BEHIND THE SCENES
Design, UI/UX, Art, Code, Data Management, Audio, Music, Testing, Live Ops, Analytics.
Design, UI/UX, Art, Code, Data Management, Audio, Music, Testing, Live Ops, Analytics.
I was recruited to complete work that had been begun as an experimental collaboration with Ringling College of Art and Design. I continue to serve as executive producer, leading new teams of current Ringling students to complete and ship a growing series of visual novels.
When I joined, there was a lot of disjointed artwork and writing, and some playable but incomplete prototypes in various stages that had begun in Ren'Py. I facilitated rebuilding the games in Unity3D, beginning with the core basics. First, I guided the students in the creation of Game Design Documents, and simple ways to visualize the flow of the game architecture using wireframes and branching diagrams.
Next was teaching the students about version control, repositories, and good commit habits. Inevitably those lessons soon included recovering lost work and restoring local versions to a stable state, until strengthening the new skills became more and more natural.
The choices and branching story are built with a simple scripting language. This simplicity allowed the students to rapidly pick up the syntax and structure, while at the same time learning good nomenclature and use of variables - without the tech distracting them from the importance of their creative voice in the narrative, mood and storytelling.
The scripting language is relatively limited, and we are largely confined to working only within the options provided by the Unity asset we are using - but that can be turned into advantage when viewed through the lens of this Orson Welles quote: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
Whether there were perceived limitations in the script, or the original flat artwork - those "limitations" have been the fuel of good teamwork, brainstorming and collaboration. Here's an example where a hologram effect was created from a normal character portrait - on the left is the result, and the underlying construction is on the right. I demonstrated how we could use the default Unity particle system to stack different effects together and create the effect they wanted.
Over and over again, our team has had the collective experience of finding creative solutions together. It increases morale and the expectation that the next revelation is just around the corner.
This ongoing project has been refreshing - beyond the end goal of creating shippable products, the journey has been a repetitive exercise in fostering good group dynamics, to encourage fresh new ideas from the energy and open-minded nature of a younger team.
It also gives me a chance to revisit some old teaching roots. I created and taught computer art curriculums at a local community college for years, so the mentoring I do in this project is very satisfying.