IMM Senior Thesis – Fall 2019

With the IMM senior showcases I have attended in the past, what always caught my eye were the projects that created an experience for you from the moment you entered the room. Ever since, I’ve been inspired to create my own interactive experience with my own personal twists for others to enjoy. For my thesis project, my goal is to create an interactive experience that details the stories of various mythological characters, utilizing motion graphic videos and 3D printed models. 

Graphic Design is something I love, so from the start I knew that I wanted to incorporate that into my project I some way. I wanted to challenge myself and use my skills in design to try to make a motion graphics animation as its something I’m not too comfortable with, but something I really want to get better at. As started thinking, what motivates me the most is when I do projects that have to do with topics I like, so I chose to do a graphics based project that involves mythological characters. However, with just these topics alone I wouldn’t really be able to create that exhibit experience I wanted to create from the start, so I chose to challenge myself and try to incorporate something I don’t have much experience with. Through this line of thinking I decided to create 3D models and print them for people to interact with and hold, while also creating motion graphics animations that detail the stories of each mythological character. Through this, I will be able to create an experience for people to remember while also spreading knowledge of various mythical characters that people may not have known much about. 

I envision my project taking up just a room. I will utilize the monitors in the room to display the animations and put each of the 3D prints either on the center table or right in front of each monitor. I will also create and print decorations to hang in the room to create a better sense of atmosphere as well. From what I’ve researched, I haven’t seen very many projects that are similar to mine. Not too many projects combine the two forms of media together and I couldn’t find any at all that have to deal with mythology like my project. 

Chance Gayles

IMM – 498

Finalized Concept 

My final project will be a portion/beginning of a manga (Japanese style comic) about Japan’s gangs and Yakuza (Japanese mafia) along with conceptual and developmental images, splash art, and promotional material. With my project, I wanted to create something that can incorporate my interests in multiple disciplines and challenge myself by putting myself through some of the developmental stages of a multimedia project usually handled by larger entities. By building this project I will be able to incorporate ideas from western and eastern philosophies of storytelling, marketing strategy, character design, and fashion design. In the future, I hope to become something that lies somewhere between a conceptual artist for games, television, and comics, and a conceptual fashion designer, or a combination of both. This thesis project will serve as my introduction to these fields and will give me the opportunity to hone and display my skills with a professional level of quality. 

This idea inspires me because it allows me to produce a project that combines my interests in storytelling, character design, and fashion design. There has been a spike in popularity in Japanese style storytelling and media in recent times to the extent that major fashion brands even collaborate with anime intellectual properties. Even as early as five to ten years ago anime and manga have been somewhat stigmatized within America (particularly in the black community) but have quickly gained popularity among the masses in more recent times. Others should be interested because I plan to deliver a high-quality project that will be stylistically and conceptually unique that could easily fit into the category of pop culture and fashion. It will further blend the two mediums of character design and fashion design.

What makes my project different from other existing works is an ensemble of ideas and concepts coming together which could only be fitted together do to my personal experience within the United States and Japan. I plan on using programs such as Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Clipstudio, and more to complete the digital portions of the project. I will then look towards fulfillment companies to provide the physical marketable portions of the project i.e. poster blanks, and other physical media. Not all of the details are flushed out but will be over the coming semester. 

For my thesis project, I will produce a Case Study on Hidden menus to prove why they are harming the user experience and heuristic metrics of both web and software design. The major difference from this idea from the others is that I truly want to see what results come out of this study and what knowledge can be absorbed during the process. With that said, I personally love this idea because this allows me to understand how people navigate platforms and see if this research can be applied to other aspects of interactive design. 

However, I know this idea is not as attractive sounding than some of the others, but people should be interested because this could answer some questions and spread the word that hidden menus, like the hamburger, are harming the experience and metrics and a push to break this design standard. To differentiate my study from the others that are out there, I am planning to create a new technique for navigation rather than suggesting to use another existing one. 

To implement my project, there will be phases: technically and stylistically. Technically, my project will incorporate user testing, both existing and new designs, and concept websites that displays new navigation techniques. Stylistically, I plan to design a small “pop-up” shop that will educate people on why this is an issue, a need for a change, and insight into what a User Experience process looks like. 

#BreaktheBurger 

Throughout my life, the love of art has been at the core of my personality for years. Ever since the earlier years of my development, my appreciation for drawing, books, and anything creative related has been the center focus for most of my creative endeavors. This will be the ultimate challenge as it requires something that I have had little to no experience doing, and that is coding. For my final concept, I will be producing an interactive graphic novel that will consist of 2 different endings. The plan is to learn how to use the Unity engine along with an asset that will allow me to create the novel in a stylistic manner that suites my expectations.

What I want most from this project is to enhance my ability to adapt to other skills than just drawing, and I feel that. Which was the main reason I decided to choose this major. As far as this project, my main inspiration for doing it is my love of conceptual art whihch toches many different fields. Concept art is a very important component in many media-related projects that involve telling a story because they offer a glimpse at the possible direction a project could take. I’ve been fascinated with the look and feel of conceptual art and not just in one category or style but a pretty of them.

My project aims to be different in style and substance, which is more than enough to make a statement. Graphic novels exist in the world in many different forms. Most made with paper and others online but done as a single digital page, and have some interactive portions been attempted? yes. but not in mass. An interactive readable novel is actually quite uncommon these days seeing is how most have no desire to click, but if the panels were created in a way that would establish some visual elements that could entice the reader, then it will be worth the chance to accomplish the goal of making such a book. My art skills are more than enough to see this project through, but the other skill required is something I need to pick up entirely. It won’t be easy, but I have faith that this will be seen through.

Testing will be done with these steps, Storyboard, concepts, dialogue, and programming. Al, the assets will be created separately and stored in a folder for further use when the time comes to put it all together. That is the plan so far and it will be done.

Overtime, the significance of taking care of our planet for ourselves and the generations after us has become more and more important to me. I’ve realized a lot about the damage we’re creating by living on Earth and the impact it has on us and the other species that live on this planet. I value the life I have and the planet we live on, and my goal for this project is to demonstrate the importance of taking care of it. With this project I want to communicate to my audience and connect with them on a deeper level. This project can relate to every single person in one way or another, and I hope to bring out that realization through projection mapping. Though this doesn’t reflect my future aspirations, it’s important to me and will hopefully make a difference to a few peoples everyday lives. The interest in my project should be high because this issue effects everyone whether they know it or not. Even if some people believe that nothing can happen during their life time, they have to recognize their future children or family members will be impacted by the way we leave it.

My project will be different that existing projects because it will be an interactive exhibit. Instead of reading about the causes and effects of recycling, you’ll be able to view it on a sphere shaped object that will represent the globe. You’ll also be able to feel the heat from a heat lamp that demonstrates the heating of the Earth, and see produced trash on the ground.

I envision an open room with a giant sphere (around 7ft x 7ft) hanging from the ceiling with trash on the floor underneath it in a circular shape, and a heat lamp in one of the corners. I want the earth to be projected on the sphere with statistics and data visuals interchanging. On one wall, I want to possibly have time lapses going for different representations of land that now has piles of waste on it. On the other two sides I want to have options 1 and 2 for which direction we can go with if we chose to recycle or not. On the last wall I want to represent how this is effecting our animals and wildlife on Earth, and how it can affect the future of our families and generations.

Algorithmic/automated composition is an idea that has been around for a very long time now, but has only had major advances in the last 30 years or so, thanks the the advances of computers. Even then, I haven’t found as much research on this topic as other more popular topics. I want to take this research and extend it into the entertainment field.

My project involves a program that takes music from an already existing band or genre, and creates its own music that will sound similar to the music categorized in the already existing band or genre. I have a heavy interest in music and computer science, and I wanted to combine these interests with this project because I feel they go very well together. In the future, I want to expand upon this project by incorporating machine learning elements in order to make this idea more free-form.

I feel that this field could have a great impact on entertainment. For example, it could be used to help musicians with writer’s block by giving them a base to go off of when writing music. It could also be used to aid with incorporating elements of a different, less familiar genre in one’s music. There are tons of possibilities that could be offered by my type of project.

The way I see it working starts by transcribing songs of a specific artist into a MIDI score. This MIDI score will contain the notes played by each instrument in the song as data. The program then takes in this data as input. With multiple MIDI scores, the program will analyze the song to figure out certain characteristics of the song, such as the key. Using the individual notes from each instrument, the program will construct instrument parts for a new song.

One way of doing this last step would be with Markov chains. The Markov chain could store data about the note choices in a song. Along with the individual note choices, it would store the probability of the next note being a certain note. For example, if an A note comes up in the song, it could store the chance of the next note being C as 50% (based on what happens when an A occurs in the rest of the song), the chance of the next note being E as 25%, and so on.

I plan to do some research on other methods that could help me with this step, as I see this being the most difficult part of my project. In addition to that, I will need to spend a decent amount of time transcribing songs to MIDI so that I have data to go off of.