Process

This week I enjoyed reading Sabine Harrer's "Radical Jamming". I think the three strategies mentioned in the article are very interesting. These strategies seem to give some restrictions to creators, but I think they are helping creators to sort out ideas and create inspiration. It's like fishing in the sea. If I don't tell you anything but let you fish, you may feel that the sea is so big that you simply can't start. But if I tell you what type of fishing rod you need to catch in a designated area of the sea, you may immediately create some plans. I think this is the pressure and restriction, but it will create an environment for creation.

I'm most interested in the third strategy, self-expression. This reminds me of what I read and analyzed last week. Use one's real experience to create works. Everyone has his own way of expression. I think the expression is the epitome of a person's character and experience. It's like the creative styles of different artists. This week, I want to show the audience my creative journey through this self-expression.

I've been worrying about applying for an internship recently, and this game also seems to give me a place to vent my emotions. At the beginning of creating this game, my mood was very depressed, but after all my troubles were written into the game, I felt physically and mentally happy and relaxed. The whole process of the game is that the audience will listen to my troubles as a listener and as a friend. Everyone always becomes sentimental at night, and so do I, and when there is such a fidgety mood, I always want someone to listen. This is how this game was born.

I don't want to spoil the game too much, but I want to show you some ways of my self-expression in the game.

Text Effects (color, effects):

I add some text effects in the game, to show different emotions. Such as shaking effects for shock or sadness, waving effects for happiness, and colorful effects for wonderful/excitement. These are so that the audience can visually feel my creative mood more intuitively. Compared with a single word, these visual effects can highlight the meaning I want to express. 

I also used "tile-colored text" to express my important idea in a dialogue.

Transition Effects:

I used the wave effect as my transition effect, because it's about my memories, and I feel this wave effect is like bringing us back to before.

I also created some dialog to connect different game scenes.

Color tone - background music - emotions - story flow:

The story is about me feeling depressed at the beginning and wanting you to be my listener, so the color tone is pretty dark. The background music is the same in all scenes but in different speeds and moods. My path is a one-way path, nothing much for me to pick up because I have no clue what should I do.

After I took you back to my childhood memory, the color tone became lighter and warmer, it's because at that time I was happy and had fewer worries. Also, the path for me is larger and empty, because I had less knowledge and not clear on my future plans. The background music at this time is turbo and cherry. The things around the environment are more about amusement, that's also because I don't need to worry about study at that time.

The next scene is at my high school and college, I gain more knowledge, and had less time to play, the path got smaller and the pickup items (choices) get decreased. The background music became medium speed and started to get gloomy. I want to give the audience a feeling that I'm feeling tired at this moment and confused about my future already. Also, the color tone is darker than in the last scene.

The last scene is the same look as the first same with different background music and color tone. The color tone became lighter, the background music got cheery because I feel better after speaking to you, And I have the energy to do things now. So I list down all the stuff and gonna start my new daily life. When I grew up, I had less time to play, but I learned more knowledge and had a clearer goal. So the path is smaller and the surrounding environment became books. 

Others (sound effects):

I also add a lot of sound effects in the dialogue, it's the same as the text effects, I set some different sound effects to show different emotions. Some of them are even present as onomatopoeia.