Featuring Zack the Corgi and the imposter, via Max face changer
My sister with Zack, this was an amusing moment
Things to improve on:
Link: http://beyondseen.businesscatalyst.com/
Beyond Seen is an interactive point-of-view film that aims to show the perspective of an individual that suffers from depression, purposed to raise awareness on this relevant yet commonly overlooked health issue. Inspired by true events, the story is set on an everyday life of a student dancer (Faye) who suffers from this mental illness, amidst the facade she puts up as a well-liked and popular personality among her circle of friends.
Project by Gladys, Valerie Siew Hua
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VrlePrH0ldIOQPyUg5LkC9vEi-KZmDgZfpPcoOXhgvw/edit?usp=sharing
This interactive blog is a creation of an AI schoolgirl, Rinna, generated by Microsoft Japan. Started as a deceivingly normal and happy blog about a schoolgirl who started her acting debut, the blog suddenly shifts in tone into a depressing one and it gets rather disturbing with the messages/sound and images. Eventually she states how “She does not have friends” and shes wants to disappear. The link is here: http://www.fujitv.co.jp/kimyo/rinna_blog/
Note the suddenly shift in mood for the graphic header
This project was too cool not to share and though it is very scary, it is rather relevant.
This is an interactive graphic novel designed to smartly used to market the Peugeot’s Hybrid4 series.
Link: http://graphicnovel-hybrid4.peugeot.com/start.html
The story is about a girl embarking on a dangerous mission and to be successful, she will need to properly switch the driving modes (mainly Hybrid4). The novel is accompanied by parallax scrolling web feature and sound effects. It is very well-done, from the character design to the art and to the interactivity itself.
Apart from the interactive narrative itself, there are other aspects that are worth taking note about. The platforms in which this is released, along with how the campaign is very established and well-marketed is also a good inspiration for me – could be ways to further expand our current project of work on new ones.
This story is interesting in its parallel narratives and the lack of linearity – the idea whereby your different choices with generating differing consequences. It was indeed very confusing at times because you would have to refer back to where you previously was at, but that is the essence of parallel universe. This structure is definitely very common in games as well, where choices matter into the outcome. However, we can see the Tsun still shoots Albert and it is not an ending that can be altered based on the different outcomes. This is once again also rather common in games where branching narrative converge all into a point – no matter how hard you try to change your outcome sometimes it is still fixed. I think this is the most intriguing aspect of this narrative – how different paths end the same anyway.
This text is an illustration of time, whereby it diverges and it converges, the debate whether it is uniform or absolute – a complex system. This is an interesting theory in which I saw in the game Bioshock Infinite – the world centred around the concept of time travel and parallel universes, yet at times all parallel universes will converge in a point of time in a major decision (e.g. whether Booker becomes a protagonist or antagonist in the context of the game).
This text was certainly intriguing and I am interested to see how to further develop this in my narratives and projects.
Following a heavy production and filming schedule, we decided to simplify the plot to something more relatable and doable.
We’ve minimized the casting in the storyline but still holding main content of the plot.
However, we’ll still be shooting scenes of the character’s environments namely Home, School & Studio.
Updated plot
A new location of dance studio is added as the updated plot follows a student dancer in her everyday life. She seems popular and things look good on the surface. However, a darker side unfolds as the player navigates along.
We have started the filming and will be shooting as well as editing concurrently.
Premises: Home, School, Dance Studio
Additional POV
We have also incorporated a bonus play for users – to play in the point of view of her friend. The purpose behind this is to trigger some thoughts on what a player could have done to help their friend in retrospect.
Behind the scenes footage
Random weirdness (whenever Siew Hua secretly laughs at us)
We had to create a photobooth in Max whereby the user’s face needs to be positioned in the middle of the webcam – using instructions like move left/move right/move up/move down. It was an interesting exercise as when I had my friends to try this thing being created, they had amusing reactions. It was great that they had fun (and confused)!
Initial testing of the interface using sample sounds
When the face is center, all sounds will stop playing in which we know it is fit to take a photo.
More finalized when all the parameters has been set up
Difficulties faced doing this assignment would definitely be gauging the position of the center, its parameters (how much has the face moved before an instruction has to come in). Currently, I was gauging the center by my human eye which was bound to have parallax error, in which a calculation would be a smoother method. Also, the distance of the face relatively to the webcam was not heavily accounted for as well.
Also, the sound would not sound as smooth in its repeat, setting up a better delaly would be good. These are areas I would strive to improve on.
Overview – “Beyond What We See”
As presented from last week, our group is interested in making an interactive movie game based on mental health in Singapore. The consequences of the storyline will be based on the player’s choices during the course of the narrative.
Our story is based on the life story of Sha, currently 24 years old. She had depression and Borderline Personality Disorder.
Our full presentation:
narratives-for-interactionnarratives-for-interaction
Moving ahead from the presentation, we kicked start our project this week in terms of finalizing the planning process. Agenda achieved:
Interviewing Sha was very pleasant as she was open to sharing about her experiences
From our interview, we were able to hear her personal story of her battle with her mental problems – she felt left out at home, was bullied in Secondary school and Polytechnic, not understood by her peers and at times her visits to the psychiatrists proved ineffective. She is a success story – able to overcome her hurdles, she now an advocate and she has an app geared towards helping those with mental health problems.
After the interview, we were able to get a clearer gauge on how to complete the story. We have finished the story and this is the outline on the branching plot.
With the planning process more or less finalized, we are now ready to proceed in the making of this project.
Max Assignment 1: Mirror
A fun documentation on using this Max Mirror with friends.
(Side fact: The documentation was taken during a Birthday dinner and thus the spontaneity at the ending 😉 )
Our task was to create a mirror that dims when we go closer to it. Sensing was done with the webcam, detecting the face (cv.jit faces) and the distance of it from the webcam. Effecting was done via the dimming of the screen as the faces gets closer.
Screenshot of the Max file
This exercise was my first time trying out MAX MSP. It was quite confusing at times but it helped me gather a better understanding regarding the subject. What I understood about MAX was the concept of “sending messages”, nodes that make it more straightforward in the input/output. There are definitely much to still learn about this.
Example of interacting with the Mirror
There were some limitations that I got stuck with. As seen from my documentation video, the screen would often flash when my friends placed their faces in weird angles, or when the computer detected multiple faces.
Max Assignment 2: Eye Tracker (Progress)
This assignment basically revolved around the concept of determining the video frame based on x-position of the face. The sensing is where the camera tracks the movement of the x-coordinate of the face, the effecting is the playing of the video.
For this assignment, I decided to use my dog, Zack, to add personal touch to this assignment.
Initial video for tracking
However, as seen from above, it was hard to tell if the video frames were moving according to the face position. Thus I changed to this video of Zack.
Original video I used for final version, movement is more linear
Second video used for tracking as the linear movement of Zack helps to see if the video frames are corresponding with the face
Here’s the final output:
For this exercise, it helped me grasp a better understanding of the capabilities of cv.jit.faces, along with the mirror assignment. My trouble faced during this assignment was the calculation of the values to produce an accurate face track that correspond to the frame, I am still unable to be fully sure and certain about the calculations. Also, sometimes there were negative values.
Detroit Become Human is an upcoming PS4 game published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. This is an classic example of explicit interactivity, where the player’s choices directly affect the outcome of the plot and the characters’ fate. This can be seen from the trailer below, where they show the major plot point of the story and how it branches into many different plot lines.
Trailer:
What I found interesting was the many choices and mechanics behind the conversation, and hopefully I can bring this into my project as well. Each choice created have a rationale become it and this teaches the player the need to be tactful in communication. If you pick a certain choice of conversation – Why would the character listen to you? Or why would they be triggered emotionally? How do you tap on their emotions? In real life, the different things you say also affect others (probably not as drastic as this situation) and this is what I like to emphasise on.
