My experience with creating my key to success was, I feel, an interesting one! It had a few twists and turns, but I wound up happy with my end product and happier that I was able to learn something by the end.
I first had to start with choosing my key. I chose the accept failure key because I know I tend to be a perfectionist. I like things to be wrapped up neat and tidy, and I often feel that if I can’t do something perfectly I may as well not do it at all, which leads me to procrastinating or worse: never starting. But failure is not something to be afraid of. Learning from failure is vital to producing something you’re actually happy with.
So I felt the accept failure key would be perfect!
I started by importing an image of the 2D key to use as a reference in blender. This way I could match up my key’s proportions as best as possible.
It was an interesting learning curve, trying to get used to blender. My experience with making the practice couch came in handy, since I now knew how to work the basics of object mode and edit mode, but learning to combine objects, make curves, and unique shapes like the top of the key still took more time than I had originally expected.
I also struggled when making the unique key cut outs at the bottom. I ended up combining multiple rectangular cubes together, but this created some strange overlapping sections and I could not get them on exactly the same plane. This is most certainly a process that could be made easier, but I could not figure out how.
I also struggled a lot with trying to make the gold texture in blender. I managed to make it somewhat metallic, but the shadows ended up strange and very harsh. I would like to dive more into texture painting inside of blender.
I would say these two things were my ‘failures’ when making this key. But that’s not a bad thing! After all, this is the accept failure key to success, and I intend to do just that. Making this key and seeing where I struggled showed me my weak points, and tells me where I need to focus in my future assignments.
Over all I enjoyed the process of making this key quite a bit. I am excited to see where 3D design continues to take me, and to see how my designs are implemented into our Second Life world!
Extended reality (and the metaverse) can be a valuable tool for education. The virtual world opens avenues not possible in the real world. A good example of this can be seen in our textbook, Ready Player One, where Wade talks about how teachers on Ludus are able to teach their classes in more engaging ways, like going to the surface of Jupiter. While we don’t have quite the virtual capabilities of Ready Player One’s Oasis yet, using 3D worlds to enhance learning is still certainly possible!
For our section of Second Life, I think there are a few ways we could make the environment more interactive for students/visitors and give them new experiences. By adding interactive elements you make the world more real feeling, and give the user a sense of changing the world around them, which in turn makes them more invested in your project/world.
First, since the Tower of Power contains a rest area, perhaps we could set up a more annual meeting to take place there for visitors and students. Perhaps a digital book club, or study group, to encourage more bonding and learning between students. It is also helpful for students who may live far away or are unable to attend in-person sessions for other reasons. Perhaps it could also be used as a place to host occasional presentations, since it has seating. All of these would also encourage collaboration between students.
Second, I think that adding some kind of interactive display, or “game” could benefit people visiting. Maybe something as simple as a quiz about the different areas of wellness as you walk along the path. It could take inspiration from places like museums and zoos, which often have little interactive stations that allow visitors to learn new facts and answer questions. It would also be a good way to encourage learning about wellness for students.
Lastly, if possible, I think having a scavenger hunt throughout the island could be an excellent activity. It would encourage those visiting to explore all of the island and find the different objects that students have made over the years. At the end, the visitor could get a badge, or a different small reward for their avatar (such as a pirate hat or other pirate related object) as a reminder of their visit. Maybe we could even set up a similar, smaller scavenger hunt in the MEDIA classroom, as a way to bridge the gap between virtual and real world participation?
Over all, the 3D world is vast, and there are many ways people can interact with the spaces within it. I think that adding more interactivity into our Second Life world would provide a better learning environment and encourage more visitors!
Premise and purpose make up the bulk of any project. For me, as a member of the occupational and pursuit team, my premise with my objects revolves around representing success in hobbies, occupations, and any general pursuits; to me it all focuses around ambition.
Audience and Market
Understanding your audience is vital for any storyteller. You would not market a romance novel to the same crowd that you would a thriller, and vice versa. The audience of this project is my fellow college students who are all on their own Hero’s Journey’s. I believe that my objects can resonate with them, as the fountain pen represents putting success into “ink” or permanence, and the hiking stick represents the journey to success.
Medium, Platform, and Genre
Understanding the medium you are working with is important when tackling a project. The medium that I’m working with is the virtual 3D world. Specifically, blender, but also second life! Despite the fact I don’t intend to make my own account, my creations are still intended for it, so it is this projects platform.
Join a Journey
Having a journey that the viewer can follow along with ties them closer to a story, and lets them understand the message a work is trying to convey without having to be told it. The journey I am following is quite literal here. I am following along the Hero’s Journey with the rest of the class, but also going through my own as I go through college. My hiking stick object corresponds particularly well with this point, as a hiking stick is symbolic of a journey and of progress.
Narrative Elements
Narrative is just as vital to a work or story as a journey is. By building a deep, and personal (to the viewer) narrative, you make the viewer care. If they can connect with your story, they will be more invested. In the case of my objects and project, I think the journey to success and the struggle to get there is something most people can relate to, but I could certainly make more of a narrative.
User’s Role and Point of View
Point of view, in writing and stories in general, refers to how the story is being told. Is it being told from the perspective of one character, within their thoughts like a diary? That would be first person. Is the narrator focused on one character but on the outside? That’s third person limited. Does the narration focus on many characters at once? Thats third person omniscient, and so on. Here, with this project, the point of view is of a user instead. The user is the person walking through the hero’s journey, so it is more akin to second person (where the viewer is being directly addressed). The user needs to be considered a lot in this project, and I would ideally like my objects to be something that the user would be drawn to.
Characters
Characters get an audience truly emotionally invested in a work. Even more so than the narrative does, I’d argue. Characters build direct connections with the viewer. In this project, there are not literal human characters (since we are just adding objects to the world) but I think by giving my objects some character with how they look, it may achieve a similar effect.
Structure, Interface, and Rhythm
The structure and interface of a project influences how a viewer can interact with it. Incorporating movement and rhythm into this part of one’s work can make it more memorable. Here, my project is quite simple: to make objects. But are these objects usable? I am unaware if you can pick items up in second life, but if you can, that would be a unique way to incorporate movement into my hiking stick and fountain pen.
Storyworld and Settings
Setting gives the viewer context for where a story/work is taking place. For this project, the setting is an island and very reminiscent of Port Angeles (aside from the fantastical elements and pirate ship) so I think my items fit in well.
Overall Appearance, Movement, and Sounds
Sound, appearance, and movement are important to any story/work to give the viewer the illusion they are part of the world. This is true even in writing, where you are only working with words. I cannot add sound to my objects, as neither of them make sound naturally, but I do intend to make their appearance unique and add some movement if I can. Maybe I can animate the gears inside of the fountain pen’s interior.
User Engagement and Opportunity to Share Experiences
The message is, like the premise, a huge part of any story. The message I want to convey with my objects is that it is possible, through effort and learning from failure, to achieve your ambitions. Even if it takes climbing a mountain, you can one day put your successes down in ink.
All of these points are incredibly important to storytelling development, and I think by going through them you can gain a better understanding as to what a story is really made of. So get out there and get creating!
The website that I chose was “Building enriching realities with children: Creating makerspaces that intertwine virtual and physical worlds in pediatric hospitals”. This article covers a study investigating a use for VR in children’s hospitals. They outlines how VR has been used previously to help distract children from pain and provide them with new experiences they can’t have while in the hospital. However, this article covers new ways to use VR to help children: by encouraging them to be builders. Thus study separated the children into different “maker-identities” depending on their focus (explorer, artisan, and planner) and were encouraged to create and express themselves, helping to decrease their anxiety.
If I were to utilize the virtual world to make my own health care space I think I would want to do something similar. Having had a lot of my own struggles with anxiety, a calming virtual space with projects to work on as a distraction would do wonders. I think I’d make something like a virtual greenhouse, with lots of neutral and earthy colors. Each plant could represent a chosen project of the person in the green house, and it could grow as the project progresses. It would provide a way for people struggling to destress, and help their mental health. There would also be setting areas and perhaps areas for collective therapy, if this were being used in a professional counseling environment. I think including simulated real gardening might be a good destressor as well. And the outside would be covered in ivy, with stained glass in certain sections.
For this assignment, I decided to focus on one of my favorite games of all time: Hollow Knight. As a fully 2D Metroid-esq platformer, it’s not directly related to 3D design, but it has incredibly stylistic art direction that I think can be learned from. The base of Hollow Knights stylistic choices and world building elements comes from the fact that it takes place in a world entirely unhabituated by bugs and is primarily underground. Each area of the world varies wildly in design, from a lush mossy ‘forest’ like environment to a village made up entirely of spun spider silk. The character designs often pull from real life bugs, such as weevils, praying mantises, etc., which makes for striking silhouettes and adds a lot of visual interest. This choice directly influences the object and clothing design as well.
One notable object that the player-character carries with them at all times is the game’s main weapon: the nail. The choice to make this weapon a nail, rather than something more generic like a sword, reinforces the idea that the game takes place on the micro-scale a bug experiences, but the small crack that can be seen in the one the player wields implies a history of it being used. Another notable weapon, wielded by the character Hornet, is a needle. This again reenforces how small the world of Hollow Knight is, but this time it also implies something about her character. In the context of the world, Hornet was born to the ruling leader of a group of spiders known as the Weavers, which are gone by the time the game’s story takes place. Hornet’s needle and thread implies her spider origins to the player far before that bit of information is revealed and shows a bit of the Weavers weaving culture.
With the clothing in Hollow Knight, things get a bit more complicated. Using the two former examples, the player character is dressed in a loose, ragged cloak, implying that they have been away from civilization (which adds to the implications of the cracked nail). Hornet on the other hand wears a bright red cloak, which you can view in a few ways. As a feisty character, the red could easily be an indication of her personality, while the nicer cloak could imply her origins as a Weaver again, but this is mainly personal interpretation. A lot of the characters in Hollow Knight sport armor or appear to wear armor, but it’s simply a part of their carapace as a bug. These choices often imply the character is a knight, or a fighter.
Overall, Hollow Knight is a personal favorite example of art direction in video games, and I think the design of it and its objects is fascinating.
One of my personal favorite examples of 3D objects are Michelangelo’s sculptures. I took an art history class during one of my quarters here at Peninsula, and in it we covered renaissance period sculptures. I love how ancient artists such as Michelangelo managed to capture such realism in their works. The poses are contrapposto, meaning they look like they have real weight shifted mostly onto one foot, and the details are so fine you can see the veins in the arms of ‘David.’ I also love the way Michelangelo is able to portray something loose like fabric in stone, which is so solid. In “Pietà” Mary’s dress has so many folds it looks like it’s actually flowing. The attention to detail is remarkable. I think it’s beautiful to look at and it is fascinating to think about how we could apply sculpture principles to a class like this one. I think these sculptures could be found in my college in the OASIS so that students could appreciate the aesthetic beauty, but also so they could use these sculptures as references for their own projects. Being able to access life-sized sculptures like these up close in the online world, especially in a place like the oasis where it looks so real, would be a game changer.
