#design journal

[silversoto]

final grad collection, 2018.

a collection of scans from the design journal. some toiles i worked on for my final year menswear collection, where i explored and deconstructed the indonesian school uniforms.

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for my grad collection, i explored the educational system of indonesia, my home country. i wanted to explore what it meant to grow up and learn from a system with a history of colonisation, genocide, corruption, extreme nationalism, and, to a certain extent, theocracy.

this exploration led to the deconstruction of public school uniforms; an understanding of the way these symbolised every life stage, from childhood to adolescence. in addition to this, i studied the significance behind school scouts and pakisbraka; both of which are distinct in their uniforms and the importance they serve to the ideals of nationalism.

[silversoto]

final year grad collection, 2018.

shoe concept development: a play on the--mandatory--rigidity of black shoes in school uniforms, deconstructing it with a sense of 'purity' from white shoes.

*********

for my grad collection, i explored the educational system of indonesia, my home country. i wanted to explore what it meant to grow up and learn from a system with a history of colonisation, genocide, corruption, extreme nationalism, and, to a certain extent, theocracy.

this exploration led to the deconstruction of public school uniforms; an understanding of the way these symbolised every life stage, from childhood to adolescence. in addition to this, i studied the significance behind school scouts and pakisbraka; both of which are distinct in their uniforms and the importance they serve to the ideals of nationalism.

[lolasfashionarchive]

[mercatointeriors]

Mercato Interiors | Bunbly.Tribe.So

Offering innovative designs from hundreds of manufacturers all under one roof makes Mercato Interiors the largest retail outlet of fine furnishings in Las Vegas. 

Mercato Interiors (mercatointeriors)

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[zaftikat]

I'm currently working on a game cover for the Record Collection 2K23 jam hosted by Riley Hopkins (@revryebread), and I feel like this is the sort of situation where the less I do to change the cover, the better. My working draft looks like this:

If I can swing it, I may have one of my friends recreate the pose from the iconic cover, and use that instead of the stock image telecaster, but I'm pretty happy with how this looks otherwise.

[larrygoodbaduxjournal]

This first post is going to be about the webpage I interact with the most. This is the Bellevue blackboard site. Ultimately, while not super exciting, it hosts each class and allows the user to navigate the site easily, The only problem I have had is trying to navigate all the way into the group project discussion board from the homepage. It took several clicks and scrolls to get there, which is unusual compared to the ease of finding anything else on this site.

[dreemerbe]

Design must to excite otherwise it's waste of time. Do you agree with me?

[lonelynightproject]

From abstraction to reality

If you have landed here without context (as usually there isn’t any), this post is a reflection, reminder, and note to self about failure, moving ahead, and not getting trapped in a repetitive pattern of thinking while trying to make a game. 

Failure and learnings from proto 0.1 

The multiplication/growth mechanic with which I had started doesn’t seem to work out and move any further, I’m not able to think of any good progression to it which would create a meaningful context for the players. I tried a few ideas but it felt forced, choices are not interesting and it is difficult to make a mental model of the game for the players to be able to move intuitively. I think I mixed up a few things and also did not take any thematic elements into consideration, due to which the game could not be made playable and it just ended up with a single mechanic with no context/motivation to play. I think I got into the classic trap of low skill, high expectation, where I’ve been thinking of traveling to a place without even considering where I am standing right now. I completely ignored the fact that one can only start from where they are, no matter where they want to go. 

I also confused the mechanic, theme, and experience which I want the players to have, they all seem to counter one another and a seamless play was not possible. I should have stuck to one element and made it a center around which other things can be built. I made the same mistake in my last project and wasted a lot of time doing it over and over again, analyzing, reading theory, and then just being paralyzed with no results which lead to a feeling of frustration and you think I can never ever make a game. Maybe I should have some intelligence and learn from my mistakes and not repeat it every time and waste time reflecting and learning them again. Last year I had made a note that every time I face this problem I will remind myself of this Doha by Rahim - एकै साधे सब सधै, सब साधे सब जाय। रहिमन मूलहिं सींचिबो, फूलै फलै अघाय।। but again, I felt into the same trap and made the same mistake, humans never learn! An idea should be nurtured carefully, not be burdened with all sorts of philosophies, theories, and expectations. 

So, basically what happened, the objective, mechanic, and the feedback loop was not working properly in sync, many of the things were just not possible with the mechanic and I just could not leave certain ideas or think of new ideas which would work with each other. It was an idea that had some metaphoric values, but it just could not work in the game form or I could not make it work. It could have been made as a simulation or an art installation, but the whole point of making a game was so that players, as an active agent, can make the choices, take actions and realize the consequence of their desire-driven actions, what they are doing to other players and to the game environment. 

Moving ahead

After two or three tests and discussing it with Jeff, I realized that this idea was not going to work, so I started thinking of some other ideas around growth. This time I was not thinking of going abstract but something that has a real-world connection and a pattern of growth which can be observed, so that there is a context to work with. It also helps in building connections between different elements of the game thematically or gameplay-wise.

After a few days, one night when I was taking a walk, I saw a few flower plants and started thinking about flowers, and I observed that flowers also have a pattern of growth, how a small seed, a non-living thing when put under a certain condition and nurtured carefully grows into beautiful flowers, full of life, this is just pure amazement. This evoked me to think of the same process in a game form, and I started to think of the journey of a plant from seed to flowers and all the other things associated with it. 

I’ve always lived with this thought that “beauty can only be appreciated, you can not do anything else with it”, so every time I feel beautiful or amazed I just stand still and be there with no actions. On the other hand, I also think why not create something beautiful yourself when you feel beautiful or amazed? And then a conflict arises and the beauty seems to fade away, so I’ve been choosing to not think and just be. But this time I decided to express and contribute to the beauty and amazement by making something myself, at least try to make something, and something was obviously going to be a game. 

Just when I thought of this, my next thought was, why do you want to make a game, is a game a good medium to express this phenomenon or the feeling? Why do you want to imitate nature, what will you get by expressing? Why are you trying to relive moments, trying to unnecessarily stretch something,  nature can not be abstracted, or made any more beautiful, don’t think of yourself as a creator, you can not create any beauty. My mind got filled with all these jumbled thoughts and suddenly I washed them away in a flash and told myself, not this time, not again. You have got to try, you have got to explore, test and see, these thoughts are always going to be there, and you will never get over it, you have got a life, you are alive, and you are allowed to express, create and the only way to do this is to go through it and test it yourself which side is actually true by experiencing how it feels to express, to create and to connect with the creation, and even after making it, if you still have these thoughts, let it be, at least you lived with it and tried to make something yourself.  Next prototype

So, now I’m exploring this idea of growth in the context of flowers, plants, and taking care of a small garden. I don’t know how or if this is going to get into a game, but I feel it can take a form, and soon it will be something playable. I will go with the fail early, prototype fast process, and get the ideas realized in material form as quickly as possible even if that means going with bad concepts, broken game, or no meaning. I will try to make it better once I have something tangible, and not plan or reject the ideas before really testing them. As they say, good designers make bad games and they improve on it until it becomes good. so.. yeah, quotes sometimes help. Also, I’m ok with bad, there is no problem in creating something which doesn’t meet your expectations, as I’ve started to realize that the perfect day is never going to come, no one ever will really understand you. So stop thinking about what could go wrong, and just start from where you stand, anyway there is no other option you can start from anywhere else, the mind can roam around, but that doesn’t really change where you are. and in reality, you only can take one step at a time no matter how far you want to go.