Over the course of my first year, I have used my projects to explore technical skills and application of my ideas through research through design. With these projects, I work towards understanding the integration of cultural research in the space of 3D animation as a way of designing more inclusive Asian narratives. While some of the projects are not 3D animations, the projects help me to consider the integration of addition technologies.

To see the process of each project, a separate page will appear by clicking on the project title.

A Discussion of Food and Racism

A Discussion of Food and Racism is a 3D-modeled graphic that looks at utilizing AR to address systemic racism in the food world. Depending on how you read the image, the narration changes as it considers the relationship between humans and technology. If read from bottom-to-top, it focuses on the lunchbox idea, where a child is bullied for their cultural food resulting in questions of their identity. If read top-to-bottom, AR in the form of phones expands perception and works to generate empathy pertaining to the issue, which closes the gaps seen in the split earth. The project is considering simplicity, color, and representation in symbols in the design. These same concepts come back in my later projects Pagan Folklore & Architecture and Specious Spaces.

Korean Celadon: Preserving Culture

Thinking about the space of representation, Korean Celadon: Preserving Culture focuses on using 3D modeling and AR to revive a lost art form and practice from the Koryo Dynasty. This project allowed me to understand the space of AR and how to go through the entire workflow.

Serenity

Taking what was learned about interactions with Korean Celadon: Preserving Culture, Serenity is an AR app for reducing stress through a focus on nature rather than a human avatar and is driven by creating reliance on user senses through binaural and meditative sounds and visual queues. 3D models made in Maya were transferred to Unity, which used Vuforia to create an AR application. The main focus was researching and learning how to use interactive tools to create an emotional relationship between the app and user. In relation to research methods, I learned how to make personas, do literature reviews, and do market research.

Pagan Folklore & Architecture

Branching off the idea of objects providing information, Pagan Folklore & Architecture creates a woven connection of a lost and revived culture by intermingling forms and relying on color to guide viewer connection of architectural form over time. The concept is to create an understanding of time and culture pertaining to Eastern Europe through environment-reliant storytelling. During the development, I learned how to synthesize text and photographs to create speculative connections based on visual attributes and lost histories. This project also allowed me to consider more abstracted and non-linear forms of storytelling.

Seek

Seek is a project created in both Maya and Unity. It places players in two-positions, an authority figure and a helpless victim, based upon how the player interacts with the scenes. The project focuses on creating intensity through environments changing color, images, and clues that are activated by action-based engagement. The central point of this project was to create an interactive space, where tools from the horror genre can be used to drive the narrative of child abuse.

Specious Spaces

Inspired by work done in Seek, Specious Spaces completed in Design 6400 (Fall) is an animation that takes on the form of a title sequence to generate a poetic form of narration. Void of characters, this project utilizes light to contrast emotional points with childhood trauma as a result of child abuse. The big idea for this project was using contrasting visual elements such as lighting and imagery to examine the narrative of child trauma. The method of working was through a mix of storyboards, lighting, and forms, which was backed up and referenced to different VR, animation, film, and game styles. During this project, I expanded my understanding of scene lighting.

Dearest Friends

Taking a turn in another direction because of an interest in culture with Specious Spaces Korean-inspired classroom, Dearest Friends was completed in ACCAD 5102 and utilized keyboard and mouse interactions that rely on exploration to uncover poetry, data, and facts that are associated to different cities in 11 different countries over 5 continents. My focus was to experiment with ways to integrate information from multiple countries to create connections and to allow for cultural exchanges. During this project, I ventured out into gathering information from friends and family in addition to online sources to create more personality and honesty in the design.