. I’m glad some people were smart enough to take pictures, because I was walking around with a big haze before my eyes :P
“Graduation Expo”
Final artwork:
“Templates pieces of scenery”
“Final design”
Unfortunately, “Loper” (the robomos tripod on the right) didn’t make it to the final animations and installation, but he is still visible in the artwork. The characters “Klimmer” and “Wachter” also didn’t make it. Due to pressure of time I decided to focus mainly on the character “Zwever”.
Here is a short outline of my project:
“Place the pieces of scenery on the table and interact with the habitat of the creature “Zwever”. The wind of change is an unpredictable and intangible element and plays an important part in Fonn. Discover how the wind influences the world of “Zwever”.”
In short, the idea is to discover the meaning of the pieces of scenery and use a piece at the right moment to create life and maintain it. You have to pay attention to the real wind that is blowing from the wind fans at the left and right side of the table. The wind coming from these fans is totally random, it influences the digital world and you have no control over it. That is also the theme of my project: the wind of change. It will come and go, but you can’t control it, although many people try to.
Of course there was a lot of technology involved, for instance the use of a DV camera, video projector and MacBook, the connection from the PC fans to an Arduino and Flash and the object tracking of the reacTIVision fiducial symbols to Flash.
My special thanks go out to Erik Sluiters & Arne Boon for helping me with all the programming and hardware stuff ;)
For more questions about this project you can always contact me.
Here are some photographs of the cardboard scale model I made to visualize my interactive scenery. It gives me the chance to move pieces, play with lighting and shadows, change the setting and project animations on the background and pieces of scenery to see how that looks.
With the first digital image I wanted to test the look of textures and scribbled lines in combination with my vector characters. I will give the characters more detail and color when I’m in the production phase.
Me and my good friend (& classmate) Niki were asked to design an image for the HKU exam campaign which would portray our course Design for Virtual Theatre and Games. Niki made the photograph of our model Erwin and Photoshopped it to make him look more digitally pixeled. I created the vector/ scribbly things in Illustrator and Photoshop. Eventually the whole image evolved into something we both felt fitted the mood and essence of DVTG. *mmm essence :P*
The Spektrum XL characters :D It was really cool to work with my friend Martijn aka Silo on the concept of the two latest Spektrum flyers for Future Research. The fun part was doodling the planet and just think up random cute and weird characters that inhabited it and played their own little part in the environment. Here you can see the characters I designed in Illustrator for the Spektrum XL8 flyer. The coloring and Photoshop work is done by Silo.
The characters I designed for the Spektrum XL7 flyer.
Go to Supersilo’s blog to check out how my characters are integrated in his Spektrum XL flyers :)
When I create characters I often just draw or outline them and that’s it, usually because I get another idea or maybe I’m too easily distracted and just put the character on hold or throw it in an obscure directory with an obscure name like “monster_tarrel04″. However these last few months I like to try and color them as well.
“Monsteraapie”
“Enoki”
“Rootmurth outlines” (and yes, this one will also be colored soon :P)
And some oldies.
These are some old Projekt Funk flyers I created for the Future Research crew. I worked with Illustrator before, but it was the first time I used my vector shapes in combination with Photoshop for gradients, backgrounds and brushes. As you can see my inspiration was Sumi-e art; with each flyer i wanted to portray an Asian scenery. I’m especially pleased with the last one, because to me this illustration is a continuation of the second one with the two fishes. If you look closely you can see the red fish in the little boat ;)
I’m working on my individual graduation project (worktitle “Windmill”) right now, everything is still in the brainstorm-concept phase. My little black book is very handy for all kinds of drawings, doodles and concepts I come up with. Here you can see the outlines of one of my character drawings and an update with two more characters and a windmill. Soon I will tell more about this project.
“Windmill & character update”
Welcome to my weblog Lizzy wanders. Soon I will upload more work :)
