Final Presentation

Did my final presentation two days ago. I've improved with my presentations and ability to talk in front of people now, which is a good thing. I'm not sure if I seemed natural though because I was really really nervous. Overall, I've improved heaps from previous presentations where I wouldn't say much at all.

Anyway, here is my presentation. I made it on a flash website creator. Thought it might be a really simple, sneak peak in to how to make websites. It lacks the coding element though with this creator, which is why I chose it because I tend to avoid any form of programming. I want to improve on that next year as well.

Un-reality: Presentations

Presentation went reasonably well today, I wasn't as nervous as I was with previous presentations so I actually said something. I think I've gotten used to it so now I'm more comfortable with talking in front of people. This improvement would definitely help with presentations for next week.

Anyway, I heard other groups presenting and some of the games they talked about seemed really fun. Two of them really stood out to me.

One is Jenny's group. I saw some pictures of their game running and I liked the kidnapping part. A good thing in my perception of what went on with the game is their acting, which made the game really convincing.

The other is Emile's group. I liked it because it seemed really fun and I liked the variety of little experiences inside it. I tried out their binoculars to see the message in the red lines, I really liked that to be honest.

Hand-in is all completely ready too. V^^V I've been taking care of group hand-in since the first day, so there wasn't so much of a rush to get anything finished.

Un-reality: Run through

Run through day was today. It didn't go as well as intended because the digital parts were completely missed out so the setting of the game wasn't defined. What the digital parts did was set up the story so that it makes more sense and gives a clearer idea of what's happening.

A good thing is we could write a lot in the "potential next steps" on ways to improve the game. I think it would have worked better if we had more run throughs so that we could test out the game.

Below is our video, which was missed:



And here is the link to our blog as well.

Un-reality: Final work day

There's not much to say about this final working day for the project. At the moment everything is falling in to place, which is good.

A slight feeling of apprehension about tomorrow's run through though. It feels like something's not quite right yet. Whether it's just my imagination or not shall all be revealed tomorrow.

Un-reality: Filming

Since costumes got sorted yesterday we're half way there to filming. At this point time is running out so we had to simplify. Since planning was not sufficient enough for the filming in terms of location especially, we decided to do the filming in Albert Park in a quiet spot.

Michelle was in charge of makeup, since she's really good with that sort of thing. We got Tim, who was acting, to look tired and dirty to play the perfumer quickly writing down his last wish prior to his execution.




We got locations for each stage sorted and consequently the journal sorted as well.

For locations we simplified it down to three instead of the original five we intended. This would make it easier for us and keep costs down. We also made it so that the decrease in locations won't affect the plot either in accordance to the journal.

On to the journal. The actual writing isn't difficult. The part that took the most thinking was the clues. So while working on the journal we had to think about how to place and present the scents at each stage for selection.

With clues, originally I was thinking perhaps some kind of code. For example, deliberately misspelling words where the correct letters grouped up would make a sentence. Or maybe dots and dashes at certain letters of words to form a sentence. However, that would be rather difficult to do especially because there could be instances where the ink would splatter at some points and break the code.

I remembered reading about how back in the old days perfumers were also alchemists and perfumes were commonly sold in apothecaries. (Lyttelton, 2007) We took that and thought about their relationship with alchemy, which led to alchemical symbols. Symbols are useful because in my opinion they're a beautiful and simple way to convey some kind of message. Take a pen for example and view that as a symbol. It can say a lot of things with just a pen. It's writing, ideas, expression--the freedom to think. This is conveyed through a single symbol. On the other hand if you used words you'd have to carefully craft your words to convey the same meaning.

So within the journal this is what happens:

There is one main symbol for the complete perfume and different parts of it are drawn on different pages. So manipulating the property of the moleskine journal paper where rubbing oil on it would cause the first page the oil is applied to become transparent, this is how the complete symbol is revealed.

This rubbing oil action is first introduced with that main symbol. Therefore, in subsequent stages the player would get the idea that they're have to do more oil rubbings.

This leads on to the stages. Now, each separate component of the perfume has its own symbol hidden on the label of the bottle. What happens is you rub the oil on the seemingly blank label and the symbol is revealed. Each correct symbol to the correct scent when combined with all the other ones would ultimately create the whole symbol of the perfume. Of course, at some stages you'd get identical symbols mixed in at selections so that you'd still have to use your nose to find the right scent. Also, inside each bottle would be a message to tell you what to do once you have your selections at each stage.

Hopefully everything will fall in to place. It still feels like there's heaps to do for everyone.




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References:

Lyttelton, C. (2007). The Scent Trail. London, Great Britain: Transworld Publishers.

Un-reality: Here

Full group is back V^^V Yay, so we got some work done today. Not as much as I hoped, but it's still something.

I did the last practice painting I'm going to do, which is shown above. I think that's my best one so far. Things I still need to improve on is perspective and lighting.

Tim brought in a really beautiful, old perfume bottle to show us. We won't use it though because it's an expensive antique.


He also brought in a strip of leather for Edrian to tie the journal closed. It adds a nice touch to the aged journal.


Edrian also did some amazing drawings as well.


Michelle and I got some little pots to hold the scents. An idea I had was to put the little pots inside eggshells so that it would be more interesting since when you crack the eggs open the scent would come out.

In my head it worked out like this:

Empty out the insides of the eggs as shown below.


Then cut the eggs in half, put in the pots, glue the halves back together and do paintings on the shell.

Tried cutting it in half with a craft knife since I didn't want to use special expensive tools to do it. Obviously it didn't work out as shown below.


An alternative is to use origami. It looks pleasing and they're easy to place. They're also cheap and easy to make.

I wasn't sure about suggesting origami as an option at first, because I know that it's an obsession of mine and I don't know if the rest of the group would like it too. But they approve of using origami as well so I'm glad.


Group dynamics:

Energy is down in the atmosphere today, but still made some progress so that's good. I know that Jason is feeling useless because he's not doing much yet, but rest assured when it's his time to work he will do it well. I think the problem is because a lot of his work is post-production of various objects. For example, he can't edit the film until we actually have footage and he can't set up speakers either until the day comes and until we have definite locations.

Un-reality: Away

Most of the group was away today, so I continued practicing and experimenting with paintings. This time I used 100% opacity with a hard round brush and then a grainy rectangular brush for the more blended strokes. I like this one more than sticking to round brush the whole way through because it looks more like a painting than failed realism. This fits an approach to making art that I learned earlier this year; Stylise what you can't do.

So these are the two paintings that I did. Since other group members were away I was worried that all production would be at a standstill. I knew that the journal probably isn't going to sort itself out so I spent some time thinking through it.

At first we were going to use an existing famous perfumer's name as the perfumer who wrote the journal. But that seemed disrespectful, especially because they were dead and if anybody else saw the content without knowing that it's a game we could run in to problems. In the end it was decided that we should make up a fictional perfumer all together so that when Googled our content would be the ONLY content to come up. Thus, our content would not be missed by the players.

I wrote up the fictional perfumer's history and the letter he writes to the reader at the beginning of the journal. Now that we have a good story along with a solid character now, things should get easier from this point onwards in terms of production. I still need to write up the rest of the content of the journal though. The content is dependent on locations for ease of creating clues, so we have to sort that out.


Group dynamics:

Even though the majority of the group was away I'm glad that communication was still working between members. This is a great thing because it means that ideas can still develop and even though things would be really slow in terms of production it's better than having no productivity at all.