Interaction & Play - Reflective Statement
Alleylight Interactive is a project about illuminating the dark alleyways around Aotea Square more specifically the one down the side of the Auckland Town Hall and by the entrance to the underground car park. During the evening, this area is essentially pitch black and there is a lot of foot traffic which could make it a potentially unsafe area. We wanted to make this part of Aotea Square less frightening and more accessible to people walking through at night. We want to achieve this by projecting onto the wall of the Town Hall with bright and friendly colours.
We wanted to make this project because we feel that the walkway is a dangerous area especially during the evening where it is nearly pitch black. We found that more illuminated walkways in urban areas make people feel safer (Sunderstrom,1996) as well as reducing crime rates in those areas (Loewen, 1993). The feelings of uneasiness are something we wish to alleviate with Alleylight as these feelings can cause stress and anxiety especially if you can’t see anything ahead of you (Grillon, 1997).
In my team, I was set at designing all of the art assets for the projection. We originally wanted the art to reflect the Waihorotiu stream which used to run underneath the square itself. Since Aotea square was a bog we could have reflected that by making all of the plant life bleak and muddy but that would conflict with the bright and bubbly theme we wanted to achieve. I also feel that that sort of art style wouldn’t draw many people in as it might not look too inviting and friendly. We decided to go with a colorful and tropical theme with tick borders and high contrast to make the images less busy and clearer when projected onto the textured wall.
First vector designs of a shark and seaweed.
These were the first set of assets that we used for the project which were designed in Adobe Illustrator. The designs were intentionally simple as if they were too complex they would be more difficult to see against the textured wall of the Town Hall. There were some initial problems with the overall aesthetic and design of the objects and my art was different to James and Charles’ art assets. The inconsistency's included the stroke weight around the objects. Those numbers varied between all of the artists which made all of the objects look out of place when presented. The overall designs were well received as they were clear as to what they portrayed.
Art style inspiration: Kingdom Rush (2011), Scribblenauts (2012), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
After the critique session, we decided to develop more of a clear art style so James and I researched certain video games which have clear and colourful graphics. We also made the art more consistent by using the same stroke weight in the assets. The art style was also heavily criticized but we wanted Alleylight to still have the crisp and coloruful aesthetic to make sure the dark alley is illuminated. The context of why we chose these objects was that a colourful tropical getaway theme could be more fitting for our idea of making people feel safer as they travel down the alleyway.
Quinn's drawings of seaweed, bones, wood and fish.
The new objects were first drawn up by Quinn and then I used Adobe Illustrator to make them into vectors. The same sort of theme was decided by James and I because it was quick and simple to accomplish in a short space of time. We also don’t have the skills to make more complex images and we don’t have the funds to hire a professional artist so we made do. In the new images, the stroke weights of the lines across all of the vectors are the same (4 pt) so it is more consistent. The colours were also changed to be much more vibrant as you could hardly see them under the water overlay texture we used. I also made the smaller fish more colourful for the same reasons. The skull is the only image which I don’t really like as it could potentially make people walking by uneasy and that is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. I could have made the skull more friendly and cartoonish to fit the mood of the project.
Vectors made from Quinn's drawings.
Overall, the whole team worked well with each other. Using tools such as Facebook Messenger to communicate with each other and transfer files was super simple and helpful. I feel as if Messenger is an underutilized tool for team management as people mainly associate it with Facebook and how its seen as a time waster. But with Messenger, if used correctly as a communication tool you can communicate quicker with your team because everyone has Facebook. I found it useful transferring Adobe Illustrator files to the other members. We were all communicating with each other well which makes the project so much easier for everyone.
I think my skills with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have improved over the space of this project. I have learnt a lot of key skills with both programs. There is a definite improvement in my ability from my very first vector designs earlier in the project compared to the newer assets. I played around with animating the fish briefly in a GIF format through Photoshop. I have never attempted this process before but it was intuitive in the end. If I had more time I would have liked to make cleaner animations for the fish and seaweed as I would think it would add more character to the project.
A quick GIF of one of the “cool” fish vectors.
There is quite a bit of room for development with this project as it can be expanded to other mediums such as interactive instillation's or for use in alleyways other than the Town Hall alleyway. The overall theme of what is being projected is very flexible and isn't bound to this tropical theme that we have chosen, so there is an amount of creative freedom that comes alongside using Alleylight.
Alleylight Interactive was overall a fun project to be a part of as well all worked coherently as a team and produced a really cool project that worked relativity true to what we wanted to achieve.
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