Anitavr Evidence of research into employment and progression opportunities
A professional online presence in the form of a website and/or blog
A showreel
An online portfolio of design materials and immersive content
Critical Appraisal (1,000 words)
Empty store is a pop-up exhibition space that aims to support digital fashion artists, by displaying artists’ work and making them interactable with the physical space. Empty store will allow users to interact with the digital assets through the means of AR – merging the physical environment with augmented reality. Creating an immersive experience for the public, will lead to a more effective way to express the voice and vision of digital artists, not to mention how the artworks will come to life in AR, combining the visuals with sound and surroundings.
I have always been interested in fashion, how the world and the industry of it works. Especially in the last year I started deepening my knowledge in digital fashion, and I took part in a summer course in Amsterdam Fashion School that taught me how to make 3D garments, and understood how the process to create digital fashion is so similar to physical fashion.
Also digital fashion allows to save so much waste during the prototyping phase, and produces a minimum amount of CO2, which is a good comparison to physical fashion, which is the second industry for pollution production:
With the fashion digitalization especially after Covid 19, Fashion has been highly affected by this phenomenon, both as regards to the future of brick-and-mortar stores, from a production point of view. A high percentage of physical stores were forced to shut down between 2020-22, leading to the lost the popularity of the high streets, full of retail stores, and to the rise of e-commerce. Many brands changed their strategy, by turning simple retail shops, into a more visual and conceptual exposition space with few garments and accessories.
Such as the South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster, that created in every shop a sort of contemporary art exhibition, where the glasses take part in, or Odin Fragrance that rescales small perfumes, making them the center of attention, Jaquemus creating pop-up vending machines where customers can buy all sort of accessories, to Adidas Original making pop up spaces appear, that reflect streetwear culture and Adidas being part of it during its development.
It will be a space given by LCC, where there will be few physical installations and projections on the walls. Being a pop-up store, the aim would be to make the installation easy for transport and to build once on site. Eco-sustainable materials will be prioritized for the physical elements.
Space would be around 3×3 meters.
Empty store will reflect my experience in London so far and all the challenges this metropolis puts in front of me, in particular, it will focus on the theme of loneliness, estrangement and frustration, and how I manage to overcome these feelings day by day. Therefore, the physical space will resemble common London scenarios where I experience such emotions, and for each scene, there would be in AR a 3D avatar, interacting with the surroundings, wearing monumental, almost theatrical digital clothes, as a symbol of embracing identity, self-expression, confidence, and creativity that help not feeling lost in such a big city like London.
As a souvenir from the exhibition I thought it could be fun to have these stickers and encourage people to stick them on their clothes. in AR they would work as Target images and make some 3d asset appear on them.
For this unity we were asked to make a Worked Based Portfolio, to include key elements of professional personal presentationsuch as CV, covering letter and online portfolio, review the guezt lectures we had during the term, and talk about the process about the Sheffield Graveyard Project, what I’ve personally done for it and the final result with everyones contribution to it.
I decided to not turn my university blog into my final online portfolio required for this unity, because I wanted it to be more simple, full of images video that would focus the attention of the potential new boss
I found out EditorX while on youtube, appearing as an ad. I’ve already used it previously for a personal project, really enjoyed the interface, pretty straight forward, simple to understand and with all the assets I needed, therefore I tough it could be a good idea to create my portfolio on this platform.
PORTFOLIO LINK: https://anitaghaffa.editorx.io/anita-ghaffarian
Decided to divide my website in
here you’ll find my name and a short video trailer with a sum up of all my best projects I’ve done so far.
Currently I’m still working on the trailer, because it requires a bit of time to revise all the screen recording pictures, and actual past projects I have, so I is a long process. I personally don’t have experience in video editing so my idea is to make a simple showreel with my best shorts, few basic descriptions of the projects and what I do.
Here I decided to use a layout given by the platform that uses square pictures with a brief description that if clicked can redirect you to the anchor located in the same page, where you can know more about the single project finding more description and youtube videos.
I decided to include my Global Campus studio project collaboration, since is a good example of team work and also shows my skills in graphoc design.
I inclued for 3d Modelling exaples the perfect holiday destination project and my charachter desing & animation, plus couple of personal projects modelling 3d fashion accessories, that can be an exaple of what I’m interested to and as well an example of realistic modelling.
For vr I included my serious game from my first year and my new game I’ve been working on this second year, because both are projects that I’ve work on by my self from the idea to the final result, showing my skillls in 3d modelling, animation, coding and overall my abiity in using Maya and Unity.
Here is a sort of resume with my general info, an overview to understand my interests, past experience, education and languages spoken and my software knowledge.
I used a layout from editor x wich I found really useful
here you can find all my detail, from facebook, linkedIn, youtube Channel and email. You also can message me straight from the page that will redirect the message to my personal email.
After setting up all the website I took time to make my video portfolio that I’ll add in the home page. It has a sum up of my best works and I’ve uploaded on youtube, so it is easy for everyone to see it.
I’ve enjoyed a lot creating my own website, my next step will be having the personalized URL. I also want to set up in my future an artstation portfolio, because after attending a lecture at LCC with a game art recruiter, during his speach he said that most of the people use Artstation to share their work online and that the companies are more familiar with taht platform and tend to check that one during the hiring process.
For my resume I decided to follow Ed Tlegenov advice, one of our gest lecturers for this unit. Ed is part of the research team for Autdesk and adviced us to have an easy to scan resume that the logarithm that big tech companies use can read easity, in oder to have our CV seen by an actual person and get to the next step.
I used to have a more visual Resume divided in two columns:
After Ed’s lecture I’ve changed it by:
My cover letter I a short presentation of my self that includes what I’m currently doing, my education back ground, my most recent and relevant Project I’ve been working on and My most relevant skills for that job position regarding both technical or language knowledge.
For this unit we have to do a VR game/experience that is interactive and that runs for Oculus Quest 2. We had complete freedom as regards the main theme and structure of our game.
My first though for this project was that I wanted it to look pleasant, this a really reach environment full of colour and element to get lost into, trying to recreate a surreal atmosphere. I started thinking about lice in Wonderland, which has the surreal and magic atosphere that I was looking for, started to search for images of clips both from the animation and movie and did a moodboard with few pics of what I enjoy the most about the aesthethic.
I started focusing mainly on the chess scene in the Movie where Alice is as big as the pawns, and another interesting scene which is when she Fights the Queen, the main enemy of the whole plot. here there is the link of the scene I’m refferring to:
I though that it could be interesting and challenging making a VR game, where the player is on a sort of distorted – chess board, on multiple levels, where the aim is to survive all the enemies that he/she encounters on the way, which will be the pawn and other random obstacles. To make it more friendly for everyone I decided thta the player does not have to follow any chess scrict rule, infsact to avoid the other pawn the player can jump run or climb, but instead the pawn will only move following the rules. My main inspo for the interaction was this scene from Harry Potter where the characters are in this huge chess board and have to fight agaist the pieces following chess rules in order to survive,.
To actually start working on my project I usually start by modelling onMaya my main elemets in the scene. In this case I started on the path that the player will play on, by modelling it and giving a basic maya texture to make it seem more like a distorted chess board.
since I didn’t know how to play chess I had to look up the basic chess pieces moves and just wrote them down on my sketchbook to remember them easier
to give the dreamy feeling I added a cloud shader to the chess board and activated the “fog” option in the inspector
After giving a general shape to what my scene would look like, with the main path and couple of environmental elements, I focused of the actual mechanics of the game that involves coding, to make it an actual survival game.
When I played the game all the chess pieces where showing up at the same time so I needed to find some way to make them appear gradually as the player gets closer to them.
this script requires referencing with Player, the Pawn and distance. It checks if player is in range with a pawn in a certain distance, it will activate the pawn in the scene, or else the rest will remain hidden. This function will loop for each pawn in this distance.
The main aim for my game is to try to avoid the chess pieces in order to survive and win the game. I needed a script that would:
To make the player understand how far they achieved in the game, I added a simple score system that just says how far the player went using numbers. Youtube video
the path is developed in 3 levels. to go one level to another there is a big step that you can not climb up, therefore I made these moving platform that work as lifts because can transfer the player up and down just by stepping on it. Link for the tutorial I followed:
this is the main interaction in VR with the player. the player has to pick up the ball and throw it againt the king to decrease his health and destroy it in the end. Had some technical issues:
as it can be seen from the video it is spawining more than 3 balls per time. I decided to keep it like this because trying in VR is easier to pick up the balls since the playre has more possibilities and it also fits the crazy aesthetics.
As it can be seen from the video it needs to:
I made a short showreel showing a little bit of everything I’ve worked onto meke this VR game. the song is the same that I’ve used in the background in the game Aphex Twin – Elio
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s-jBtrfTV5ikGLW2QIL5Zkzmdn3DBwat/view?usp=sharing
Here there is the apk of my final project:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s-jBtrfTV5ikGLW2QIL5Zkzmdn3DBwat/view?usp=sharing
I’ve enjoyed a lot working on this project, I went though a lot of challenges since the beginning starting with the idea which changed a lot troghout the process, to building the mechanincs which required a bit of coding. I’ve learnt a lot more about C#, I’ve noticed that since last year my understanding of the language has improved a lot.
Checkmate VR is a VR survival game that challenges the player to survive a long distorted chessboard full of enemies, which are the basic chess pieces jumping around and moving following chess rules. The final step is to do checkmate by trowing this spiky ball to the King do decrease his health, but at the same time there is the Queen that tries her best to get in the player way.
It is an Immersive Virtual Reality game, where the player can experience a surreal world, which only VR can give, where our usual human point of view is rescaled and everything around us that in real life we are used to see small and innocent is huge and dangerous. I wanted to give another meaning to simple objects of our day to day life creating a whole new journey in this inspired Alice in Wonderland World.
I’m really happy with the result, all the basic mechanics work as I wanted and the visual surroundings are as I was planning of.
In the future I’d like to imrove it on the VR interaction, since during this period I could work on too much due to technical issues regarding my PC, which can’t support VR anymore, and I had the opportunity to see in VR only when I was onsite, which wan’t enough.
To improve the interactions I would have liked to keep the controlers and to match specific kind of hand movement to a movement in VR. for example if in reality you are moving the controllers fast up and down, in VR that means you are running. other wise by moving the controllers left and right that would change the direction in VR. for now a stick to basic movement controlled by the joystick to move in 4 direction and to a default speed.
In our first lecture we’ve seen how VR can be used for education, medicine, where it can be used for training in surgeries, for example and for social justice, especially in the forensic field. We talked about Forensic Architecture, which is an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigating human rights violations, including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations. It refers to the production and presentation of architectural evidence relating to buildings, urban environments—within legal and political processes.
Their work involves open-source investigation, the construction of digital and physical models, 3D animation, virtual reality environments and cartographic platforms.
Architectural analysis and digital modelling techniques enable to unravel that complexity, and to present information in a convincing, precise, and accessible manner–qualities which are crucial to the pursuit of accountability.
source: https://forensic-architecture.org/
This reading made me understand more and more how the tech industry is still highly male-dominated and because of this, most of the contents, apps and tools are designed by men for men, creating a big gap in unequality among women and men. Following a few statistics on the paper, in the UK only 12% of the jobs in tech are held by women, while in the US is 25%.
This situation is the result of many factors, like geographic location which has a dominant influence on gender difference for internet/mobile access.
As it always has been internet can be an amazing tool if used with a positive purpose, but on the other hand can be a hate device, able to spread anger and negativity quickly. An example can be how both ICTs (information and communication technologies) helps give voice to feminists and minorities, and on the other side, misogynist groups can use online resources to spread hate.
That’s been the reason why there are still a lot of people that are against new technologies because the is still a huge slice of people that take advantage of ICTs for bad purposes, instead of building something useful that can help merge minorities and people in difficulty with technologies and improve.
source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13552074.2018.1489952?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Coded Bias on Netflix takes exactly about this issue, how AI is based on some Date and algorithms that identify more easily men and light-skinned individuals (this when talking about facial recognition). Cathy O’Neill defines algorithms as ” using historical information to make predictions about the future”, therefore if the notions and information we give to technologies and computers are from the past, consequentially is unavoidable that we encounter this kind of sexist and racist episodes in software. Further examples of discrimination by AI software can be the Amazon one, where an AI software was used to scan and analyze resumes and it ended up rejecting all women applicants. Another example that involves in this case racism by AI is the one that regards United Health Group, where their main algorithm was prioritizing healthier white patients, over sicker black ones.
AI has so much potential, but if the information that built the data behind it is not updated these days it can just be destructive. UK police started using facial recognition without a legal basis, by putting cameras in public spaces that could recognize peoples’ faces and associate them with potential wanted criminals, the problem is that this software is inaccurate, leading to unhappy mistakes where the machines associate criminal profiles of innocent people walking by.
source: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81328723
Visual storytelling is how the story/narrative is told through the use of shapes, colour and prompts and what they communicate to the audience. In VR, these elements are fundamental since it is an immersive technology, where the visual aesthetic plays the principal role, environment and its colour and shapes are the first things we experience when wearing the headset for the first time. Our brain is almost overwhelmed by visual elements, therefore these must be well thought and have a specific aim meaning in the scene, otherwise, the user might just get distracted by them and not keep the attention on the actual narrative.
When taliking about shapes, these can be sintetized in the three basic ones:
humans have been giving meanings to shapes since the antiquity, associating them to things they experiences throughout the day
triangle: fear, distrust, suspition
square: manmaid, stability, strenght, oldfashioned
circle: completeness, balance, maternity, endlessness
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Horizontal lines have more or less the same meaning as squares, they remind of the horizon, so stability, it is also considerable as a leading line, which are those lines that our eyes follow in the landscape that take to the main elements in the scene
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Vertical lines rimind of power, but if repeated they make you think about prison, being imprisoned
Colours as well assume a huge meaning in the environment and how the audience perceives them. I think that visual elements in VR are fundamental and they are really important for narrative comprehension. When immersed our brain is completely focused on our sight, in discovering the “new environment” around us, therefore it doesn’t pay a lot of attention to a voice narrating for example. That’s why visual elements are so important because, if effective they can almost replace voices or any kind of language communication. Visual elements are such a great tool because are discreet, but at the same time powerful, and our brain detects them almost automatically.
Virtual Reality lets developers and artists play with hue, values, saturation and brightness, creating both unrealistic and realistic coloured environments, making people able to me part of them and interact with the surroundings. It is not only an aesthetical choice, but it let players be engaged both on their emotional side.
Color is a powerful communication medium, that has been used through the years between film, television, 2D gaming and virtual and augmented reality to create interesting and engaging scenarios to keep the audience attention high and curious. If we look into films, it can be noticed that colour is not only used passively for the environment or object, but it can be used as a signal, for example, when a character changes suddenly his/her attitude towards the narrative, directors typically make their characters change clothes of take of a particular piece of clothing, revealing a new colour. Also, in VR color can be used actively, for example, could be used to change scene smoothly, by changing its value, or if staying in the same scene, it can be used to focus the attention to another point of view.
Prompts are part of the visual storytelling, they help at the scene, by saying something more about the characters or the time in which the experience is. There are different types of it like personal, which belong to the character and say something about the personality, or practical prompts that do not necessarily belong to the narrative but are useful for particular moments in the scene. More or less almost everything in the scene can be used as a prompt, and colour is one of them.
Light is highly related to color because it can change its perception, by varying the value, making colours darker or brighter, this can also arouse a series of emotions. But light also has its meanings in storytelling, for example, by nature, light tells which part of the day is, like morning or evening, and people usually associate to different periods of the day, different feelings like a bright morning can be felt like positive, full of energy, while evenings have that romantic/nostalgic atmosphere. Light in cinematography has a major role, because it tells emotions, focus the attention on particular characters and reveals their intention or doubts in the scene. I think that in VR light is important, but not as much as in films, because since BR is 360° experience, we can’t have specific shorts because the main camera is our eyes, it is more an environment light, therefore I suppose that the colors are much more significant to express emotions and moods. Maybe a good use of light in VR is when used as a prompt, like a practical prompt, for example, illuminates a specific object or character in the scene.
In this lecture we focused on the first part about Google Maps, and how much trust we give to it. Firstly we thought about when you go on holiday or in a new place, what is the first thing you do? Is checking google maps to know where to go if we have an address for example. But the question is, how truly reliable is, is it 100% mirroring the reality?
That’s when our certainties started becoming doubts, we used as an example Palestine, which is a country, but on Google Maps its borders are not the same ones as the other countries’ borders, as is not a “full country”. This lecture can be compared to Coded Bias, because they talk almost about the same thing, at least we encounter the same doubts. All this internet web site and softwares are based on Data, and as I’ve already said, data is “using historical information”, and this data is storaged by people. Therefore is like those people in charge of the data are making the software and are reasonsabe on “how the software thinks and act” because it is based on the data they had. And if we keep analyzing the few people that insert data have a specific background, gender, ethnicity and so on, in consequence there might be sexist and racist episodes regarding AI softwares.
If by real we mean how we perceive the world through our 5 senses. If we define VR as a computer generated 360 experience, Virtual Reality and the Physical reality are the two extremes, and in the middle we can find mixed reality, cinema, augmented reality, theatre which is closer to physical reality than cinema because is a life performance, where is some cases it can be interactive, and news, which are not part of the physical reality, because are always mediated, to make them more interesting, therefore by mediated reality we mean when the information before coming to you go through a media. However, even Physical reality can be or is mediated, an example can be constructivism, where people usually try to create their own vision of the world, which is built on what they perceive from news, media, social media, school, our senses and I think that geographic location has a big impact on human perception of the reality. Just think about memories, for example, when talking about a shared memory with someone and they don’t recall few facts or you have remember different things for the same memory, that is how we all build without even noticing own personal model of the reality. Therefore, if even physical reality is mediated, we can say that everything is a representation.
According to Jean Baudrillard, we live in an age where everything is a representation, a virtual representation, virtual representation of ourselves, for example, he says everything is a simulacrum, not real and he calls this Hyperreality. In the physical reality we can encounter loads of simulacrum, during the lecture we talked about a Sherlock Holmes house in London, or Harry Potter studios, this is simulacrum examples because this character or places are fictional, they were not real people but a physical representation of the house/streets were done. Even with social media, we people have a representation of their selves, for example on Instagram there is a fashion influencer called @lilmiquela, which is a computer generated avatar, that looks aesthetically really close to a real person, that posts fashion tips/outfits and so on, and pictures with real people. Of course behind her profile there is a group of people managing the account making it “look” as real as possible, creating a simulacrum.
Digital Wonderland is a platform created in 2002 by Marie Laure Ryan, describing it as a “computer generated three-dimensional landscape in which we would experience an expansion of our physical and sensory powers, leaving our body and see ourselves from the outside”.
This concept is really close to VR Chat, where people interact, built relationships, share emotions and feeling, true emotion and feelings on a VR platform. This can make us think that at the end VR is not that far from physical reality, because it can not be considered the opposite of if we can experience such emotions.
I personally wouldn’t consider VR the complete opposite of the “real world”, because despite is is computer generated graphic world, we still experience true sensations, feeling, we still have our own perception of it through our 5 senses, as we do in the physical world. A surreal environment, a landscape that doesn’t reflect exactly the reality won’t make the experience less real, if we still can feel and experience emotions through it. If we keep analyzing this, we can end talking about how companies try and try to built softwares that have a great definitions, looking almost real, but if our can’t feel any emotions, if you don’t feel immersed it all that effort to make it look real doesn’t lead to anything, and maybe a low poly VR game can be much more interesting compared to it.
We talked about 360 panoramic paintings at the start of the lecture, seen as a second order reality, where the first order is the physical environment. The second order in this case is trying to convince the audience the painting reality, creating an immersive experience, in a live experience.
Romanticism, artistic movement developed around the end of the 18th century is characterized by subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism, spontaneity, freedom from rules, most of all the environment reflects one’s emotion, and not the physical reality for what it exactly is.
This is a pretty well known paining from the Romanticism movement of Caspar D. Friedrich. The man stands upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer. He is wrapped in a dark green overcoat, and grips a walking stick in his right hand. His hair caught in a wind, the wanderer gazes out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog.
During the lecture we were asked to think about a Never Ending VR story based on this painting, where we could take inspiration from a book, film, story dream or whatever it was helpful.
I made a padlet because I felt it was visually easier for me to organize the ideas: https://artslondon.padlet.org/aghaffarian12201911/cwoqsrrsmt1hr1k2
How you can see from padlet,
The Theatre has existed since the ancient times, from the Greeks until nowadays and always tried to create immersion, for example through light, stage scenography, to create a sense of reality. But with this kind of theatre the audience is sitting and watching the play, creating a 4th wall, that limits the immersion. Lately from the 2000 theatre started to change, trying to create a fuller experience for the audience, trying to tear down the fourth wall, with performers trying to interact directly with the audience, or with the absence of a stage but with a more dynamic environment, where the audience can move and explore around. We were shown Ghosts, by Jonghee Woo,
I liked this play, I am not a big theatre fan, I struggle to keep the attention throughout the whole play, but with immersive theatre it gets much more interesting. I found this play engaging and I liked how the actors perform, but I don’t think that they broke the 4th wall, because, yes the audience was moving around and was able to be really close to the actors without any stage boundaries, but the performers didn’t interact directly with them, the audience was still there listening and watching remotely.
sources: https://uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog
Talking about the fourth wall in VR I think is a bit of a broad concept, because it depends on which VR experience we are considering, it can go from a 360 VR movie to an interactive game or training program.
Most of the time when experiences or games are interactive, the audience is much more engaged, so I think that you don’t feel the presence of the fourth wall as much as a 360 VR movie which can be compared to the traditional theatre setup. So overall interactions help a lot to not fell the 4th wall presence, but they are not the only thing that keeps the agency in a VR experience. The environment, plot, elements and whatever has to do with keeping up the player’s attention and interest.
Eadweard Muybridge was an English pioneer for his work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection, analysing animal and people movement frame by frame.
In class I analysed this short clip from A Goofy Movie, by screenshotting the frames that I considered relevant for the animation. Goofy appears like a elastic figure trying to get out of the car but bouncing back because of the security belt.
I decided to do a happy walk and look for resources on Internet
to make this animation we had to record ourselves doing a “dramatic scene” and use it as a reference for the animation. Here’s the result
In order to create a character that can ommunicate to the public, we should understand: the shapes it is made of, how it’s volume behavies, how it moves in the environment and its colours, why we chose those colour and what we want to say about its personality through them.
I chose to analyse Clancy, from Midnight gospel
Head composed by a triangle (hat) that dominates the character figure and the actual head that is a small circle but in proportion with the body.
TRIANGLE
The character , I think is in between being sharp and low intelligence, because during his journeys he meets characters and can keep up with conversations and ask questions about the episod topic, but at the same time he is learning from the other characters, trying to grow up in terms of self-aknowledgement
the CIRCLE can indicate he is a quite young character.
SQUARE BODY
In his main state the body can be inscribed in a rectangular shape, soft lines. He changes his body depending on the episode.
It is a solid body, infact Clancy has this body in his main World where his stability and regular life style is. He can be considered reliable and peacefull.
To study the colour I used color.adobe.com to understand the which priciple was used for the colour choice.
Global Campus Studio is a collaboration between Canadian (Ryerson University) & UK (LCC) students. Our group created “Momento”, an App that centres on virtual collaborative space and platform for the performance art of dance that offer interdisciplinary resources and networking opportunities for dancers impacted by COVID-19. This program will incorporate dance instruction with a creative interface that has components of VR, 3D animation and other visual elements.
Being a VR student, my assignment was to think and try to create an AR/VR experience regarding the App. My idea was to create an ar or vr video tutorial for the users. The teacher could upload on his/her profile a prerecorded ar/vr video of a specific lesson, letting the students rewatch the class slowly and giving them the possibility to pause the video or send it back in case they did not fully understand the steps.
During week four in “Introduction to virtual reality” we learnt the basics of character design and how to animate 3D models. I applied what I leant during the week on Momento and did a short clip of a possible “dance tutorial”.
I also created the Logo and designed the App’s interface, applying my highschool studies in design:
For this unit we had to write an essay; this is the first academical essay that I’ writing, therefore it’s been a bit difficult for me under the language skills and organizing the point of my idea of view, but also because I was unsure about which top I’d liked to discuss.
Initially, I wanted to write about how much visual realism is related to the presence and affects the level of immersive ness of the player, but then I did not have enough resources and interest in developing this topic, I wrote down roughly half of it but I never continued because of the lack of affinity to my personal. After I thought about a topic that would catch my interest concretely, and I tough it could be interesting if I spoke about the relationship between fashion and virtual reality, in particular, whether VR can give the same kind of emotions as physical fashion shows and also the environmental impact with and without using VR.
I found my references mainly online, for example, online magazines like Vogue and websites, like Highsnobety, the Fabricant and I used also youtube videos, trying to give an overall explanation about fashion and how fashion used advanced technologies during the decades especially VR.
I discovered a really good example of a complete VR shopping experience led by Alibaba in 2016 “Buy+”, that allows players to purchase articles across China, USA, Australia’s shops.https://www.youtube.com/embed/-HcKRBKlilg?feature=oembed
other than virtual shopping experiences (V-commerce) I centred my attention towards fashion weeks, which create loads of pollution due to countless trips both for business and for guests to attend the catwalks. I found two main examples of virtual catwalks, one from Topshop (2014) the other from Tommy Hilfiger (2015).https://www.youtube.com/embed/lUal_Lrhec0?feature=oembed
The fabricant (https://www.thefabricant.com/), which I already knew, a digital fashion house, that believes in creating garments only digitally through 3D modelling that can be used and traded in virtual realities. I always found their work really interesting and pretty straight forward, where clothes are created only for a digital market “free from the constraints of the material world.”
another article that helped me out a lot with concrete statistics and data was one found on https://www.ordre.com/en with carbon emissions from the travel associated with the ready-to-wear wholesale buying process by fashion week (tCO2e) here’s the table:
after I found all my resources I started writing straight after, I was motivated and managed to write down the whole essay in 2 writing session plus one revising the grammar and organizing my resources list. For the resources, I found an amazing website (MyBib) that created a list of all the links and articles I’ve saved and formatted in the style I needed (APA).
My initial idea was to create a serious VR game about tennis, with the aim for the amateurs to learn the basics, while for professionals to keep training even during the lockdown period. I though that it could be structured into two parts: the first half there would have been a teaching session with a VR character that would explain each movement and train, while in the second part there would have been a match with the teacher, in order to understand if the player learnt effectively during the training session.
But during the days I started rethinking about the main idea, because there are way too much tennis VR games online, it is a toping discussed too much, therefore I started thinking about a new idea.
After watching on Netflix: “Love on the Spectrum”,
a documentary series following young adults with autism as they explore the unpredictable world of love, dating and relationships. The partecipants were helped by a relationship counselor, which gave them tips and ideas on how to try to keep a conversation interesting and lasting.
I though it could be helpful to create a VR experience that could help people on the spectrum to manage a conversation with a stranger while immersed in an environment, with other characters and elements that could disctract or put the player underpressure.
Watching the documentary can be seen that most of the partecipants are sensitive about loud noises and crowds, therefore I decided to add to my VR game cartain sound that play in random moments to see how the player reacts, and to set the experience in a public space such as a park.
To create a sort of dialogue I though about having a quiz on the scene, where the player could read hipotetical questions that could be useful during a conversation, and 3 different answers and only one answer is correct.
the criteria is that an answer is considered correct when is responding clearly to the question but is also giving further infomation about us/ point of view and gives more tips on how to continue the discussion.
after setting up the panels I started writing the code: to do so you need 3 scripts:
and drag QuizManager inside an empthy game object and write down the question and answers:
Last component added in the game is the Audio. I used the Native Spatializer Plugin (ONSP) which allows to have a 3D sound in the game (Ambisonics).
I have a crowd noise in the Quiz scene and a Nature sounnd in the Character selection one to give more immertion.
In this post I’ll be narrate my “journey” throw my first assignment: ” create an AR detective game”.
Initially, my idea was to create a “Christmas murder game”, a sort of Dystopia, where the typical Christmas symbols, turned suddenly into something negative, creating a melancholic atmosphere.
Later on, trying to work on my project on Padlet, adding details, for example adding images to visualize better the concepts, I realized that, despite the idea and the characters, I couldn’t give an actual plot to my game, I didn’t know how to make the facts follow while the user was using the app; overall it didn’t make much sense.
So I decided to change completely and start it all over again. I stopped and took my time to think step by step each component of my game from scratch to the final product. I wanted it to be a bit more personal (compared to the previous idea), in order to tell something about me, in fact being our first assignment, I have seen it as a sort of funny way to get to know each other a bit better, which it has been quite difficult because of all of this terrible situation.
PADLET LINK: https://padlet.com/aghaffarian1220191/elxn2rb1mt0vnzqn
I decided to inspire my game to one of the cartoons that characterized my childhood “Courage the cowardly dog”. I chose this cartoon because, besides being scary and fun at the same time, it can be seen as a detective animation, where Courage, the lovely main character, has to save Muriel (its mistress), which inevitably gets always in trouble.
I started with Padlet, where I decided which characters should be on the game, gave them a specific role and described them a little. All the characters exist in the cartoon, but they belong to different episodes, so I did a sort of mesh-up and created my own plot.
I uploaded the image targets on Unity. For each image will appear a 2D/3D animation or text, which will give the player an information to solve the mysterious Muriel missing. Augmented reality is created with Vuforia Engine (a Unity package).
2. the second image that will be scanned is Muriel’s. on it it will appear a text that says: ” help! I’ve been kidnapped!”.
3. the player than will have to scan three different QR codes. On each of them will appear an animated cube, where every face will have the image of the suspect. The cubes will move and rotate, therefore the player will have to be careful and pay attention to the details on the image, which will be precious for solving the case.
4. The first suspect is Eustace Bagge, Muriel’s husband; he is extremely grouchy, rude, selfish, possessive, stubborn and insensitive. He often repeats the phrase “Stupid dog!” referring to Courage, sometimes even for no reason, and enjoys scaring him by using a mask. Often Eustace treats Muriel more like a servant than a wife.
5. The second suspect is Ma Bagge, Eustace’s mother who shows contempt for everyone and in particular for her son, always calling him a “stupid boy”. She always wears a red wig to hide her baldness.
6. The tird and last suspect is Le Quack, a very cunning cruel French duck, He is an excellent criminal, known for his escapes are famous.
7. The computer will be Courage’s helper, in fact when Courage is unable to face the monster on duty he turns to him as he often provides valuable advice. When the player will scan the image on the compuer screen will appear the crucial clue, which would be an object that belongs to one of the three suspect.