DATE: 2015

ORGANISATION: National Film and Television School

ROLE: Design and Development, Animation

 

This was my submission for a module called Synthespians, in the latter half of my first year on the NFTS Game Design & Development Course.  

 

The brief was to create a digital actor and have them carry out a spoken word performance, which the player could influence in some way. I chose an edited monologue that Kanye West delivered, seemingly off the cuff, during an interview on the Jimmy Kimmel show in 2013. Set in a chat show environment, a player can elect to throw a random object at the avatar, restricted by a cool down timer after each throw.

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The thinking behind this piece was to allow the player to engage in destructive behaviour that appears initially popular and comedic, but to frustrate those attempts so that they actually engage with the content of the speech. The avatar is programmed to dodge every object thrown, and the timer means that the player has to wait before throwing another prop.

 

As the speech goes on, West’s proclamations stop being self-aggrandising and become more sincere and impassioned, finally ending on a comment about the fear of being spoofed, and creative individuals having to deal with attempts to silence them from a young age (’think of a creative person at school: when you picture them, you’re probably picturing them all the way in the back of the class, sketching, or getting beat up’). Juxtaposed with the pile of detritus that has accumulated from the player’s attempts to do precisely that, the hope is that it gives pause for thought on our attitudes towards creativity, celebrity culture, and individuals who we love to hate.

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This project had a very tight turnaround (approx 4 weeks); animation and character creation was carried out in iClone 5, and it was built in Unity.