2/12 – 2/16

This week, we finished a demo video to show to Deeplocal. We created great content in the video. This content was to be an exploration of art style and imagery, to see what Deeplocal and what our playtesters resonate with.

Advisor meeting

We talk to Mo about our idea of 6 different style videos to get validation from Mo. Mo recommended we to apply the styles into a complete song and show him and the clients the visual of our ideas. 

Demo Video

As a team, we picked a song that we all liked, after pitching several songs to each other. Annie and Angie used the Spotify API to analyze the track and see how the API split it into segments. We then wrote out the timestamps for every new section of the song. Using this information, Yawen, Anna, Cassie, and Kira created scenes aligning to different segments, drawing out different landscapes and abstract visuals. We put the song and the visuals together to make a concept video of possibilities for what our content could look like.

https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=OurbluesSty_Alive_Demo

We felt that this exploration was very valuable as it taught the team about the importance of parallax video to create the idea of depth and beginning the exploration of stylization. The feedback we received from Deeplocal was useful and we have decided to do a more concentrated style exploration for next week, creating visuals that can work with Annie’s generative animation as well as narrowing it down the exploration to stylized versus realistic. We will be playtesting with this video in the upcoming weeks to test for engagement with the content. 

Hardware and Illusions

This week, Angie brought in a TV to test with the fresnel lens. She built a cardboard mockup of the wall with the TV and a sheet of cardboard to hold the lens with, so that we could test looking at the TV as if there was a window. We felt it was a success of what the fresnel lens can do, with the issue of slight distortion in the visuals if viewed from the wrong angles, especially troubling if viewed from far away. Angie will continue to explore how we can improve this design. 

Programming

The Spotify API is retrieved using Python’s app connected with Spotify Web Development APP. Annie used the timestamp from each song to control the animations. She used Pygame to integrate the designers’ contents, and combined them with the song. She also experimented with the login interface for users which allow them to log in with their accounts. But getting API in real time needs valid access, which was a main challenge for this week. Though the app successfully worked, Annie decided not to continue with retrieving the API. Her focus will be to support the contents looking better.

ART STYLE EXPLORATION

For this week, each of our designer/artist were assigned with 2-3 sections from a song. And we each created couple of animated art/scenery that we felt resonated with the song without discussing on the art style so that we could gain more variations for future decision making. 

Yawen finished the team logo design after creating five different versions of the logo and discussing with instructors. 

Cassie has tried collage and illustrations to showcase her feelings and views on the 2 sections that were assigned to her.

This week, Cassie has also finished the final version of poster and handed over to Anna to complete the half sheet.

Anna has finished the half sheets using the assets from Cassie, and created an animation of skateboarding.

Conclusion

This week we did a lot of explorations for content creation, hardware and programming. We think all these explorations are very meaningful and can help us to move forward.