wferre20's blog

I work with my school’s chapter of the Technology Student Association. This is the largest nationwide technology competition in the country with over 1500 hundred high schools competing. Last year we were national champions and this year we are hoping to repeat. This is an exciting group of students to work with because my students are a blend of future engineers and artists

One of the lessons I teach them is that technology is nothing more than a tool. A hammer can assist with assembling a house. In the wrong hands it destroys easier than it can build. However, in the right hands a team of master craftsman can use it to build a skyscraper, a cathedral, a hospital or whatever those masters’ dream.

One of the events I am coordinating with my students is video game design. We are using a 3-d engine called Unity and various 3-d modeling software packages like…Mudbox, 3-d Studio Max, Solid Works, and Blender. We are also using standard design programs like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Our goal is to use this technology to assist in leaving an emotional impact on our audience. We want to utilize it to create connections to people. So our first goal was to develop from the word empathy. We wanted to use the technology to help people connect to a character, a place or an animal. The students and I brainstormed as a team and we felt that turtles would make the perfect character to empathize with because of the hardships they go through just in the first few months for their survival.

Particularly in Florida, turtle nests are under constant threat of humans stepping on them or light pollution confusing the direction they go. Raccoons will raid the nest. After the turtles are born and rushing to the ocean, crabs and birds prey on them. Once they make it to the sea, sharks and squid attack turtles. What makes matters even worse is human netting and pollution.  Animal interaction with turtles may be considered the circle of life, but human impact is devastating the turtle populations here in Florida.

Our team feels that our approach to this project could be very informative. However, the problem is how to make this video game playable and engaging.  I asked my students for words they felt associated with this early life of a turtle. They kept coming up with words like fearful, horror, and scary. Statistically the first 24 hours of a turtle’s life can greatly impact their lifespan which can be up to 80 years. So our design quandary is how to make an educational video game, which causes one to empathize with our turtle character, and captivates our players.

We decided to take an Alfred Hitchcock suspense direction. Our concept art will borrow from the themes of pulp movie posters and 1950’s monster movies. Currently, the students are researching font types, doing character development and board coding. However, our goal is to create empathy with our turtle character and to spur those who play into being more responsible. My goal as instructor is to engage our team with responsible design that can be fun. This class has helped me to understand how to instill that in my students better. All the artwork is very early concept work.

There are many aspects I enjoyed while reading the process books.

Jane A. Dorn’s Process Book:

My first observation is an appreciation for balance between the more gestural thought in her roughing out her ideas in contrast to the clear design prompts and explanations of her notes.  This very successfully balances out for the reader what is going on and engages the reader to want to explore her sketches.  The roughness seems to imply a freedom to explore where this project may lead her.

One of the things I take away from this book is her building on her drawing skills in combination with her design skills. I think that this is a tactic that I could take advantage of as an illustrator.  I am also impressed with her frankness in the process. Like when Dorn describes being “on the math short bus.” This sense of humor engages the reader to see the direction she is going to go in order to compensate her math deficiency.

What Dorn lack’s in math she more than makes up for in design skills. It is exciting that she takes what makes her book initially interesting in the first place and translates that into the finished product. Dorn using that creative balance between the chaos of thought with the simple compliment explanations gives a vitality and visual interest to her work. The only drawback from a distance it becomes visually confusing. Overall, she creates a very engaging product.

April Bliss’s Process Book

Right away when I look at Bliss’s book I am reminded of an old Apple campaign. Bliss’s approach appears more formal than Dorn’s. The use of photography is much more prevalent in Bliss’s book almost allowing for the images to speak for themselves in terms of her development process.

The questionnaires and the feedback devices used I thought were very intelligent, and help Bliss get a rough sense of who her demographic is that she is targeting. This was smart.  While our attack style to solve the problem might be slightly different. There is a lot I have learned from observing her process book.

I love her end product. The fun captured in Bliss’s sleeve almost caught me by surprise as her initial work was so formal. It was clever and had an almost Tim Burton quality to it in the aesthetic sense.  Definitely engaging, but got across clearly the intended message. I found her process and product effective.

Jamie Turpin’s Process Book:

Turpin’s strong sense of color is prevalent in her initial design of the book. Her visual references are a bit more chaotic than Bliss’s or Dorn’s. However, in Turpin’s layout there is a definitive organizational method in the arrangement that makes visual sense.

When one gets to the schematic section, there is a strong return to more organization. Turpin’s color studies seemed informed and backed up by strong references. She lays them out like selecting swatches. The rigorous testing adds credibility to her end product. She has given me things to ponder when it comes to how I do color studies. Her choices are gauged carefully with other successful products. It is less instinctual than I have worked in the past, but very, very smart.

I was surprised by the use of toned paper in the end product. It works. The toned down saturation is actually more visually appealing than some of the arresting color choices she experimented with. I think it engages the viewer better, by not overloading the color of the visuals. In the end, you are left with an energetic design, that is pleasing to look at, and that cleverly uses hierarchies.