• idea consists of photoscanning multiple male toilets with low light and merging them together in a 3d software, creating a amalgam of a space. (variation could be purely scans of toilets and urinals.)

• intend to play with scale and audio to disrupt its form.

• also include imagery of dogs (guard dogs, hostility, belonging to a pack, idea of sacrifice) - test out photogrammatry on actual dogs, see what kind of model i end up with when scanning a moving object out of my control

• use of low poly / leaning into the limited forms

• environment thought of as seemingly enclosed, claustrophobic space of a bathroom disrupted and walls missing, revealing red sky / opressive atmosphere of the open space with scaled up dogs or toilets. (inspired by UMURANGI GENERATION)

• lack of linear narrative / seeming progression, just letting the viewer exist within this uncomfortable space. (inspired by LSD dream simulator)

idea 2: a couple of robots on a friday night. a more narrative experience. Story of two robots set in a post apocalyptic cyber punk future but in a purely domestic setting where it feels almost the same as reality, told through progressing still shots where the camera is placed around their apartment, as they go through their friday night. One waits for the other to come home from work. Welcomed home with a kiss on the cheek. They cook and eat dinner, wash dishes, mop up. One lies on the dining table and the other opens up a mechanic chasm to tweak some gears. They put their nice outfits and seem to head out for a walk. They seem just like us, domestic and human and banal. story ends with frame of them holding hands infront of annihilation.

• perhaps its linear and narrative structure does not lend itself to the immersiveness of vr, but i find the material of 3d modelling and scanning to perhaps lend itself to its aesthetic

• inspired by the intro sequence of cruelty game, intending to use rudementary and limited vertex snapping low poly models, textures over saturated and chaotic. voices weird and off putting but their domesticity warms the heart.

• into the death machine? (the sun? junkyard?)

• UMURANGI GENERATION

  • NZ indie game, main mechanic / game play loop consists of taking photos of specific targets. in the background, constructed with low polygon models and an excellent atmospheric light and audio design in every level, portrays the reality of a fictional future. One where giant aliens resembling blue bottles has invaded NZ, where the UN send in giant mechas and armies to defend against them. The local protest against UN occupation as well as themes of colonialism. None of this is written in any single line of exposition in the game, rather, presented within its rich set design, sound design and mise en scene. I admire how this game, on the surface, is about photography, but through just existing in the various spaces it spawns you in, looking for the objects you must take photos of, the rest of the story is told. A masterclass in environmental immersion.

• LSD dream simulator

  • more of an art piece walking simulator of randomnly generated environments with no real goal than a game.

  • the aesthetic of this experience is beyond surreal, disorienting, weird and dream-like (as suggested by the title)

  • I am inspired by each and every environment within the experience, its use of game conventions settling the "player" to try to understand it with game logic and time and time again subverting it with pure anti-utilitarian aestheticism. or just weirdness

• The intro sequence of the game cruelty squad

  • The game itself puts you as a mercenary to kill targets within a obscure, chaotic and some of the time eye-burning levels.

  • The intro sequence itself is weird enough. Multiple still frame shots of a man recieving a call - mundane enough, but through its use of low polygon 3D models (doom esque), sound design and camera placement, it creates a unsettling viewing experience. I wish to emulate this aesthetic and viewing experience.

• ABZU

  • I'll keep it short - beautiful environments of ocean scenes rendered with simple models but ungodly breathtaking lighting and ambience. A swimming simulator.

• JAZZPUNK

  • pure weirdness in narrative, lowpolygon visuals once again.

• Kid Amnesia

  • radiohead's walking simulator - immersive environments, music sound track

Main take aways i want to apply to my work

• immersive, environmental story telling

• low poly, leaning into the rudementary and dated aesthetic

• surreality and weirdness - using incongruent models and textures in addition to weird, senseless narratives.

• playing with scale

• audio enhancing the work

• video game logic / the reversal of it

• contrast of real textures and the extremely stylised

Flaneur of the toilette. Dynamism of a dog in a bathroom. I intend to construct a space, extrapolating the feeling of being a transgender person and having to deal with the dilemma of gendered bathrooms. To construct an uncomfortable space, littered with nonsensically scaled urinals and toilets, in addition to using the motif of dogs. I intend to use photogrammetry and 3D scanning to produce less than ideal scans. Utilising the fragmented and distorted nature of incomplete models of these toilette items to emphasise the animosity of this space. Furthermore I want to experiment with scanning of moving subjects, ie. dogs, to see what kind of blurry mess I could create. For now, I am envisioning the end product to be a nonsensical, cruel, dreamland of a bathroom.

I did some scan experiments of moving subjects, as well as 2 scans of the bathroom. I've inserted them into blendr to test out its textures and interaction with lighting.

Also, with John's reference to the painting Dynamism of a dog on a leash, in relation to a moving scan test, I discovered this: https://variants.artbase.rhizome.org/Q1545/balla01.html

Unsure of the origins of this work or even the creator, but I find the digital replication and disruption of the painting to be beautiful.

In premiere pro, i applied adjustment layers to alter the colour of the setting to enhance the atmosphere, adding glow and a cold tint. In addition, I masked in faces into the poster and walls of the stall, creating a even more crowded and unsettling space. I really like the effect on the wall, due to the blending mode it looks like a face projected onto the wall.

My main goal with this test was to get up to date and reach the "equivalent" of my modelling knowledge in Nomad. To be able to upload textures and sculpt (even very shittily), as well as play with the lighting and camera. In the future I also want to learn how to replicate the low polygon style of ps1 / ps2 games in blender to incorporate it into the style of my first project.

In addition, I was testing out some ideas for the project. To fragment and distort the space of a bathroom, especially with the masculine exclusive motif of the urinal. I also wanted to play with lighting, using one main fill light of cool hues and a yellow grimy spotlight to create an uncomfortable atmosphere.

I did have a lot of struggles with uploading textures, sometimes they just don't show up even when the image is allocated to the object. I would also like to learn texture painting, and using the grease pencil to do simple animations.

Finally - I think I have the ability to make a crude version of what my final product will be. I will utilise lots of 3d photo scanned objects of urinals, toilet stalls and other objects of that atmosphere. In addition, I will attempt do some photoscan experiments of moving subjects - the dog. Playing into the unrefined nature of photoscanned models.

Could be in small built in screens or simply mapped across other objects. I want to use this to include more dog motifs as well as making the whole atmosphere more uncomfortable - like a morphing breathing porcelain urinal, or to use it for sky maps / backgrounds. Also for small screens to play grease pencil animations of a dog run cycle.

I first experimented with scale - the rock and trash bags are scaled up vastly to create the island. I like the sense of unreality this creates. I especially like the dissonance between pixelised textures and chunky meshes that is created when small models are scaled up.

Secondly I want to include just an abundance of toilets in my work. The work itself will be a toilet, but i also want to accentuate the sheer vastness of grimy porcelain constructions and the suggestion of pee stained tile. Not only in 3D model / scan form, but in image, in video, perhaps even audio. further more the appearance of these toilets on what seems to be a desolate island creates an unsettling atmosphere.

Lastly I tried out Styly's environment, filters and particle tools, especially relating to video textures and texture maps that emphasise the digital shoddiness and lack of refinement. Inspired by games like cruelty squad and LSD dream simulator, as well as some VR works i looked at when first exploring Styly, I want the textures to be ever-morphing, abstract and eye-straining pixel goodness. By importing a video and selecting the "fracture" effect, i was able to create this rotating wall of flat circle videos that oscilate between whole and broken. I really enjoyed this aspect.

I think moving on I want to lean further into the digital degradation of it all. Like previously documented, I think i will screen record the pixel loading effect in Blender (using the cycles sample mode) and reimport it into the scene as a video to be texture. I also want to populate the environment with an uncomfortable abundance of toilet imagery through a variety of techniques - animations on tangible screens, video textures warped over walls and particles, incongruently scaled 3D models, floating, sitting, evaporating.

(i like it's use of jarring and sharp meshes, constant movement and bright colours. It was psychedelic and immersive and sickening)

Games are not (often) linear stories, it takes away the agency of the player and the innate need for control and movement in a game itself. However, tools of storytelling are embedded within the environments the player encounters, the movements of the player character, the game play mechanic itself, the music, the graphics, the meat of the game itself. Of course, with this VR experience using styly, there are a lot of limitations in terms of code and intractability, however I intend to take inspiration from game / level design in order to guide the viewer to experience the space.

The plan diagram I illustrated previously is heavily inspired by level design's logic of a descent from normality into obscurity, manifesting itself in the environment. I also intend to use spatial audio to emphasize this. I was thinking of a doom mod called "My House", in which the gameplay loop consisted of beating normal doom maps in between a level of exploring a replica of the creator's house in doom. The house slowly starts being altered and distorted after every loop, eventually descending into a sort of purgatory populated by monsters and unnatural alterations to a space defined as home. In a shortened version, I intend to create a space which at first appears to be a seemingly normal toilet, but as the viewer is guided in deeper by the lack of choice, it distorts into a surreal and chaotic space.

I also intend to utilise spatial audio within styly to imbue each area with a specific sound, distorting towards the end/.

Some limitations I will have to consider is the ability to make an enclosed map like this in styly, as well as the movement of the player within this space.

options:

• creating a urinal "museum", a sterile and empty gallery space with toilets and urinals on display. This emphasizes the concept of animosity and an uncomfortable hostile environment with focus on object and sculptural forms. This is inspired by the work Monuments To Guilt https://louisthings.itch.io/monuments-to-guilt

• Glitch mindfield - to create a large open space like many other experiences in styly occupied by distorted and glitched toilet models and video textures.

• another variation of this could be a more simplified bathroom space, clashing the aesthetics of badly photoscanned models with bright and glitchy video textures.

When looking at interactive 360 videos and it's branching story paths, it made me think of a lot of game examples, namely those of David Cage, who aims to bring story telling and cinema into video games. His works Detroit Become Human and other smaller titles all embody his anthem of "every choice affecting your story" and I do like this mindset in approaching my project. Moreso, I thought of Disco Elysium, a tabletop rpg where the choices and paths are myriad, but similar story beats remain. I am inspired to gamify this experience.

While doing a few brain storming activities with random image / sentence generators, I came across a few concepts I took a liking to.

1. a meaningless easter egg hunt. A game environment with the main goal of looking for a monument, (the egg). Each location is contextless and arbituary, linked only by the appearance of this monument, which once discovered by the player, triggers a snap teleportation to the next environment. An exploration and attempt to make sense of infinitely meaningless spaces.

2. The prompt gave us snowy path, night sky and chinese experimental theatre. I thought of a simple interactive element. Simply following a snowy path with a snow particle / environment that has actual collision physics. You are slowed down by the piling of snow around you.

These brainstorming activities helped me alot with conceptualising a simple idea and how I would actualise them.

An Idea I had is to make a 360 video, perhaps interactive. I found that a lot of the MR examples we looked at all utilised the empathy machine to document and bring light to tragedies, whether it be plane crashes, boat sinkings or disease and war ridden communities. Obviously the medium of VR lends itself to this, and perhaps the forward nature of this technology makes it more appealing to governmental information hubs and UN articles. I wanted to call towards the domestic and comfortable, a night dinner with your loved ones simulator. I had this idea of a simple sequence of two robots enjoying a meal together for the last project, but I think this captures the theme of a moment in time better. It could be a 360 video sequence of still shots within this 3D model apartment, following two small robots sharing an intimate and domestic moment. I admire the aesthetics of early ps2 games, low poly and bright colours, glitchy pixelated textures and janky movement. A game cut scene.

Attached to this post is a small story board :3

How i would achieve this is most likely constructing the 3D environment and modelling the robots (could photoscan and rig a physical sculpture), animating it and then record it as a 360 video. The viewer model will stay stationary but can look around in these still frames. I will however have to learn godot or how to animate in blender, and subsequently recording it as a 360 video. Worse come to worse I could leave them all as frames with no movement except maybe video textures, subtitles and sound.

Time line

• build models in blender, optimize

• texture

• animate

• export and edit for 360 video

Either become completely linear with constructed viewing angles (limited teleportation, linear sound scape) or completely open world exploration.

Overall, as a stand alone experience, it is a well-constructed dreamscape, expanding on Dali's paintings and legacy. but the experience of it could be improved by viewing VR as something more than the follow up capitialisation this feels like. Surreal dreamscape walking simulator experiences are not a unfounded genre, I feel if this leaned into that more it could be a better experience.

Also 180 video instead of 360 for more concisely constructed shot by shot narrative.

low poly ps2 style + CRT layer effect (applied at end before 180 video in premiere)

pixelise + other shit

• eevee faster

• for cycles - up noise threshold to 0.5

• add detail first then optimise, doesnt have to do that much bc pre-rendered

• edit texture maps in photoshop then import back, attaching in shading tab

Inspired by New Yoku View, a VR/AR work I first found on styly.

https://gallery.styly.cc/scene/9f864a11-386c-4603-ba77-dba4697042a2

I liked the aesthetic of the moving models. I guessed that they were photoscanned clay sculptures which were then imported into blender, rigged and animated.

I thrifted a digimon plastic craft kit and used its parts to construct two small robot figures. I found that while using the 3D scanner app the true depth function was less effective in capturing smaller objects. I used the photo mode instead. I then imported these into Blender as GLTFs. I need to work on adding some more detail, using sculpt mode to really carve in the ridges. After that I'll optimise it a litte. Since I'm rendering these in blender to be 360 videos, I don't have to worry about optimisation that much. I'll also mess with the textures in photoshop. When I have the model ready I'll upload them the mixamo to rig and animate.

That's where I'm at. Hopefully I'll have some animated shots of the characters ready by next week.

also i am a little confused about such file type exports but such is life

interpolated textures etc

• research vr propeties in pp for spatial audio control

More game vibe? and robotic. also would be funny that these are the voices speaking and the subtitles are french,

oh yeah its gonna be french. i think. l'amour c'est comme une machine à mort.

going to do a test 360 render now