Tuesday 6 January 2015

Unit 70 Computer Game Story Development

Unit 70 Computer Game Story Development

Definition of a story: an account of imaginary or real characters and events told for entertainment, education, cultural preservation and instilling moral values.

Stories nowadays are mainly told through books, films, TV shows, and comic books but there are also many other ways to tell all sorts of stories, stories could told through paintings, art, video games, theatre, poems, music, jokes and much more.

But the most common way that stories are told is orally, because it's a quick and effective way of telling someone something. People tell stories all the time usually it's about something that has happened to them recently.

Humans have been creating and telling stories for thousands of years we know this because even cave men told stories by painting their hunting stories on cave walls, the Greeks would tell heroic stories of gods and mortals by painting on vases and the Egyptians would carve their stories on to walls inside of pyramids.
Cave painting Cave of Altamira


Egyptian carving
painted Greek vase

Stories have always been a great way for humans to talk about their adventures and travels but we wouldn't just talk about are past we would also invent our own stories: fictional stories. Most stories nowadays are fictional and are a great way to escape from reality.

Interactions in stories probably first started in the 9070's with the D&D (dungeons and dragons)  tabletop board game which is a multiplayer board game where one person comes up with a fantasyesque story and plays the role of the dungeon master who tells the story to the other players and gives them choices and options of things they can do in the story, which will in turn change the way the game will be played, the other players play the role of the main characters in the story and they can act however they like within the story. The game is usually played with some kind of map and character pieces to play on the map, the game is also played with multiple different dice.

And in the 1980's the first interactive books were made books like the Fighting Fantasy series, they were basically like D&D but single.
In these books you are set a specific quest example: find the treasure of a dangerous warlock. And then you have to follow what the book tells you but you often get a choice on what to do for example: you stumble upon a goblin will you fight him yes (turn to page 6) or no (turn to page 14).
In some books you would need to make a map as you read along.



Methods and ways of creating stories
The Three-act structure is a writing model/story arc used for making stories and like the title implies it has 3 acts or parts that the story follows, on Act 1 the main character is presented and we learn about their life then something happens to the character, the character learns something new or something dramatic happens and then act 2 takes place where the character has to deal with this new change in their life creating obstacles for the character to go through, the mid act 2 something new happens, the character realises that something is wrong or that he/she has been missing something (big plot twist) and then there are more obstacles to surpass and then some kind of disaster or drama happens to the character that they have to defeat and overcome end of act two and start of act 3 the main character then returns to a normal life but with something new.
A good example of a story that follows this structure is How To Train Your Dragon
HERE is a Great video that explains how this films follows the Three-act structure.

Brainstorming is one of the most common ways of coming up with ideas and is commonly used when coming up with stories.


Storytelling in video games
In the early years of video games, storytelling wasn't very rich in content because it was so new and not many people thought of making a story as good as a story you would see in a film, because most people saw video games as just a fun distraction that you would only play for about 20 mins or so game devs wouldn't really see the point in adding a complex story to the game. The only story heavy games that they did have back then were text based games like zork were you would be able to interact and change the outcome of the story but these games only had text to tell the story and there wouldn't be any colourful illustrations on screen to help visualize the story more.


Zork gameplay image

But later as games evolved with technology they became more advanced and more complex with better graphics, and gamers would play these games for much longer durations of time, these improvement in games help to make better gaming experiences with better and more immersive gameplay and story.

Nowadays videogames stories can be as complex or more complex than film stories, games like the walking dead by Telltale Games has multiple endings that all depend on what choices you make within the game.

But different types/genres of games are likely to have different types of stories for example a 2D platforming game is more likely going to have a linear storyline and a 3D third-person game could have a branching storyline with multiple choices and options and a first person shooter game is probably going to have a story about some kind of war.
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Making the story
In this unit I need to make a short interactive story about some characters surviving through some kind of global warming/natural disaster and it needs to be realistically set in the current day or the near future and the characters have to go through some kind of dilemma.

Definition of a dilemma: a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable.

My story is going to be set in Italy Pompeii and will be about 2 friends trying to survive a volcano eruption. Why a volcano eruption ? Not just any volcano i chose one of the most dangerous volcanoes on earth Mount Vesuvius and the reason i chose this volcano is because there could be many different catastrophes that could happen if this volcano erupted, earthquakes, lava damage and most dangerous of all an ash avalanche and what's most surprising about this volcano is that it has 600,000 people living at the base of this monster. So creating a story about characters surviving such dangerous disasters could be really interesting if written well of course.



Event day:12/02/2045
Country: Italy
City: Pompeii
Catastrophic events: earthquake/Avalanche of dust/volcano eruption with a dirty thunderstorm
Volcano: Mount Vesuvius one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world
Links to information about Mount Vesuvius:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/earth/collections/mount_vesuvius#p00hgs29
http://www.protezionecivile.gov.it/jcms/en/view_pde.wp;jsessionid=3DDAFAE6B2D6096A41CF68577C44324F?contentId=PDE12771


I made a plot map at home to figure out what the story's main elements will be.





After that i made a similar thing to this but with coggle and with the help of PhotoFit Me i made a basic image of what my main characters might look like.
I sketched a quick story arc
I'm going to be writing my story in third person.

Here is the story i wrote, this is basically the story that you will play through if you choose all the correct option/choices
in other words it's the story with the good ending.

Leonardo furiously mashed all the buttons on his controller as he played the latest fighting game on his dusty computer, he and his friend Wei have been have  been playing this game online for the last 2 hours now and they still can’t seem to defeat the second boss battle. After losing a fifth time to the boss, Leonardo pauses the game, sighs and chucks the controller on to the desk in frustration and decides to take a break of this undefeatable boss battle "That's it! I have had enough of this! I will be right back I'm going to go make myself a sandwich" he says, Wei replies through Skype and says "sure thing. I'm going to go check the wiki to try and find this boss's weakness." as Leonardo walks to the kitchen through the hallway he checks the time on the digital clock mounted on the wall, “Already 3PM! tss” he says to him self, wishing it wasn't the actually time.
He had been procrastinating over some homework he needed to hand in the next day for his University course in zoology, as he wants to become a Marine Scientist.

As he arrives in the kitchen he turns to the fridge and swiftly opens the fridge door and grabs the cheese and butter so she can make himself a cheese sandwich, when all of a sudden a massive rumbling noise roared from the ground! And the whole apartment building violently trembled in all directions making all the nearby objects instantly fall to the ground.
Leonardo in panic quickly lay down on to the floor right in front of the fridge with his hands on his head, as the ground continued to shake, food items in the fridge fell out hitting Leonardo’s back. After a few seconds the trembling slowed down and completely stopped, Leonardo was cautious and stayed on the ground a bit longer just in case of an after shock, a minute passes and Leonardo is still laying down on the ground, he decides to get up to investigate the damage in his apartment and just as he stud up the ground trembled violently throwing Leonardo into the fridge, causing his head to viciously hit the top of the fridge making everything go dark, as he falls unconscious.

Leonardo wakes up on the floor of his kitchen in pain, he has no idea of how long he had been unconscious for, he tries to get up but something seems to be blocking his legs from moving, he looks up at his legs and the realizes that his fridge had fell on him when he was unconscious. Leonardo sighs as he struggles to pulls his legs from under the fridge, after a few seconds he manages to wiggle his way out of under the fridge and stands up to investigate the kitchen mess and sighs as he realizes he is soaked in milk that had spilled when the fridge fell.
Leonardo goes into his room to change cloths but a scream coming from outside catches his attention, he looks out of a window and is shocked as he notices the devastation of the street outside of his apartment, buildings had been completely knocked down and smashed into pieces, there were people walking mindlessly in the streets not knowing what to do or where to go as others were sitting down in shock at what had happened, some were crying at the fact that they just lost everything they owned, after seeing this Leonardo remembers that he was in a Skype call with Wei, Leonardo rushes into his room to see that his computer monitor and tower was knocked over during the tremble and that his apartment’s electricity had been cut off, he takes out his smart phone from his pocket and wipes milk off of its screen and tries to calls Wei “CRAP! There isn't any signal! I hope he’s ok” says Leonardo in disappointment. "I should probably go to his apartment to make sure he is ok, after all this is most likely his first time experiencing an earthquake in a country he is foreign to." Leonardo thinks to himself, "Should I change out of these soaked cloths? NO! there is no time, who knows maybe Wei is in trouble" Leonardo grabs his keys and walks out the door closing it behind him, as he takes a step outside he views the havoc of the natural disaster and freezes as he sees the horrible sight of a man pulling out a corpse from under some rubble, he is shocked at the amount of destruction that actually occurred as he was unconscious and is amazed at the fact that his apartment building didn't collapse he felt lucky, but then remembered why he had stepped outside in the first place and started to run down the street to get to Wei's apartment. As he ran down the roads he tried not to stop and gawk at the horrific sight of destruction. He couldn't believe the amount of buildings that had been destroyed in the natural disaster, Leonardo had experienced multiple earthquakes before but he had never experienced an earthquake this destructive.

As Leonardo ran through the streets he couldn't help notice that some people were running in the opposite direction as him, he wondered why and then he heard a man shouting something, Leonardo couldn't quite understand what the man was saying his face was in panic he looked terrified as he ran down the street he shouted the same words again, this time Leonardo heard exactly what he said "MOUNT VESUVIUS IS ERUPTING!", Leonard couldn't believe what the man had just said as it was simply impossible, "Mount Vesuvius is a heavily surveyed volcano and it's eruption could be predicated days before, by specialized scientists, there is no way that the man was saying the truth, he just assumed that the volcano was erupting because of the recent earthquake right?" Leonardo thought to himself but then he thought a bit longer and started to panic "what if the man is right, and that the scientist missed something and couldn't predict the eruption, hundreds maybe thousands of people could die! I need to get out of this city and as quick as possible" Leonardo's heart was beating twice as fast now he was in a state of panic he has no idea of what he should do, evacuate the city or ignore what that man said and go to Wei's house to see if all is ok "No! there is no way that I am leaving the city without warning Wei about the potential dangers of Mount Vesuvius. I need to evacuate with him. I don't want his blood on my hands!" he thought to himself and then continued his path to Wei's house.

After 6mins of vigorous sprinting Leonardo finally arrives at his destination and he feels relieved to see that Wei's apartment hasn't collapsed. Leonardo walks to the front door trying to catch his breath after the long run, he lands 3 heavy knocks on to the door and waits for the door to open, no answer Leonardo knocks another 3 times and shouts "Wei! open the door!", the door opens and Wei is on the other side he looks confused "Oh, hey Leonardo are you here because of the earthquake?" Leonardo grabs Wei by the shoulders and says "Wei are you ok? did you get injured by the earthquake?" Wei replies "Well my apartment is a bit of a mess but other than that I'm fine. Thanks for coming to see if I'm ok.", Leonardo says "Ok well we need to evacuate out of the city now! The volcano might be erupting." Wei looks confused and scared to see his friend in such a panicked state, he asks "Wait what? Do you mean Mount Vesuvius? I thought that volcano was inactive." Leonardo gets slightly angry "Well it's not and it never has been! We need to leave now! Because if it explodes now we won't have the time to get out of the city and we could ..." Leonardo couldn't finish the rest of  his sentence, Wei rushes back into his apartment and grabs his phone wallet and passport and put them inside the pockets of his black jacket, he walks out the door closing it behind him "Well come on!" he says in a hurry "We need to get out of here!".

As they walk out of the apartment building Wei asks "So where is the evacuation point?" "It's on the other side of town. But we need to hurry!" as they start to run down the street a rumbling earth sound travels underneath their feet shacking the concrete they stand on, Leonardo becomes alarmed stops, and looks in the direction of Mount Vesuvius, nothing happens, Wei realizes that Leonardo has just stopped "Hey! Leo! come on we need to go! it was just a tremor." "Yeah sorry. let's go!". The two of them ran through the ruined city, jumping over rubble and cracks in the roads. The streets were empty and quiet as everyone else had already left to evacuate. After about 4mins of continuous running Wei stopped to catch his breath, he wasn't as athletic as Leonardo, Leonardo stopped and turned around and shouted "WEI! we can't stop now, we're not even half way there!" "I... I can't... I can't  run for long periods of time like this... just... just go on without me I'll catch up" Wei says panting, Leonardo gets annoyed, he opens his mouth to say something but just as he is about to speak he spots a giant black cloud of smoke rising to the sky, he looks towards the source of the clouds and notices that they are coming out from Vesuvius, Leonardo's facial expressions changes from annoyed to disappointment "We're too late..." Wei turns around to look in the same direction as Leonardo "The volcano it's smoking but it hasn't erupted yet we, still have time to get out of the city right?" "No... no we don't, an ash avalanche is what's coming up next, it will cover up the entire surface of the city and will burn and suffocate any living life forms in its radius" "Well what if we found a basement to go underground? " "Underground?... That's right! they made underground bunkers a few years ago, so that the people in the red zone could take cover if they didn't have time to evacuate! We can just go to one of these bunkers there is one nearby I think, but we need to hurry!".

Mount Vesuvius was now spewing out twice as much smoke and the sky was slowly being covered in thick clouds of ash, bursts of red lighting was occurring at the peak of the volcano and time to time there would be some molten magma flying up out of the volcano. Leonardo was running to an underground bunker that he recalls seeing a few years ago when it was still in construction, Wei was following close behind. "Were almost there!" Leonardo says impatiently. They arrive at a small white sturdy looking building built out of concrete and metal, at the front of it is a large metal door with a sign above it saying "Emergency Underground Bunker", to the right of the door is an intercom with a camera on it. "Ok it's here! we made it!" Leonardo says proudly "But can we still get in?", Wei walks up to the intercom and presses a button and just as he presses the button Mount Vesuvius erupts creating a massive explosion sound, magma and rocks come flying out of the peak of the volcano and a huge cloud of ash and dust comes from out of the mountain, the cloud is so heavy it rides down the slopes of the volcano creating an ash avalanche. The avalanche is heading straight for the city in full force pushing and destroying anything in its way. Leonardo sees this and starts to panic and a voice from the intercom responds "Hello?" Leonardo in panic get close to the intercom and starts shouting "Open the door now! Please the volcano has just erupted!", the door makes a buzzing sound and Wei manages to open it, Wei and Leonardo both quickly enter the building as quickly as possible and then shut it behind them instantly, inside of the building was small and didn't contain much there was a table and a metal trapdoor in the middle of the floor. The trapdoor opened and a old man came out of it "Quick get down here!" he said in a hurry, Leonardo and Wei quickly climbed down through the trapdoor which lead to another small room, the room contained 3 small wooden crates and another metal door. The old man closed and locked the trapdoor in a rush, he looked scared "Ok follow me quickly!" he said, he unlocks the metal door which reveals a long concrete spiral staircase going even deeper underground, Leonardo and Wei rushed through the door and down the steps,  the old man followed and then closed the door behind him "Mind your step" he said as it was quite dark. At the bottom of the staircase was another metal door, Leonardo and Wei were already at the bottom of the staircase the old man was still walking down the steps "The door should be unlocked go ahead and enter." he said while walking down, Wei opens the door revealing a massive room, in the room there were many tables and chairs but weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit on, as there were people who were sitting on the floor next to walls, there were multiple doors leading to different types of rooms, there was a food supply room, a pharmaceutical room, male and female bathrooms and another door which wasn't identifiable.

Leonardo and Wei entered the big room, the old man was behind them closing the door. A young lady walked up to Leonardo and Wei "What are you names?" she asked, "Leonardo..." "and your family name?" "euh...Olmo" she turns to Wei "and you, what is your name?" "My name is Wei Lian" he answers politely, she notes down the names in a notebook and then closes it "Ok, my name is Fabiana and welcome to the underground bunker, it was especially built in case of Mount Vesuvius's eruption, you are safe here but you will need to stay down here for the next  72hours depending on how long the eruption lasts." she pauses for a second "you were both very lucky to have made it here on time" and then she walks away Wei looks at Leonardo and smiles but Leonardo is still in shock from all the recent events, he doesn't feel lucky "Come on Leo, lets go take a seat and rest now that we are safe" the two men walk closest wall and sit down on the ground resting their backs against the wall "Hey Wei how many people do you think are here?" Leonardo asked " hmm I would say about 80 to 90" "yeah that sounds about right".

For 3 days everyone in the bunker had  to sleep eat and wait for the volcano's silence. But when they were all finally let out, there was nothing left of the city apart from rubble and ash. A rescue team from the nearest city had come for the survivors. Leonardo was brought back to Rome where his mother and father lived and Wei was brought to an airport so he could travel back to China where his family lived.
The End

Shakeele's comment on my story: lots of descriptive and emotive language, makes me feel like I am watching the event take place in real life. surplus amount of detail, character is no longer as flat he has some personality. this seems like the start of a very interesting story. To improve develop the protagonist more, give more detail about him.


Planning out the different paths you can take within the game

My story branches out with multiple choices that will change the story as you read along.
This chart contains all the major decisions that the player must take when playing the game.
I made this flow chart with Lucidchart.
In total there are 4 different endings and many different paths to chose, 2 of the endings are bad 1 of them is ok and another 1 is the good ending that the player should aim to achieve.

To make the game I will need to do some research on HTML, CSS and some Javascript to make the story game functional.

Making a prototype

Before I started to work on my final game I made a quick prototype to see if I could make a small interactive game that was fully functional with different choices and endings.
This prototype was fairly easy to make as I already knew quite a bit of HTML and CSS but I still needed to learn a few more new things.

I didn't base my prototype on my story i just made up a random story about being lost in a forest.

You can play the prototype HERE
Making the prototype help me a lot to understand how I was going to make the final game.

I had some friends and family test out my prototype, most of them enjoyed it but they would usually be quite unhappy with the fact that there is no way of winning, some of them pointed out that a back button would be nice.

Making the final game

Since I started the making of the final game I have modified and changed some of my plans.
First of all I am no longer setting the story in Pompeii with mount Vesuvius instead the story is still going to be set in Italy but the reader will never be told what  city Leonardo lives in and the volcano will have a different name.

And for the technical changes I have decided to not use JavaScript to make the game all occur on one page instead I will be making a game in the same way I made my prototype so each section of the story will be a completely different HTML page. I have only included a very small amount of JavaScript to create an alert button.

When designing the pages I took the same basic idea from my prototype but I made it look nicer with more features, for example now there is a BACK button so that the player can choose a different option if they made a mistake by going back a few pages. The back button was a demanded feature from the people who tested out my prototype.

When making the game i thought that it would be a good idea to create an Intro page to explain to the player how the game will be played and to give some back story on the main character.

early version of the final game

This is the standard design of most of the pages

This is what the Intro looks like

And this is one of the pages with choice options

The background image I use in the game find it HERE
I chose to use the image as the main background because I thought that I fitted well with the story as it look like the kind of hot smoke you would see coming out of a volcano.

Talking about the code and i't structure.
When i was writing my code i remembered reading an article about how important it was to write understandable clean and structured code, In the article the programmer was saying that it was important to make clean code as it would save time for when you would want to get back to some old code to tweak or modify it but if you have forgotten what the code was about then you would lose time just by trying to write stuff in a environment that you don't understand but if the code was easily readable and understandable then it would be a lot easier to tweak and modify it. Making clean structured code is also very helpful for when you are working with other people and that they need to look at the code you are writing. So after remembering about this article a  immediately added comments to make my code more readable and understandable and i do feel like it has helped me understand my own writing better.

This screen shot shows the HTML code for Page_1 of the story and as you can see it was written in a very clean way to make it as easy as possible to understand and i even added comments to explain what parts of the code does. Adding comments really helps when somebody else is going to have a look at the code you write so it is important to do so.


These are snippets of the CSS and i wanted to show this because of how clean and well structured my code is.
When i made the CSS code i made diffrent sections for diffrent groups of objects.
All the sections are titled with a comment that explains what the section is for.
This first screen shot shows the section that contains all the diffrent divs that make up the page.

This sections shows all the CSS for the diffrent kinds of buttons that appear within the story

This section was made for styling fonts and text

 And i even made a section just for one specific HTML page and that's the intro i needed to do this because of how diffrent my Intro page is to all the other pages.


My story is nearly exactly like the flow chart I made for the story as it has about the same endings and numbers of branches.

The only real problem I encountered with this project was time as I ran out of time to make the images to go with the text I was planning on making minimalistic illustrations but the deadline came much sooner then I expected so I took some images from the internet and put it in the game. It's a shame that I did not have time to finish the game to 100%, but at least I made it fully functional.

At first i had no idea of how what the story was going to be called but then i came up with the name "Vulcan Ash" which i thought was pretty cool as the most dangerous thing in the story is the ash of the volcano.

You can play the final game HERE on my experimental website

I had a few people test out the game and they all said that they enjoyed it and most of them said that the story was well written and some said that it would of been better with some images.

I totally agree with what my friend was saying and i am happy that he enjoyed playing it.

Final Evaluation
In this unit we were asked to create an interactive story game where you can have different choices and endings, but before we went on to development we did some research on story telling and the different ways story's can be told an written, this helped me to write a good story to fit the game i was going to make.

The story we needed to make had to be set in the near future and some kind of dilemma had to happen because of some kind of global warming/natural disaster and it had to stay quite realistic without going into a fantasy theme. When i wrote my story i struggled a bit because i didn't really enjoy writing it but at least i managed to write quite a long in depth story with a good amount of detail.

And once the story was done it was time to develop the game, we had multiple different ways to create the game, we could of made the game with Flash, any programming language or something else. I chose to make my game in HTML and CSS because of how easy it would of been to make it accessible to other people just by making a website. Before i started working on my final game i made a short prototype about being lost in a forest, I made this prototype so i could figure out the structure and design of my final game and after i made the prototype i started to work on the final game. The final game wasn't actually that hard to make it was just very tedious as i had to create so many webpages that all looked similar. I wasn't able to completely finish the game because i need to make artwork for it which i ran out of time to create.

Overall i think that i did well within this unit, i made an entire story that fits the brief, i made a short prototype to show that it was possible to make a game with HTML and CSS and i made the story fully interactive with different choices and endings for the player to explore. 

And what's most important is that i made a game that is fun for the player

Monday 5 January 2015

Unit 05 Contextual Influences in Art and Design

Unit 05 Contextual Influences in Art and Design


 Having a look at Street art as an art movement and how it is influenced in certain video games.
Street art is an art movement that usually consists of art done in the streets, they can be paintings/graffiti's on wall or they could also be sculptures placed in streets. The art is sometimes controversial or witty with smart play with the environment.  I really enjoy good street art but I don't really like tags or graffiti's they usually look all very similar. I find street art very enjoyable and it really adds to a city's landscape.
Video games that are influenced by street art (mainly graffiti).

Jet Set Radio is a game about gang wars in Tokyo The most common goal in the game is to spray over other gangs graffiti with the player's own.

sideway new york is a platform puzzle game were you play as a graffiti on a wall and you can interact with other street art that is on the wall.
The art style in this game is very inspired by the street art and graffiti's you would see in an urban city.



Getting Up is a action-adventure game. The game focuses on an amateur graffiti artist who uses graffiti and tagging as a way to protest against the corrupt Dystopic

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Having a look at Cubism as an art movement and how it is influenced in certain video games.
Cubism is a very abstract art style and usually consists of many geometric shapes forming something and the colours are usually quite inconsistent. I personally don't really like this art movement it feels a bit too abstract and crazy for me.
Finding a game with a Cubism art style was hard to find.
Canvas Clash is a 2-Dimensional, two-player Racing game built using the Unreal 3 Engine. It has a mix art-style of cubism and surrealism.

Making my own cubism art piece with adobe illustrator.
I think that it fits the art-style well enough.

I based my piece of this image
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Having a look at Minimalism as an art movement and how it is influenced in certain video games
Minimalism is an art style/movement that uses mainly very basic shapes (usually just squares, rectangles, circles and triangles) with few colours but it can also just be a simple silhouette of something or someone. I like minimalistic art it can sometimes look very meaningful.

Every day the same dream

Every Day the Same Dream is a short, 2D art game that puts the player in the role of a man whose life is about to change. Developed for the Experimental Gameplay Project in 2009. And it's art style is very minimalistic

Thomas was alone

Thomas Was Alone is a 2D puzzle platformer video game where you go on an adventure with multiple colour block characters of different shapes and sizes. I't art style is very minimalistic

Minimalist artwork that I have done in the past.

Minimalistic Spinosaurus that I did in class.
I had fun making this with Adobe Illustrator.
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Having a look at Surrealism as an art movement and how it is influenced in certain video games.
The Surrealism art movement/style consist of paintings and sculptures showing impossible or dream like worlds and events... etc. I personally find that surrealism is great! it's great because it defies everything that we know and with it you can portrait anything.



The bridge is a puzzle game with many different confusing levels. The art style is very surrealistic with lots of optical illusions and impossible scenery. I personally really like the way this game looks it seems really interesting with all the optical illusions.


AntiChamber is a puzzle game with not much sense to it there is no overall goal it's just a place full of puzzles to solve. The art style of the game is a mix of surrealistic and minimalism. The level design is mind blowing and sometimes catches you by surprise with optical illusions and other mind tricks. I have played this game before and it is really fun and i really like the art style of the game.


Canvas Clash is a 2-Dimensional, two-player Racing game built using the Unreal 3 Engine. It has a mix art-style of cubism and surrealism.


Sketching my own surrealistic art piece, I used my hand as reference to draw this sketch.
I think that it looks good apart from that I think the hand looks a bit off but then again hands are tricky to draw.
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German expressionism
German Expressionism came from Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20Th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. This is Wikipedia's definition find it HERE.
German expressionism is a very sad looking art style and it can provoke a lot of emotion. I don't think much of it as i don't enjoy or relate to it in any way.

So basically the expressionism art movement is an art style that expresses a mood and feeling that the creator thinks about a specific subject. It usually consists of dark moods with abstract shapes and dark colours.
Limbo is a 2D puzzle platformer game with a dark German expressionist art style.
In the game you play as a boy who explores a dangerous forest with traps and giant spiders.


My own piece inspired by german expressionism
It's supposed to represent that work you have to do that you don't care about can feel very punishing and horrible.

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The pixel art movement was created thanks to video games, as the first generations of video gaming devices weren't capable of creating advanced visuals graphics, so they used pixels and bitmaps to create the visual aspects of video games but as time went on and as technology evolved video games became a lot less dependent on pixel art, but quite a few games nowadays still use the art style/movement as it can be nice too look at and isn't to hard to make.
Pixel art back then wasn't really seen as an art form but more of a way to visualize objects on a a screen but nowadays it is seen a lot more as an art form as a lot of video game developers choose to make their games in that art style instead of using higher and more detailed art.

I really enjoy pixel art as it is nostalgic from the old gameboy games i use to play as a kid. it's also a very fun art style that can be at the same time very simplistic or very complex.

Here are a few examples of video games which purposely use pixel art.
StarBound is a survival/adventure game where you can explore different planets and loot different types of dungeons and castles.



Minecraft is a very popular game and is well known for it's pixel art style, it is a survival game where you mine and craft there is no real objective to this game it's an open world sandbox game.



Risk of Rain is a rogue like game where you play level by level fighting bosses and different types of enemies, there are characters and power ups.



My own pixel art piece.
Made this using Photoshop.
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Making a presentation about pixel art using a website called Prezi
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Analysing/researching famous art pieces.

Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol 1962
This painting is by Andy Warhol and it is about the beauty of Marilyn Monroe and was completed after the actress had died. The painting shows Marilyn Monroe face coloured in many different bright colours. The painting is popular for being pop art and it has a very light tone. The art piece is currently owned by the Tate. I personally think that it looks well done and I understand what the artist wanted to show but it's not something that i would like to have in my house I don't particularly like it.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp 1917
The piece is by Marcel Duchamp and was submitted for the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, but it was rejected by the committee. Since the original piece has been lost and 17 replicas by Duchamp were made in 1960s. Fountain was a piece which Duchamp called a readymades (also known as found art), as the piece was made out of an already existing object (a urinal). So basically all he did was take a urinal but it on it's back and then signed "R. Mutt 1917" on it. I do acknowledged this piece to being art but I personally don't think that this is a worthy piece of art, because it hardly shows any creativity.

Jake and Dinos Chapman: the End of Fun 2010


The end of fun are miniature sculptures made by the Chapman brothers in 2010. This art piece consists of 9 parts which show landscapes with hundreds if not thousands of small human figurines sculpts filling up the landscapes. The art piece shows a very macabre, sinister and grim art style with Nazi representations killing and torturing other humans, with humans crucified and hung and many severed heads on the end of long sticks. This art piece is an exaggerated historical representation of when the Nazis were invading a city in Russia that still vividly remembers the horrors of the Nazi blockade of the Second World War. I personally think that this art piece is strange and also very fascinating because of how much amazing detail was put into it, it's something that you could probably look at for hours and you would keep on seeing things that you hadn't noticed before but it's not something that I particularly enjoy I just find it disturbingly fascinating.

les demoiselles d'avignon by Bablo Picasso 1907
les demoiselles d'avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) is an oil painting by Picasso Current location: museum of modern art in New York City. The painting shows 5 nude women posing with sheets and fruit around them. Picasso's art style is very abstract with not much realism, when painting humans he usually shows them with very bad human proportions and anatomy but that's just the "charm" of his art style and is the main reason he got famous. I personally don't like this type of art style it doesn't excite or fascinate me in any way it just make me feel I little bit bored but I do understand why it is such a popular art piece because of it's unique art style.
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My essay draft
Video games are the Ultimate art form!

Recently I re watched a documentary called indie game the movie and in it they talk about how indie games are made and how it is stressful being an indie game developer, in the film they interview Phil Fish the creator of Fez and during this interview Phil fish says ‘’To me games are like the ultimate art form. It’s just the ultimate medium. I mean, it’s the sum total of every expressive medium of all time made interactive. Like how is that not… It’s awesome! ’’ and after hearing that quote I totally agreed with it I just couldn't see any other art form that could be superior to videogames. In this essay I will be explaining why I think that video games should be considered, as the ultimate art form.

So videogames have been around for over 40years now and they have always been looked at as being just a source of entertainment and an escape from reality, but it is only recently that more and more people have started to look at videogames for being more of an art from then just a silly way of entertainment.

Now before I can explain why I think that videogames should be considered as the ultimate art form I should first define what art is, what it does and how it applies to videogames.
So what is art? "Art: the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." This is the definition that comes up when you search up the definition of art on Google.
So how does this apply with videogames? Well videogames fit this definition quite well, making videogames requires a lot of creative skill and imagination and can definitely be appreciated for its beauty and emotional power, here are three examples of well known games that fit this definition: The Last Of Us, The Walking Dead and Shadow Of The Colossus, all three of these games are beautiful in their own separate way and they all have some strong emotional story/feeling to them. But of course not all video games are seen as having beautiful visuals and emotional stories/meaning to them it depends on how you play and see the game, but this is the exact same thing with any other type of art form, Paintings aren't always seen as beautiful and emotional it really depends on how you view the piece of art.

Ok so now that we know what art is and that videogames are a type of art form let's have a look at what art does and what is its purpose.
After researching the many different ways people explain the purpose of Art, I realize that everybody thinks of art very differently, but in the end they are all saying more or less the same kind of thing. Here are three quotes by different people who have different opinions on the purpose of art.

"To inspire an individual to think differently about their surroundings. To shock, intrigue, impress, alienate, open and influence others. 
For some, it is simply a way of expressing emotion, and quite often some art is never intended to be shared as it is so personal." by Matt F on Yahoo Answers.

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Aristotle Greek philosopher.

"Art doesn't have a purpose, because art doesn't have a sentient mind. It can't have hopes or goals. Some artists have purposes and some art consumers have purposes. Those are different from person to person." Marcus Geduld on Quora

So after reading all these different opinions I have decided that it would be best if I just shared my own opinion on what I think the purpose of art is.
To me the purpose of art is to share a common interest with others, to express emotions and feelings, to aspire and influence people in their lives and to start a conversation with others, but what I think is the best and most important use of art is to create a community by bringing like minded people together.
All types of art forms have managed to these things some way or another whether it's an art expo, a club, an art school, an orchestra, a festival, online websites ...etc.
Ok so how does videogames fit in to all of this, do videogames also bring like minded people together, create conversation and influence people's lives?
Well yes they do, and they have been doing so for years, people all of the world have been connecting and discussing thanks to videogames, there have been gaming conventions/festivals, like E3, the penny arcade, gamescom...etc and there are many gaming websites online that give a place for gamers to talk about videogames and interact and thanks to multiplayer games I would say that the gaming community are the most connected art consumers in the world which is awesome!

So now that we have had a look at how videogames definitely have a place in the art world as its own art form, let's go back to the main topic and look at why I think that videogames should be considered as the ultimate art form.
Now the main reason I have for saying that videogames are the ultimate art form is because videogames consist of many singular art forms, videogames consist of: music, storytelling, voice acting, animation and art (painting, drawing, 3D art...etc) kind of like animated films really, but the only thing that is different from animated films is that videogames are interactive so instead of just viewing the art and story you get to take place within the art and story and you become a part of the artistic form that is videogames, without the player's interactions with the videogame, videogames wouldn't be the art form it is and that's what makes it so special, it needs a player or multiple players to become a work of art.
In other words videogames are an art form that you take part in. And there are some videogames that take it even further for when it comes to storytelling, games like Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Don't starve and Rust are free roaming sandbox games where the main fun of the games is to go on an adventure and create your own stories, in the world that the artists are offering you. Making the piece of art your own as it was your own modified experience of the game.

And this is why I think that videogames should be considered the current ultimate art form as the art itself is not limited to a canvas as it can change depending on the play style of the player. But in the end it's really a matter of opinion, not everybody sees games the way I do so not everybody would agree with me. So what do you think?
Should videogames be considered as the current ultimate art form?


Final Essay
Video games are the Ultimate art form!

Recently I re watched a documentary called "Indie Game The Movie" and in it they talk about how indie games are made and how it is stressful being an indie game developer, in the film they interview Phil Fish the creator of platforming game called Fez and during this interview Phil fish says ‘’To me games are like the ultimate art form. It’s just the ultimate medium. I mean, it’s the sum total of every expressive medium of all time made interactive. Like how is that not… It’s awesome! ’’ And after hearing that quote I totally agreed with it I just couldn't see any other art form that could be superior to videogames. In this essay I will be explaining why I think that video games should be considered as, the ultimate art form.

Videogames have been around for over 40years now and they have always been looked at as being just a source of entertainment and an escape from reality, but it is only recently that more and more people have started to look at videogames for being more of an art from then just a silly way of entertainment.

And to those who still think that videogames have not achieved its place in the art world and that think that they should still be classed as just a form of entertainment then they should really consider having a look at games again, as videogames have evolved quite a lot. "Art: the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." This is the definition that comes up when you search up the definition of art on Google. Videogames fit this definition quite well, as making videogames requires a lot of creative skill and imagination and can definitely be appreciated for its beauty and emotional power, here are three examples of well known games that fit this definition: The Last Of Us for its very emotional story and it's amazingly realistic graphics/visuals, The Walking Dead for its unique cartoonish art style and difficult emotional story choices and Shadow Of The Colossus for it amazing landscapes, colossus designs and unique gameplay, all three of these games are beautiful in their own separate way and they all have some strong emotional story/feeling to them. But of course not all video games are seen as having beautiful visuals and emotional stories/meaning to them it depends on how you play and view the game, but this is the exact same thing with any other type of art form, Paintings aren't always seen as beautiful and emotional it really depends on how you view the art piece for example a blank canvas with a single red dot in the middle could make somebody feel emotionally lonely just by looking at it or it could make someone feel indifferent as all they see is a boring red dot.

Chris Hecker believes that games have the potential to "become the preeminent art and entertainment form of the 21st century."
Now the main reason I have for saying that videogames are the ultimate art form is because videogames consist of a mix between many singular art forms, videogames consist of: music, storytelling, voice acting, animation and art (painting, drawing, 3D art...etc) kind of like animated films really, but the only thing that is different from animated films is that videogames are interactive making it that more immersive, so instead of just viewing the art and story you get to take place within the art and story and you become a necessary part of the artistic form that is videogames, without the player's interactions with the videogame, videogames wouldn't be the art form it is, and that's what makes it so special and unique, it needs a player or multiple players to become a work of art.
 In other words videogames are an art form that you take part in.


 And there are some videogames that take it even further for when it comes to storytelling, games like Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Don't starve and Rust are free roaming sandbox games where the main fun of the games is to go on an adventure and create your own stories in the world that the artists are offering you. Making the piece of art your own as it was your own modified experience of the game.

" While films are a very visual and emotional artistic medium, video games take it one step further into the realm of a unique personal experience." Jet Li
Videogames are also one of the best ways of expressing a feeling, emotion or experience as they can simulate these feelings as you play through the life of a fictional character. 2 examples of games that express these kind of things are "That Dragon, Cancer" is an interactive retelling of Ryan and Amy Green’s experience raising their son Joel, a 4-year-old currently fighting his third year of terminal cancer, and "Depression Quest" is an interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression.

Another reason for why I think that videogames are superior to other art forms is that playing games does not always need to be a lonely experience as a lot of games are also multiplayer games where you get to enjoy the art form with friends, family or just total strangers thanks to the internet, this makes the experience that much more diverse and interesting as you play with different people who think and play differently to you. And of course I'm not saying that videogames are the only type of art form were you can interact with other people, you can very well go to a concert or art exhibition to experience art with other people but videogames allow for such a different experience and interaction as you don't need to act as yourself if you didn't want to, you could very well be any kind of person/character you want to be depending on the game you are playing, for example in the MMO (massively multiplayer online) game World Of Warcraft you could be a Warrior, Hunter, Mage...etc.

And this is why I think that videogames should be considered the current ultimate art form as the art itself is not limited to a canvas as it can change depending on the players play style, thoughts and ideas. But in the end it's really a matter of opinion, not everybody sees games the way I do so not everybody would agree with me. So what do you think?
Should videogames be considered as the current ultimate art form?

Reference List
Websites
Author surname
Author initial
Year of publication
Title of website
Available from: URL
Accessed DD Month Year
Hecker
CH
6/5/13
About/Me
http://chrishecker.com/About/Me
25/04/15
Li
JL
5/2/04
Jet Li Interview
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2004/02/05/jet-li-interview-2
25/04/15



















Film
Fish
PF
5/18/12
Indie Game The Movie
2/04/15

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Interactive Artwork

Definition of interactive art: Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose.

Here is a list of websites i found that show interactive art.

http://kkkatzenadvent.com/?v=42
This website is some kind of christmas calendar where every time you click on a number, an animation will occur. I don't really know how to explain this website all i can say is that it has art yo can interact with.

http://www.patatap.com/
This website is really cool. Every time on click on a letter button on your keyboard a sound and animation will occur and you can change the colour scheme by pressing the space bar.
This website is a great example of interactive art.

http://www.koalastothemax.com/
In this website a circle will quadruplicate into smaller circles every time your mouse hover over them  and where the circles can no longer divide into smaller circles, all the coloured circles will show an image of a Koala.

http://manetas.com/pollock/
This website is another really good example of an interactive art piece as it gives the user absolute control on what happens on the web page. This website is basically a white canvas that you can paint on by hovering your mouse over the page, you can also change the colour of the paint by clicking.

http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google-space/
This website is pretty cool as it shows the google search webpage but with all it's elements floating around on the page. But the best part about this website is that you can interact with the floating elements by clicking on them you can drag them around and throw them across the page.
All the elements are also fully functional.

http://soulwire.co.uk/experiments/muscular-hydrostats/
This website is really fun to play around with. It shows a Tentacle simulation using inverse kinematics that you can modify the colour, size, frictioin...etc of the "creature" with a conrol panel that is in the top right of the page. when the "creature" is clicked on it will follow you mouse cursor around the page.

Interactive art isn't always digital it can also be physical such as these examples:
This interactive art piece consists of a light that follows pedestrians around. This messes with the pedestrians and it becomes very amusing to watch their response.

This interactive art piece is called a wooden mirror as it reflects your silhouette if you stand in fron of it. It does this thanks to a camera, a program, machinery and many small wooden panels. The small wooden panels turn to hide or reflect light depending on where the user is.

This interactive art piece is a mix of digital and physical it consists of using a projector, a program and a wee remote used as a 'gun'. When shooting the 'gun' at the projected light a spurt of colours will be displayed. It's pretty cool.


After researching diffrent interactive art pieces i have come up with 2 ideas to make an interactive art piece of my own. I have come up with an idea for a physical interactive art piece and also a digital interactive art piece.

Blueprints and sketches of some ideas for making an interactive art piece.

So the first idea i came up with was Necronomicon book with a animatronic eye coming out of it and it has a camera with has face tracking software so that the eyes follows the user's head making it an interactive art piece. This piece will consist of a hollow book, an animatronic eye with eyelids, a camera and an Arduino.
But this isn't the project i will be making as it would take too long to make.

Blueprint version

This idea is an interactive website with a pixel art eye in the middle that follows you mouse cursor when clicking on the eye the eye would blink and when the eye is taken out of the web page the eye would have a 50% chance of closing and going to sleep or look around maniacally to find the mouse cursor again. It could also have diffrent percentages of chance that when you open the webpage the eye is in a diffrent mood i.e. it could look angry or sad or excited and happy.
This project will consist of HTML, CSS and javascript.


So after researching interactive art pieces i was mainly inspired by making a digital interactive art piece as i thought that it would be easier to fully accomplish so i decided to make the interactive eye on a website idea instead of the physical interactive eye book idea.

Working on the project

First step find out how i can make an object/div follow the mouse cursor.
My first thought was to make it all myself with javascript but i then realised that it would take too long to do so, so i found a Jquery plugin that would make a div follow the cursor in a set environment.
The plugin is called Jqeye and it can be found HERE

step 2 figure out how the plugin works and create a quick prototype with it.

I made a prototype of the mouse following eye and i posted it on my website HERE
currently the only problem with this prototype is that it doesn't function correctly in Firefox.

Step 3 figure out a way to make blinking eyelids when the eye is clicked.

I didn't think that this would be too hard to make but it turned that it was a lot harder than what I thought. Originally I planned on making the eyes blink with CSS animations but after literally hours of testing and failing I learned that CSS animation are not reliable for making what I wanted to make so i turned to JavaScript and Jquery and this turned out to be so much easier than I expected.
With the help of an animation plugin called Transit and some Jquery magic I was finally able to make a nice blinking animation for when the Iris is clicked.

Link to this version of the eye prototype HERE

This is the code that i wrote to activate the eyelids
(this code has been slightly changed since)


Transit is just a plugin that allows for smooth css transition animations by using Jquery you can find the plugin HERE

As you can see the Interactive Eye now looks a lot different than before.
I needed to change the iris image because the previous one got blocked, I have added a nice pixel art background but that won't be the final background image. And the only reason the eyelids are of different colour is so that I could differentiate them when I was setting them up.
I have also added some weird music to add more of an atmosphere to it.

What the eye looks when it is blinking/closed.

Step 4 make a looking around animation for when the mouse cursor leaves the webpage.
So after a lot of research on css animations and animation queues i finally managed to make the eye play an animation for when the mouse leaves the webpage and it all works fine apart fo if you spam mouse in and out of the webpage, doing this will mess with the animation queues making the looking around animation jerk and twitch when in play and will not be in the correct order.
Click HERE to see this version of the eye.

Here is a gif showing off how to activate the sleeping animation.

Here is the code that performs the animation when the mouse leaves the page and stops the animation when the mouse reenters the webpage.

Here is the code the makes the sleeping 'zzz' gif visible when the mouse leaves the webpage and disappear when the mouse reenters the page.
There is only one bug that occurs with the eye and it is that when you bring you mouse in and out of the webpage multiple times and then wait for the sleeping animation when keeping the mouse cursor out of the webpage, the animation will play incorrectly and will glitch out as the animation queues are messed up and out of sync. Hopefully i will be able to fix this issue but i have no idea of what is causing it.

Now all i  need to do is fix this bug and then create all the art assets for the eye.

Step 5 make the art
Here is some rough concept art for how i would like my final eye to look.
I decided to go with some kind of lizard/crocodile/monster eye look as i thought it would look nice.



I will be making the art look a lot more simpler and clean as i am thinking of making it all in a pixel art style.
This is a quick pixel test to see what my concept art would look like if it was in pixels.
In photoshop i used the mosaic pixel filter to quickly achieve this effect.
After a while of trying to make pixel art for this eye i abandoned the idea as i couldn't get the pixels to look the way i wanted them too as i didn't have enough pixel art knowledge to create this. So i went on to make the art in a more simplistic style with adobe illustrator.
Making the scales and the eye


Testing out the art on the eye

Final look of the eye
When loading up the webpage for the first time the art will take a few seconds to load.

Link to the final finished version of the eye HERE
Link to My website HERE to check out all the different versions

In the end i wasn't successful in fixing the bug that i talked about in the end of step 4 so it is still an occurring bug. 

I had some friends play test the Eye and they said that they really liked it the only thing that they thought was bothering was that the sound was too loud.

Overall I think that i have achieved a lot throughout this unit and that i have done quite well and I have found this part of the unit very enjoyable and fun as it was exciting to learn so many new things even if it was frustrating at times because of my limited knowledge on javascript but that's what learning is all about.

If i had more time to improve this reptilian eye i would have liked to play around with the art a bit more to make it look better and I would of really liked to fix that animation bug, I would of also liked to give it different mood states shown by the way the eyelids would be placed as you played around with it and a volume control would be useful addition as the music is sometimes too loud.