I worked on this game sketching project during the summer of 2016 as an undergraduate research intern at the University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project lab (DGP). I find it remains representative of a lot of my interests!
As my very first foray into human-computer interaction (HCI) research, I decided to explore how I could enable anyone to so-called "sketch a game to life."
I was intrigued by:
- Sketch-based interfaces.
- In-situ UI.
- Drawing as a form of communication and ideation.
- Low-fidelity prototyping.
- 2d and frame-by-frame stylized animation.
- In-situ UI.
- Drawing as a form of communication and ideation.
- Low-fidelity prototyping.
- 2d and frame-by-frame stylized animation.
Some particular inspirations were Rubaiat Habib's work, in particular his Draco project, and bits of Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences.
My supervisor encouraged me to run a brainstorm session with other members of the research lab. I wanted to get some ideas of the ways people might naturally sketch out game-like mechanics and interactivity ideas.
For the brainstorm session, I threw some gifs up on the projector, examples of bite-sized game mechanics from a few different games. Equipped with printer paper and Crayola markers, I asked participants to sketch them out, however they saw fit.
The workshop was fun and informative! Sadly I didn't really get around to implementing the sketch-based interaction ideas when building the prototype, which ended up being a teeny-tiny-game engine within a canvas, built in Processing.
Some more gifs!
Spawning:
Keyboard controls, simple animation, pick-ups:
Aaand much more... it's all pretty modular, but I didn't have the UI to showcase it that well yet!
Eventually I stumbled upon Unity tool that does something kind of similar: lets people sketch game objects right into scenes, and even animate them in-situ too. I don't remember the name of it now so: if anyone knows what I'm talking about, please ping me!