Author Archives: AzraelCelena

The Present Future: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (and final summary)

This is just a screenshot of the title page! Access the game with the link down below!

For my final project, I went with the first prompt from Dr. Oblivion which was to create an interactive multimedia narrative essentially of the dangers of the AI takeover. I have always loved a good story and I love creating and telling them, so I thought getting to do something more writing and narrative based would be a good way to hone my skills that I’ve gotten to develop over this semester especially with projects such as reordering the songs of Dear Evan Hansen to change the course of its story, discussing the way that color plays a role in storytelling in The Corpse Bride, or even using a simple song lyric to create a more nuanced backstory for my course character.

As evidenced through my own character creation and the elements of design, writing, and aesthetic of my whole website and assignment choices, I’m very drawn to macabre and horror-based storytelling and with the prompt asking us to discuss implications of such an AI revolution, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to create a horror story. A bit of background for this: I am very against the big boom of AI, I avoid using it at every possible cost (which has created an ethical dilemma in this class, but I’ve cut my losses) due to the environmental damage it causes, the way that work is stolen from countless artists, the job displacement it creates, etc; I think it’s an ethical nightmare and not one where I believe the pros could outweigh the cons. Therefore, a perfect basis for horror in my own personal views. I also thought very heavily about how the world is what we make it and how all of the horrors around us that we face today came from the decision of someone somewhere, maybe even ourselves which is where I got the idea for a choose-your-own-adventure. In my own love for horror, my personal favorite style is surrealism; I was incredibly inspired by aesthetics like that of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and games like “Samsara Room” and “Cube Escape” by Rusty Lake. With all of the pieces put together, I created the basis of my interactive multimedia narrative: a surrealist horror choose-your-own-adventure set in a future ruled by an AI governance where you are the master of your own fate; or so the governance would like you to believe (EXTRA LINK TO PROJECT!!!)

I decided to use Prezi to create this! I know it’s normally a presentation software, but because the viewer can click the planet subtopics and be brought to any point in the presentation without a necessary chronology, I thought it would be perfect for this! The player can click the subtopic with their choice for that part of that story and follow the timeline of choices for those particular aspects.

In the process of creating this, I knew a few things: 1. with it being a narrative, I wanted this to be a very writing heavy project and 2. I have unfortunately had an insane amount of pre-finals week finals that have been due all throughout the month of April therefore making my time limited and prioritization key. That being said, this did not end up as multimedia as I had hoped or intended due to a lack of time as a whole and certain resources with the program I used (i.e I wanted to create and embed an audio for each new slide to play in the background, but I didn’t have time to do all of that and Prezi will not let me incorporate audio without a pro account).

The bulk of my time was spent writing the story and creating all the various endings (there are 4 main endings that are used with a few times, but with their own explanations and plotline and 1 unique ending that is exclusive to a specific story line; can you find the secret one-of-a-kind end?), and this took me quite a long time to write out and then put together especially on top of all of my other miscellaneous class projects and big presentations. In Canva, I put together a background design to showcase the connection of humanity to the digital world, but to also symbolise the reach that the virtual aspects of life have.

When creating the aesthetics of the presentation, I used a font that I thought felt futuristic yet also still legible to read text groupings in and I used layered circular subtopic aesthetics for each of the choices and made them translucent rather than their typical opaque to create a nuance, almost glitchy or laggy vibe that also felt very cyberpunk/tech inspired in my mind. I incorporated some images of Rorsachs in one of the storylines to create a visual element of uncertainty, but ran out of time to create more designs despite having worked on this project for 2+ weeks. I also spent about 3 days of that trying to sort out my audio situation as I hadn’t realized until the writing and aesthetics were complete that Prezi won’t let me embed audio that automatically accompanies the presentation without a pro account. So, I tried to troubleshoot for a while and then ended up just embedding a Youtube video of ambient horror music to really create a surreal and unsettling ambience that, to me, is one of the most important parts of surrealist horror. Sound, as we talked about in our audio weeks, can play such a pivotal role in the way our brains perceive elements of a story. The player can open the video in a separate tab and have the music playing in the background as they go through each part of the story.

This was a really long, arduous process and I do wish I was able to do more with it, but a lot of really intricate planning went into perfecting the narrative aspect and the storytelling which is really what this is all about. In the end, I incorporated elements of writing, design, and audio to create my surreal horror interactive experience and I’m really quite happy with the way the story came out and the way the mechanics function. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to create something like this without this class teaching me to think outside of the box when it comes to the various ways to tell stories digitally!

Final Project Progress Report

I’ve fully planned out how I want my interactive multimedia narrative to play out and I’m starting to put all the pieces together!

I’m using Prezi to create a click-through choose your own adventure-like software as with the planet topic function on Prezi, you can click them to take you exactly the way you want to go; it felt like a simple yet effective way to accomplish what I’m trying to do.

As mentioned previously, I want to do an interactive narrative that is constructed by the player as they make choices throughout to see how the way they conduct their “life” will be impacted by the ever-growing power of AI in this dystopian world. I was heavily influenced by surrealist/horror game lore like Cube Escape, Samsara Room, and even the FNAF lore to a degree. There are multiple endings depending on what choices you choose. There will be mix of text, images, audio, and design throughout to really immerse yourself in the experience and to keep you on your toes as this is meant to illicit feelings of unease and confusion, much like how it feels to know how the powers of AI can expand and make us unsure of the future ahead.

Radio Show and Week 10 Summary

This week was spent recording and editing the show, so no new content was made for it. We did run into the technical difficulty of the show not being long enough, we tried to extend the script, but it’s still on the shorter side. However, I’m proud of what we made and the way we communicated as a team.

Aside from recording my part, I was in charge of double checking the editing of everyone’s individual parts together and the sound effect/music timing, and I, myself, had to put the bumpers and ads into the final product.

Week 9 Summary

While I only had one physical creation this week due to some emergency circumstances that came up, I think we’re at a good point in our preparation for our radio show. I created a promo poster and have been in communication with my group all week; we’ve got some really good ideas and content and my groupmate in charge of the script got a really solid one done. Can’t wait to see what we produce!

Promo Poster

Admittedly, this week entirely got away from me with work emergencies and doctors appointments, but I was able to get the promo poster done for our group! I took inspiration from the bumper sticker made earlier this week by my groupmate. They had mentioned in their write up of struggling how to make the font futuristic, so I thought adding some glitch-like font effects would maybe help the cause. I tried to keep with their color and logo choices, but add a bit more nuance because a poster provides more space than a bumper sticker.

Promo Poster

Admittedly, this week entirely got away from me with work emergencies and doctors appointments, but I was able to get the promo poster done for our group! I took inspiration from the bumper sticker made earlier this week by my groupmate. They had mentioned in their write up of struggling how to make the font futuristic, so I thought adding some glitch-like font effects would maybe help the cause. I tried to keep with their color and logo choices, but add a bit more nuance because a poster provides more space than a bumper sticker.

Week 7 Summary

My disabilities and off and on month long illness caught up with me to the point that the health center and ODR sent me home to recuperate and be closer to my doctors, so I have not had a very productive week unfortunately. However, I was able to at the very least get my propaganda assignment done and I feel quite good about it. I’m really hoping that being home and on spring break will help me finally recover and get better so that I can finally start getting back in the swing of things.

Goth is Political: Propaganda Creation

Growing up in a very political family and working in a very political counterculture scene, propaganda is something I am very familiar with. However, I’ve never made it before. I decided to use my own roots that overlap with my character’s to use this opportunity to spread a message that seems to have been lost over the years that has been making waves in recent times especially with the current administration. Goth is political. It always has been, and it always will be. It stemmed from the punk culture of the 70s and 80s, the music has always been steeped in allegory, and it’s more important now than ever to understand that and use those beliefs to fight for the same rights and freedoms that we’ve been fighting for the whole time; it’s life or death.

I hopped onto Canva, grabbed some commonly associated political symbols with the goth scene, and got to designing. It’s a fairly simple design as I am still very sick, but I overlapped and overlayed some various paper textures to give it that old school punk propaganda feel, I chose a font reminiscent of counterculture zines, and made sure to outline it to contrast the font color with the background color. I purposely chose to make the outline of the word “political” blue because punk/goth ideals lean very left and blue is the color most commonly associated with that.

While simple, I feel like propaganda should be simple. Colors, fonts, and symbols to catch the eye, but it should be able to be digested in a quick glance without a need to think much about it. The message should be blunt and clear. And this is one that will always be important.

Week 6 Summary

This is unfortunately a bit late as my illness caught up with me on Friday. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, I completely missed week 5 because of my health and I was only able to get two video assignments and my goals revisited complete. For the two video assignments I was able to get done, l chose to do a lyric snippet to showcase another song my course character would connect with and a video of who I am to further showcase my identity as it is something I hold dear to myself.

Physical disability and illness have certainly been making it very difficult to do most things lately, but hopefully I’ll be back to my normal self to be able to keep up with everything.

Goals Revisited

I revisited my goals this week and I have conflicting thoughts. On one hand, I’m meeting the goals I set for myself of learning new forms of media and figuring out ways to utilize them outside of this class, but on the other, I have been truly unable to keep up with the rigors especially as of late due to health crisis after health crisis with my disabilities. I had two massive flare ups, a cold, and a horrible infection in the last three weeks alone and it has been physically incredibly challenging some days to even sit up to use my laptop without my heart rate spiking. While I haven’t been able to complete as much that is expected, I’ve been very happy with what I have created and I feel that I am much more digitally adept because of them. I’ve gotten to use my analytical skills to look into some of my favorite media like the colors in The Corpse Bride and the plot of Dear Evan Hansen, I’ve gotten to shine a light on who I am through playlists of music and videos, and I’ve learned a lot about an aesthetic that I’ve normally avoided due to it being very sensory overwhelming (I still find it overwhelming, I just know more information about it now). I’m hoping my health struggles ease up in the near future, so I can begin to effectively complete the assignments for this class and continue to work towards those goals.