We visited LCCS for finalizing/testing our project with LCCS students and collaborating with Ocean Odyssey team on April 1st. We first gathered together in a small classroom and presented our prototype videos, LCCS students love to interact with our prototype video using the red and blue lens. However, after the discussion, they provided a better and fun solution to discover the underwater scene instead of using glasses, which was to make ‘telescope’ prototypes. Ella is going to help us narrate turtle story, so we talked a bit about the script and we hope to have her voice record for next time. Also, most of them enjoy drawing ocean creatures, so we gave them some time to explore our shared Hudson creatures folder and did some drawings. At the end of the class, we Parsons teams started to organize assets we had from LCCS and we edited them for Unity program. Fuad made a quick Unity prototype which showed us ocean surroundings with LCCS students’ drawings in it.

Raquel and I had a rather challenging Owl/Zoom discussion with the Trash Trivia team from Parsons. We could not hear them well and neither could they hear us well. After switching rooms and earphones a few times, we even tried typing, with Jeet typing us back from LCCS. This worked better sometimes and at other times, talking was better. After some intervention from LCCS side, the communication became a little bit better.

PROGRESS

We showed our 3 moodboards to the students and got them to vote on their favourite. Given how the team is made up of 6 boys and 1 girl, they all seemed to prefer the Game Show style better, but this could also be what they are most familiar with when it comes with Family Feud.

But towards the end of the discussion, the boys somehow ended up getting quite obsessed with the idea of an underwater, mysterious/dark setting and so we asked them to do more drawings for us to use as production assets.

To keep things going and to involve everyone in the making process, we allocated tasks to each student and asked them to come prepared next week with things to show and discuss with us. Hopefully they will have done their homework.

We also sent them this email after the Owl/Zoom conversation:

 

Going with our forest idea since everyone else is doing underwater/water related projects; Raquel and I decided it would be good to tailor the enchanter forest idea to the boys’ taste by perhaps changing it to a future forest/futuristic forest idea. By incorporating the neon lights and fog machine the kids liked during the Owl/Zoom discussion, we devised a new moodboard and prepared the first prototype for testing our game.

 

BELOW: Inspiration images

 

OUR REVISED MOODBOARD (incorporating assets done by LCCS students): ——> more process work will be added soon

Logo as of now (will be updated):

 

Raquel and I have been very productive over the break, making lots of notes and doing research on the different elements of Trash Trivia. We prepared the below package for the LCCS kids to go through and collect assets from them.

After missing what could have turned into a super productive making day because of the snow day, we headed to LCCS for our week 6 session with the students fully prepared with lots of ideation exercises.

The LCCS and Parsons students got paired/mixed with each other to complete a series of mini ideation exercises involving drawings, discussions and narrative development. One thing I realised that really stayed with me from this session is how mature the LCCS kids actually are! Although we all knew this from the beginning that they are grade 6, 7, 8 students, I feel like I have been treating them to much like little kids, in effect missing out on an opportunity to have more serious conversations with them about the environment.

Nevertheless, our idea sharing/synthesizing/vote session went quite well in my opinion. All of the students I spoke to were excited about their ideas when explaining their stories/characters to me and they all really listened when I told them about my character. As we all spoke to at least 4-5 other students, we ended up with lots of ideas: the originals and the combined hybrids. This meant many of the new (and old) ideas had to be discarded or somehow synthesized into the new/selected ones. One girl on my team came up with a beautiful story about a seal-princess and suggested we incorporate shadow puppet effect in the project that she knows how to do, in effect creating a performance. This was the last idea I worked on during the ideation session so we put the idea down as our proposal for others to vote on. It didn’t receive many votes, mostly because I think there were other projects already going viral amongst the older boys and kids catch onto these things very quickly ahihi.

Below: My character turtle boy who goes on a quest to collect all the resources needed to build a device that can tell the difference between jellyfish and plastic bag.

Just before we started the ideation session:

 

I joined the Trash Trivia team which I thought was a team with the most straightforward idea. The challenge for us going forward would be to rebrand the trivia/jeopardy/family feud styles that were proposed to fit the earth day theme while at the same time keeping the questions both fun and informative/educational. Finding this balance I think would be the hardest especially since trivias and game show styles are already very popular among the general population and introducing completely new elements may throw things off too much. At the same time, the popularity of these shows also make the Trash Trivia idea already very attractive to the public, as can be easily seen from the way the idea went viral in seconds during our ideation session.

I’m looking forward to developing Trash Trivia further!

Since Ocean Odyssey also plans to utilize the dome, our teams tried to create a connection between the projects this week. At the beginning of class, we had a zoom meeting with the members of Ocean Odyssey from LCCS to discuss the details and goals. The ideas went from a VR game about collecting trash with controllers to a more visual based experience. However, by the end of the meeting, so many ideas were discussed that we were more lost than earlier. Anezka’s written diagram helped us clarify our goals and mediums which lead to an idea of combining the two colored world and x-ray vision to show a plastic free ocean, a plastic filled ocean, and the inside of plastic filled fishes. We also decided on narrowing the background to being the Hudson River which lead to a more robust set of marine animals and plants to use for assets. I look forward to finalizing the project and seeing the new assets we will be getting next week.

Updates#

Confirmation of the team member 

Switching Unity to COSPACES 

We initialize our idea that uses unity to create VR experiences thru scripts that kids at LCSS contributed.  Zhane already made an low-res prototype that illustrates and infrastructure on farm background,

Missing Elements

We still missing the water assets as well as the characters movements etc to full-fill the core of the project goal.

STRATEGIES & PLANNING

WE finalized our ideas and decided to use unity to align with story.  also we did a pre- act to clear and the story characters and what everybody should do. milo as the leader of the kids team from LCSS in charging of the story coherency and other kids and making tiny elements like text for “protestors” etc. It was a productive day.

 

STORYLINE

1. Farmer John wakes up goes through a brief morning routine.
   1. It’s a little off-color. John swings his leg over the bed and lumbers to the sink. He brushes his teeth and wakes up.
   2. Foley: Running water.
2. Cut to chickens clucking, in cages, by the thousands, stretching back into a warehouse- John checks water and we see a chicken with a pink, irritated, underbelly. From the outside, the space is gray. The leaves are kind of greenish-gray, and there is a brown pond close to the warehouse.

——————————————————————————————————————————

1. From a close-up of a sign for Happy Acres farms, we see protestors picketing with signs like “PRACTICE SUSTAINABLE FARMING” and “STOP TORTURING ANIMALS”
   1. Protesters are waving signs up and down and marching around, chanting slogans like “ Factory farming is murder,” etc.
2. John is poring over documents which are revealed to be tax forms.
   1. He seems worried.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

1. In the same room, John calls a friend who suggests he give into the protests and try sustainable farming.
   1. 1. John: “It’s just, with these new protests, the numbers aren’t working out.”
      2. Friend: “On Facebook, I saw a story about this farm. It’s like the most sustainable one on the planet. They even rotate chickens out to help the soil. Besides, the protesters are kinda right. Your farm really messes up the river. Maybe you should take a look. But remember, if things go South, I’m here for you. ”
      3. John “All right. I’ll take a look. And thanks. Seriously.”
2. John Googles “Sustainable farming,” and a name comes up: Wilfred Stephens.
   1. Foley: Keyboards clacking.

——————————————————————————————————————————

1. He calls Stephens and asks to visit his farm.            
   1. 1. John: “Hello?”
      2. Stephens: “Hello. This is Wilfred Stephens.”
      3. John: “Hi Mr. Stephens. I’m a farmer, although I can’t claim mine is anywhere near as environmentally friendly as yours.”
      4. Stephens: “Thank you. It’s been a long fight to make my farm sustainable.”
      5. John: “The reason I’m calling, anyways, is that I’d like to visit your farm. With the new protests and awareness, I’m getting chewed out.”
      6. Stephens: “I absolutely understand. Does next Saturday work?”
      7. John: “Definitely. Hang up.”
2. John drives down and sees the grass getting greener as he leaves his farm. A river running next to the road starts brownish and ends up crystal clear and blue. He arrives at Stephens’s farm and
3. Tour time! Stephens leads John around and he sees the chickens, 10 to a small coop, strutting around, and the cows, large and docile, grazing on grass.
4. John speaks to the same friend, and describes his dilemma. He wants to make profits, but he’s not sure if he can continue having seen the better way.

——————————————————————————————————————————SoPHIA:

1. “1 year later”
2. We see the same “Happy Acres” sign, and pan down in the same way to a line of trucks waiting to get their food.
3. We see an ending sequence mirroring the opening one. John’s legs swing off of the bed and he brushes his teeth. Cheery music is playing in the background.
4. The chicken warehouse is gone. Instead, small coops of happy, healthy chickens take their place. John looks out on to his farm and the grass is vibrant. The trees are fuller, and there is a small pond, and everyone looks happier.

 

 

 

 

So for this week I decided to well, take a week off, it’s Spring Break. Discover a bit of what Manhattan has to offer, primarily in terms of museums, food, interesting attractions and Trader Joe’s. The beginning of the break was a notch hectic, though, as my mindset was still burning red after the mid-term streak and I had to reorganise in many ways. The break did me a lot of good, although I see what’s about to come, what seems like a step-up from the mid-terms working rigour actually.

Before the Spring Break technically took off, I received a phone call, as apparently I missed a conference call. I was quite behind with reading emails, so nothing really reached me on a normal basis throughout preceding week. But I caught up to speed and managed to produce a few notes about this and that.

Also, I somehow magically cannot find the cluster of notes that I have taken at LCCS. Sadly, as there were plenty of great ideas that the students came up with and myself included. In addition, I could not overcome some difficulties with getting the low-fi prototype to the extent I wanted it, I had a few workarounds in my mind but those would have taken quite some time and effort. I’ll still see if I can push through a late version but what it technically was, well, was a spin-off from the Hydrangeas. I really liked that concept and I just wanted to adapt this to Unity… Until I found out it was kinda actually the same idea. I’ll push an update, perhaps I can get conceptual build uploaded sometime before the next class takes place.

I had a few notes, though.

First, about the Garbage Garry. I just managed to see a (in my eyes) absolutely brilliant animation series Love, Death + Robots, a Netflix anthology produced by David Fincher and Tim Miller, and some of the best animation studios around the world. Once I saw the 9th episode ‘The Dump’, I was like – woa, hold on, that looks like Garbage Garry to me! (For reference for others if they’re interested to see how Garbage Garry’s world could look like)

Second: It seems that I will be in between teams, trying to stitch up technologically stuff for the Dome, primarily but could also be in between Unity and other technologies. Now, while my experience with Unity is ever-increasing, especially since I’m at Parsons, juggling between a variety of technologies might prove a notch tricky. In any case, all three projects are connected in some ways to underwater worlds, in such case the first reference link I established was, well, Subnautica. A quite rather interesting videogame, where most of the time you get to explore rather sci-fi but still dynamic, diverse and extremely rich underwater biomes, where vibrant colours and spectacular fluorescent lighting comes and goes. Rather to serve as inspiration but this is one rather good source of inspiration. From others, Blue Planet I & II look also great, also for reference (these two I never managed to finish, though).

I have proposed instead of a field-game, gamifying the environment, such as bins, as to connecting them to the Dome and visualising how not recycling pollutes the environment. This brings the ideas broached to rather shallower waters but it’s very palpable, one action will generate a reaction. In any case, merging the ideas or some features seem (to me) like the right way to go. There is a reference to this, as at University of Sydney there are a few people who came up with an idea of a gamified trash bin.

…aaaand I guess that is all for now?