{"id":164,"date":"2013-03-01T20:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T20:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=164"},"modified":"2013-03-10T19:09:08","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T19:09:08","slug":"week-7-overcoming-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"Week 7: Overcoming Obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week in Review<\/h1>\n

Thanks to faculty input, this week we leapt\u00a0over an obstacle that might have put us in a\u00a0lose-lose scenario, helping us lock down other\u00a0design choices and putting us on track to have\u00a0a prototype ready for half-way presentations.<\/p>\n

To meet our client\u2019s goal of having kids feel inserted\u00a0into the stories they\u2019ve created, we had\u00a0planned a design with a lot of moving pieces:\u00a0there was to be sections that were animated\u00a0based on kids\u2019 choices, sections where kids\u00a0could draw or write their input, and sections\u00a0where kids could have their faces mapped\u00a0onto onscreen characters\u2019 heads.<\/p>\n

Juggling these moving parts turned out to be\u00a0a challenge. In Week 6 we discovered that our\u00a0planned sprite sheet animation was not going\u00a0to work with our facemapping feature. We\u00a0knew we couldn\u2019t drop animation, since we felt\u00a0made kids\u2019 stories come to life. We knew if we\u00a0invested time in finding some way of making\u00a0facemapping work with sprite sheet animation\u00a0we wouldn\u2019t be able to invest it elsewhere\u2014we\u00a0would have to do fewer animations, which\u00a0meant fewer options for kids, and we might\u00a0have to limit how we let kids draw or use free\u00a0input. This seemed like a necessary, but less\u00a0than ideal, compromise.<\/p>\n

Then, a ray of hope: on our adviser\u2019s suggestion,\u00a0we approached ETC faculty member\u00a0Ruth Comley with our challenge. She suggested\u00a0we switch from 2D sprite sheet animation\u00a0to a 3D paper doll-like system that would look\u00a02D, but more easily map player\u2019s faces to\u00a0character heads. Some of the time we would\u00a0lose by switching from a less demanding four frame\u00a0animation style to a more demanding 3D\u00a0style could be made up by the fact that characters\u00a0did not need to be individually animated, but\u00a0could be mapped to a common skeleton.<\/p>\n

As this was going on, we finalized our physical\u00a0design for client approval, allowing us to give the\u00a0designs to Ben Carter from the School of Drama\u00a0to order the parts and build. We also used general\u00a0UI examples we had shown earlier to create\u00a0a storyboard of the whole user experience. This\u00a0helped us firm up the scene structure so our\u00a0programmers could continue building the skeleton\u00a0of the system. This is particularly important,\u00a0as our design involves networking between a client-
\nside touchscreen monitor and a server-side\u00a0big-screen TV.<\/p>\n

At week\u2019s end, we presented our progress to our\u00a0client, the San Antonio Children\u2019s Museum, and\u00a0their\u00a0adviser\u00a0Argyle Design. We were able to walk\u00a0them through the whole experience and even\u00a0demonstrate a prototype of facemapping and\u00a0animation. This let them share final input before\u00a0we continued our march towards a full-feature\u00a0prototype.<\/p>\n

We Suggest:<\/h2>\n