Complementing Projects

There's been some big developments in the scope of this project since my last post, to say the least.

The new plans have all been green lit though, so that's the main thing.

The new project is a collaboration between Rob and myself. Rob's project is interested in evaluating and studying the emotive connotations of hand gestures in interactive environments. And my project is interested in conveying game mechanics/dynamics/aesthetics through concept art which have been developed through study of a specific story.

Rob's project, in his words, lacked a rich context which would support his experiments; and my project lacks the production side past 2D concept art, and also would be benefitted greatly through the use of gestures, which allow a more aesthetically pleasing and interactively strong way to explore.

The context of my projects' art was to be a folk tale, but I as looked into it, the way of the Appalachian people was much more interesting in its natural heritage and nuances than the stories themselves, at least in terms of explorational potential, I felt. The folk tales of Appalachia all stem from their way of life, and are all interwoven into their environment in some way or another. So, in theory, the Appalachian hillside could act like a hub for many folk stories, which would organically be portrayed to the player, preferably avoiding the interactive design misfire - literalism.

Rob and I are currently fleshing out the Aesthetics of our game as we are interested in the MDA approach to game design.

To give Rob something to work with while I developed some more concept art, I put together two mood boards: one to detail the environment mood, and another in attempt to capture the desired aesthetic gesture relationships I think would be great to experiment the value of the game with.

Environment

Gesture Aesthetics

For tomorrows' pitch group, we had set out a to-do list that we decided would be needed to give a clear picture of what it was we wanted to do, without having to give a long-winded explanation - an elevator pitch, basically.

I've currently written a good few pages of a GDD/Project guide for us, which we'll hopefully have fleshed out a bit more by the end of the week. I'll also have a few pieces of concept art to display (below), and Rob will probably have some gestural examples, which I'm really looking forward to seeing.