For my interactive touch concept, I was admittedly really caught up and struggling with an idea. However, after a lot of brainstorming and discussion with friends, I remembered what Professor Chery once told our class in the past: Nothing is Holy.
This is an axiom that I follow for most things in my life. At the end of the day, we have to make a decision, draw a line, submit a project. No matter what, there’ll always be something you can do better with something you made, and inversely, something you can do worse. What’s important is that we keep creating, experimenting, and expressing. What really needs preserving is this spirit of creation and artistry, not necessarily the work of art itself. Therefore, make those mistakes and mess up your art. You can always make more.
With this philosophy in mind, I wanted to create “particle clay”. Essentially, there will be two hand inputs that take in info from specific finger digits. When the user interacts with the inputs, they will begin “sculpting” the particle system, mixing and matching the different particles’ speed, color, scale, etc, and creating an interactive art piece that is ever-changing and dynamic. By keeping it fluid like this, the person will be in a constant state of flux/creation. When the player releases their hands from the palm inputs, the particles will fade away, destroying the piece.
This will be done using Unity’s shader graph and visual effects graph. For the medium, I am still undecided what I want to make the input out of: My Artist Question is which medium would be better for the hand inputs: something glove-like (fabric) or something illustrated (graphite or paint)?
I really like this idea, the message definitely benefits from greater interactivity. I do have a neutral question: How exactly do you plan on making it respond to player inputs? What would the “buttons” do?
I intend on one hand to control the rotation of this particle system (so they can view different angles of it) and on the other hand to manipulate the particles themselves.
I have a neutral question: Is the hand input supposed to be in the shape of a hand that users have to press/touch?
Yes. I am not very good at drawing, so my sketch of a hand may not seem so 🙂
I think incorporating some fabric would really add to the touch element of it, unless you draw something that communicates the message itself. Maybe the particles are an augmented version of the drawing you make as and input sketch to further show this experimentation.
I think that the fabric would be a better input because of the 3D creations.
I agree with including an additional material to interact with. If you include a physical material for the person to interact with, that would allow them to immerse themself into the experience with one more sense which could be beneficial.
I think your project would work with something illustrated, but I think if you made it out of fabric, it would make your project more unique and stand out more.
The glove idea will be super neat! I am intrigued to see how you would wire this to make it work.
I agree that fabric/material would increase interactivity and give the user a connection to the digital story
I think that gloves might be a more interactive element than using a pencil/brush, since your description mentioned how creative should be challenged and art can/should be messy.