Pockets of Control / Protection Spells
The research project aims to explore ‘world building’ – an established discipline in applied narrative contexts like animation, concept art and video game design – as a conceptual grounds for counter-narrative, specifically in the context of those dealing with possible futures and their ramifications.
Through the imagining of small-scale spaces – their geometrics, myriad objects and the configurations they find themselves in – as prime subject matter, the project aims to provide a sideways view on themes of safety and control, the loss of it, ritual, protection.
‘Sideways’, as in wanting to invite ambiguity, non-linearity, speculation. A ‘view’ as in a look into, a being surrounded by, an interacting with virtual spaces, objects. The chosen modality is that of the videogame, one of the emergent contexts of applied illustration in a digital context. Or more specifically, experimenting with several of its components – immersion, interaction, a moving viewport, interactive objects – and a lot of its technical and visual language – meshes, textures, shaders, animations.
I aim to produce several small-scale digital prototypes and iterate on them. Technically I would like to combine 2d digital illustration with 3d design methodologies, and the intersection of drawing and programming. I specifically want to take some time to explore the uses of parametric design and procedural generation as parts of this toolset.
Furthermore I want to explicitly position this project within the applied field of illustrative design and its tangential field of game design, more so than in an autonomous or hybrid context, as I feel there is the most ‘work to be done’ from where I am standing: the material culture of survivalism throughout the ages has been moodboard fodder for a long time. The ‘scavenger’ as gritty protagonist fetishised, conflict and its often violent resolution center staged. I hope to steer clear of this and provide a small counterweight, by acting more as a ‘stock taker’ than a ‘dungeon master’ in my approach towards story, and by centering flux and a constant re-arrangement, instead of solution and resolution, and by introducing nuance, ambiguity, fragility.
