JelloFish–Ang

Abstract

This project is originated from my daily life experience. The experience of watching jellyfish always interests me. The concept is making people interact with jellyfishes so that they will view other life forms as equal to human beings. For the technical prototyping, I chose Unity as my tool to the world.

Concept, design questions, goal

In the beginning, I was thinking to design a jellyfish evolution. To show how will the life form adapt to the environment change. But I figured it conveys a very vague meaning and I want to design something more interactive. So I pivot my conception to create an equal relationship between human and nature.

Unlike normal human relationship, I want to make nature as a bossy person since that’s the human’s attitude toward nature. The color of jellyfish will be constantly changing. Different color represents a different personality, which means people need to move different distance to see the jellyfish or the jellyfish will hide. I like the concept of using people location to interact with the jellyfish since it offers a spatial experience.

Research:

The jellyfish tank has always been a hot spot in the aquarium. Yet, to human, they are nothing but something to use for entertainment. I want to create a more equal relationship by changing the interaction. I also used to the conception of intimate distance. Intimate Distance is a zone of space ranging from intimate contact to less than an arm’s length in which people operate under specific social situations. By introducing this conception, I can measure the relationships between the user and the jellyfish.

Audience & experience

The project is intended for everyone. The core experience will be interacting with the jellyfish by changing users’ location. As the jellyfish change their color, users need to adjust their position so the jellyfish won’t disappear.  The different distance between users and the tank will have different expression form the jellyfish.

Technical Production

For this project, I was expecting to enhance my unity skills. So I mainly used unity to build the scene. At first, I built models inside C4D. But after I built models, I found the animation I built cannot be exported into unity. So I end up using models from the asset store. Then I learned a lot from this experience. Especially the animation knowledge.

Prototyping & testing

 Since I am not good at techniques. So my prototyping strategy is to try to build something first then iterate. One difficulty is that I cannot export complicated models into unity, which really bothers me. Fortunately, they have great models in the asset store. The process is modeling — animation — trigger mechanism — environment.

https://vimeo.com/305446870

Slideshow Presentation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gvy2fmp-o5GV0cymAEuTYZ1BV4UlWVzO/view?usp=sharing

Takeout

This project offered me a great opportunity to know unity. Although the interaction is kind of weak for now. I will enhance the interaction during the winter break. For me, modeling for the game engine is a really interesting experience. I am excited about making interactive objects.