Part 01: Title and Description
Project title: Guan 关
This project goes with a simple idea, where the players will be given pieces of an island. And they will use the provided paint and brushes to decorate the island. The concept itself derives from my background. I grew up on a pacific island. Going with the topic, an island on its own is already very isolated. The island is purposefully placed inside a dark blue painted box. According to color theory, blue gives people a depressed perception. In addition, around the box, I painted some stereotypical island-like characters, such as seagulls, eagles, beaches, etc. I want to communicate that people outside of the island often perceive island life to be interesting and vivid. However, in reality, island life is isolated and different from what they had perceived. The play part for this project has room for improvement. Players could only paint the island and nothing much besides that. I realize that it might be too simple of an idea on the play part after discussion in class.
Part 02: Project Creative Process
When I was designing the project, I did not want to set up an age
the range for the players. However, it might not be so interesting for adult players from what I received from the comments. For future improvement, I would add more play part to the project. For example, I could give the players images of each selected place. It could be an island, a specific amusement park, or a famous architecture. And they could use the images as a guideline to puzzle it together. Then they could use the given paint and brushes to decorate the item in any way they want. Right now, the only play part is for them to glue the pieces of the island together and then paint it. Adult players might easily find it to be boring.
For this project, I decided to define isolation as a negative concept in which individuals are far from mainstream culture and population. To me, isolation means not only physical distance but also misunderstandings. Many of my friends, who grew up in big cities, often think that island life is simply full of sun, moon, and stars. They believe that it is nothing besides happiness living on an island. However, to me, that is a misunderstanding.
For this project, I think one of the most obvious skills I learned was to use Adobe Illustrator better. Before this project, I would say I knew how to use the software for some fundamental features. However, for this project, I had to make the designs on AI. Thus, I better enhanced my skills by using them. At first, I was going to use a mechanism and put waves on the box. Then place the island on top of the box. A stick goes through the box, and with rotating the stick, the waves could be pushed up and down. I spent a full day designing the waves, printing them out, and paint them. However, after I placed the painted waves on the box, my classmates commented those waves reminded them of Candy’s previous project. I then changed my project concept at the very last moment. If I had more time, I would probably use the idea of the circular waves in which the waves are made up with numerous circles, and in the middle, there is an island, instead of pieces of laser-cut waves lined up in sequential order.
Part 03: Documentation
