Weekly Workshop

Workshop 1: “Out of My Mind”

For this week’s workshop, I wanted to test out everything I had learned in class and discover new Unity features. I first started by exploring the “Low Poly Nature”(LPN) Package we downloaded in class, and with that, I knew what I was going to build.

Mainly inspired by “The Wizard of Oz” and “Rick & Morty”, I wanted to create a sort of path that leads to an abstract structure, this path would have details on both sides. Not only that, but the main theme and idea behind the colors and “scattered” objects is a hallucination or being in an out-of-mind state. I felt like to follow such a path leading to an unknown structure, as well as seeing strange, out-of-the-ordinary colors, would mean that the viewer is either imagining things or that their reality is being distorted, which is what my creation was going to convey. I should also add that I was not actively thinking about either “The Wizard of Oz” nor “Rick & Morty” when I thought of this idea, but then realized that it was probably my subconscious brain that conjured up these images that I had seen before in the movie and show.

The actual process of building on Unity was very entertaining and fruitful, as with every object created, and every asset used and created, I learned more and more about this software. I first struggled greatly with the controls and sensitivity of the camera view and mouse movement, but eventually somewhat got the hang of it. Next, the parent-child relationships were very useful as they made the process with repetitive objects much easier. However, I did struggle a lot while trying to figure out how to color all objects at once (n.b. google said I couldn’t do that!).

Moreover, I had first drawn a quick sketch on pen and paper of what I wanted to create, which was very useful when making it, I also thought of the steps of building before starting to work, which served as a good guide to not get overwhelmed in the process. My steps were:

1. Build path using “Plane” object.

2. Build and color sides using the “grass” object from the “LPN” package.

3. Add all objects and “decoration” on each side of the LPN package, and add textures.

4. Build abstract structure at the end of the path using geometric 3D shapes

5. Build an “ending” to the structure, with a message (wake up).

Lastly, this whole workshop helped me get familiar with Unity, and think of new ways to improve while using this software. For future projects, I am very interested in discovering more logical or “smooth” ways of placing objects, figuring out the relationship between objects in terms of space and proportions, get more familiar with materials and their functions, and so on…

Hi Janna,

So proud of you! This is very striking and futuristic! Love the colors and the path you create in your scene. Well done!