Solitary Confinement with VR

Obviously this may seem a boring concept at first, a VR experience walking round a cell, but from reading about this, I now take a whole new perspective.

Created by The Mill for The Guardian newspaper, this experience gives you the chance to begin to understand what 100,000 prisoners endure for 23 hours a day. Staring at the same 4 walls, no human interaction, that haunting claustrophobia, not even any colours to look at, so dull and lifeless.

To get the cell looking and feeling so real, The Mill worked with first person experiences to get accounts on the cell design and also the spatial atmosphere, with audio. Because of the fact that the cell design was powered by first person accounts, it makes it more poignant. The aspect that your looking round a room, that is so real to what so many people look at 23 hours a day, like your inside their memories.

In a way its like your in a documentary, this is showing how much VR is now changing our documentaries sculpting how we transfer information to the masses. Now, we don't need to describe in detail a place or an event, we can send them right there and let them experience it for themselves.

Carl Addy, The Mill creative director had this to say on the project; “Part of us trying to build empathy was to give a user agency; the ability to make choices and interact with the experience makes you invest emotionally in the narrative and outcome. VR puts you in the cell without any of the safety one gets from the detachment of a screen. This is not like watching a documentary, you are in it.”

The Mill, evidently from what Addy said, have set out to involve you in this experience and as a result, trigger emotions and bring empathy for those people. At the end of the day, solitary confinement is a punishment. That person has disobeyed the law, why should they deserve anything more? In some cases, they have given worse a torture to someone , so it's time for them to endure it themselves. It all comes down to themselves, its their fault they are in there, so why should we be made to feel sympathy? or more importantly, HOW can we feel empathy for such people? 

Carl Addy questions this himself;  “How do you build empathy around an issue as contentious as this?"

My answer is, you can't.

As much as this VR experience TRIES to make you feel it, for me, I can't feel sympathy for such people,  and why should I be made to feel. I can understand how people can even begin to feel empathy when the whole reason the people are in there, voids that completely. Would you feel empathy for what a mass murderer has to endure for the rest of their life? Given he ended so many others lives prematurely.
Overall, I love what The Mill have created, the opportunity to go inside a documentary basically, and experience first hand what it's like in a room for 23 hours, hearing those things, being in that atmosphere, which they have successfully achieved. It is just the empathy element that confuses me.

Commission from Leeds University.

I recently got commissioned to create a logo for an app that a collaboration of computer scientists are making in Leeds University.

The app is an app for waitresses which they use to input orders and keep a total on peoples bills, so it didnt need to stand out in any way. It needs to look professional but then still having the character of the restaurant.

Obviously the restaurant isnt real but it's menu is catered to a student audience.

So with my app logo I went for a quirky illustration style to appeal to that younger audience along with a funny side.

Considering the collaboration is named "Ibex"

I used an Ibex, illustrated him semi realistically with a certain messy, overlaid illustration aesthetic. With the humour aspect being his bib and fork hanging out his mouth. (and the fact theres an Ibex on it)

I feel this logo promotes Ibex as a unique company, what students want. The hand-drawn sketchy feel also conveys creativity in their food, and the green a certain freshness. But most prominantly that shines through is that innovation which stands out and makes it look different.

The collaberation are very happy with their logo, their comments ranged from "its professional and just what we needed" to "very tasty!"

Here is my logo actually on an andriod.

It stands out from all the CG rendered apps, which I quite like.

Reflect

For my reflect presentation, with it being a presentation of my academic journey studying animation this year, I felt it fitting to create a short animation to lead my audience into my brain to expose how I have really found my first year, the negatives and positives, what I have liked, disliked etc.

These are the questions I need to consider and critically answer within the presentation;

• What have you learned and also what do you want to learn?

• What have you enjoyed during the year and why, also what have you disliked and why?

• What mistakes have you made (in and out of college) and how have you learned from them?

• Has this made you consider how you do thing or will approach things in the future?

• What are your strengths and how will you develop them further and begin to apply them?

• What are your weaknesses and how do you intend to address them?

• What did you want to get from the year? Have you achieved this? 

For this animation, I decided to use After Effects puppet rigging to keyframe an avatar of me which I created in Photoshop;

I rigged my character and keyframed, I also then applied a cool tunnel zoom effect to zoom into an x-ray depiction of me;

I used purple hues to show the inside version of me, considering this presentation is all about me I wanted to add that personal touch and purple is my favourite colour and it is how I saw the inside of me visually in my imagination first.

I firstly tested making the pulse like a heart, but I didn't like it, it seemed to weird pulsating in my head. So instead I decided to animate lightning flashes to show my brain working, then I added another zoom to go inside my brain.

Because this presentation is personal, all about me and my journey, I wanted to also add a bit of my sense of humour because that has accompanied me throughout my animation journey, it is something I am never without.

So I was thinking along the lines of looking through a window into my brain to see all the information of my animated journey. The thought of windows made me think of the bizarre idea of when you zoom into my brain, my brain loads like a computer, like windows..

So I robbed the windows XP load up screen and instead of Windows I typed "Rosie's Brain" and I changed professional to unprofessional, for comedic value;

I then keyframed the loading bar to load and then I made a make-shift desktop to my brain, with folders containing the parts of my brain, For example; "People" "Video Games" "My lack of Academic Ability" and "Regrets", and I keyframed the mouse to open the folder titled "Animation" 

From there my presentation begins as if sprouting from a Windows folder, inside my brain.

Finally ending in the blue screen of death, that when the camera zooms out you see its because my avatar has fallen asleep...

This is my animated opening;

I am really happy with how it looks, I especially love the tunnel zoom, I feel its a very effective effect and it feels like it does physically lead you into my brain. I also like how I have animated my avatar waving, its quite child-like.

For the rest of my powerpoint I want to animate text, reflectively to what the text is about and the context.

I started off with a title;

using rainbow colours as a metaphor to show how colourful my year has been.

The animated GIF for software is mechanical in movement to reflect software.

In this text animation, I actually applied the basic principles of animation that I learnt during the brief Animation Skills with a bouncing ball.

Inspired by the ratatouille visuals when he eats food, I did a quite GIF to show enjoyment, with swirling rainbow colour.

 These paint splatters represent experimentation, expressively splattered with a watercolour digital brush, all different colours, to show experimentation.

Animated with a charcoal effect underneath to show a medium I use in  life drawing.

I animated a rainbow here , something I find personally very aesthetic, to pronounce the word aesthetic.

I animated this text to sparkle as if the text itself is perfect.

The word exaggerated, is exaggerated with scale and robotic is mechanical in its jumps.

Using the puppet tool in After Effects I made a bicept flex to represent my strengths in animation.

To show how I am observational I animated a magnifying glass to expose the words "errors" and "small details" to show how I can spot them.

The clock is used to represent my patience with animation.

The word weakness, is written with a thin font, which shows weakness, enhancing this is how it shakes like the text is physically weak.

I animated a see-saw to show my unbalancing of work and play.

I used a soft font to show sensitivity and a soft shell of unconfidence.

Yet again I used paint splatters of different colours to show experimentation

I animated this text from clouds, thought bubble dream clouds.