Originally the project that I had envisioned was to teach the younger generation, aged 12+ what the loom industry is, the idea of Ned Ludd and who were the Luddites, where this concept of the Luddites originated from and why?

What I have learned who the luddites were, they were a group of people who opposed to the idea of the loom factories and its poor working condition, also how the industry to making loom in masses made people who made lace’s at home on a spinning wheel redundant. Our project was going to illustrate this shift and the advance that technology is having and how people were afraid of the idea of how technology might take over.

The project didn’t have a clear out let of what it might look like, but we knew that in our project there will be 3 members. One who is me doing the concept art for the project, second being Sam who would be programming the game and lastly Brendan who will be developing my sketch work in to 3D models. Even though we knew what we as individuals will be doing we still didn’t have a concept for what the game will look like.

We finally came to a conclusion of what the game will look like and what it would be. Using the Ue4 as an architectural software we would make gallery spaces, with three room each showing different periods. Gallery one would be the Luddite gallery, showing the history of the Luddites and 3D model of the spinning wheel. Gallery two will be the contemporary gallery, in this room I have created photomontage posters that was made on Photoshop and a new skill that I had learned from my tutor, clipping mask, where the text overlaps the image in the background but still able to see the image through the text.

In this project I handled the concept work for the photomontage posters, the sketch work for the 3D models, i.e. the 70’s cored based receiver attached to the more modern day mobile phone, cassette being juiced out of its life by a handheld music device and much slimmer. The music device could something like an IPod, for concept sake. Also for the AI room I had designed the robotic hands which is a play on Michelangelo’s painting “The creation of Adam”. The scrolling text is also an added feature that I had made on Photoshop later to be turn in to like scrolling cryptic code for the AI room. I had also a big part in what the game should look like astatically and the curation of the gallery space/ spaces. I was also given the chance to create sound cues for the individual galleries and the theme of what each gallery would sound like.

I’d like to say what went wrong for the project first and it was communication between the three of us. There were times in the beginning of the project that communication wasn’t strong and we were losing out on precious time, so that was something we had to work towards to bring the group back together and get the project back on track.

The best aspect of this project for me was that I enjoyed doing the concept art work for it and visualising what the game would look like, also getting feedback from my team mates of what they thought about the project and pitching in ideas. I also got to a bit of sound making, however, because we had strictly divided our parts I didn’t get the opportunity to do a lot of tech based work, as much as I would like to, but in the future I will be concentrating on animation of my 2D work.

We had several changes in our games which I can’t possibly go through all of them, but the one change we had that was reoccurring was the amount of rooms/ galleries we were going to have. Initially we were going to have 5 rooms that would go through different period of time and coming to the futurist AI world, however we had to drop that idea because of time. We were also going to have a narrator who would speak throughout the game, but again because of time we had to drop that idea, so there was a lot of our project we have taken out because realistically with the time frame we had we could have not done it.

We did have a timetable that we had made initially, during preproduction, however we didn’t use it because we ended up “going with the flow” and what came naturally. Also being a mature student I have other priorities outside of college and the work was somewhat on my shoulder because until I didn’t bring in any concept design the 3D models would not be made and we would not have anything in the gallery space.

My inspiration for my photomontage posters came from an UK based artist, Linder Sterling. She specializes in photography, radical feminist photo-montage, and confrontational performance art. Her work emerges from the Manchester punk and post-punk scenes in the 1970’s. What I was more interested in how she would layer her photography work with magazine cut-outs and how obvious it is. I wanted to bring the same idea to the table with doing poster on Photoshop using secondary images, but I didn’t want this idea to be used for making posters I wanted to use it for my sketch work and how it would be developed into 3D models. I had also looked at a music video by Bjork: “All is Full of Love”, this was to be inspired to create my robotic hands.

As I have spoken about communication and how poor it was to being with, we had to sit down and plan out that if one didn’t come in then they would be updated about the project and what was developed on it via Facebook or discord and when the group would be in we would constantly ask question and show each other what we are developing on for the project. I would also sketch out what each room would look like and what will be placed to show visual communication. We also had game play day where we had to play each other’s game and answer question on an online survey to get feedback from our peers and tutors, so we would know how to further develop our project.

To summaries the project, I would say that the project went well and we got all the aspect what we had finalised on, and working in a group is a task of its own and to be able to communicate with harmony. I have also learned that to do concept work you need a lot of time and you cannot rely on one design that sprung into your mind and drew it. I would have to seriously do more drawing based work when we go into our specialised area for next term and carry that on to my final major project to build a substantial portfolio. Finally I would like to add, despite the slight off balance I had in my team I would still like to work in a group because I have the opportunity to learn more and know what kind of design work other people like.