Author: Ben Nguyen

It’s great to see how an artist group is quite different to an independent artist (more projects, larger portfolio, more streamlined process). Since a lot of their works are commissions, it does feel like there is less ‘resonance’ between the artists and the final piece (perhaps because each person works on one small part and it is not as personal), but the end products are all very high quality. It’s a bit sad in a way since a lot of studios like these I will never hear about unless I go out of my way to look for credits (or take a related course).

My art piece of choice is the UI design of the video game Persona 5. Below are some pictures of the in-game UI:

Of course, there are a lot more UI elements within the games, but these images capture the ones that I feel are the most impactful. I always feel very drawn into the world of the game whenever I play, and I think this UI is a big part of it. Because of how unique each section is in terms of aesthetic, it feels like I switch to a different ‘stance’ (which is also a mechanic within the game) every time I am in a different part. The characters’ emotion also tends to be quite visceral, since the UI really emphasizes extreme facial expression.

Part of this is due to the color use. The game in general is quite colorful, but they use a lot of contrast to highlight different elements (such as character names), which make them ‘pop’. This in turn draws attention to important elements within the game. The letter font and sizes tend to be a bit all over the place too, which hurts visibility a bit but gives the game so much personality. Because of that, it feels like the various menus are integral parts of the game rather than something I have to slog through to get to the real gameplay.

In addition, there is almost always a character posing in different parts of the menu, so it never feels like my play time is interrupted whenever I open up one of the menus (which is great since large portions of the game requires some menu-ing). The game does a great job of making sure that I am playing Persona 5 100% of the time.

P/s: the main theme is a banger. I will just leave a link to that down here: Life Will Change (youtube.com)

The fact that she’s very firm in her stance about funding is quite interesting, especially since it kinda defeats the purpose of going to Berlin for art (tho apparently it is cheaper compared to London). It’s a little funny that most artists that we have met so far cite the funding as the main reason for moving to Berlin, and Harshini was just like ‘yeah no’. Her perspective of a newcomer is refreshing as well, since she basically came as a not very well established artist, and thus had to scramble a bit to get going.

Reversal method

Entry point: Game developers crunching to get games out on time.

5 reversals:

• Games trying to ‘dress up’ (i.e., finish) on time so the developers don’t beat them.
• Developers hounding executives to go find more funding.
• Developers breaking down a finished game into small pieces.
• Developers making a game leisurely.
• A game making itself.

This took me a bit of time since I tried to keep things logical at first. I decided to go with idea 3. I made a collage of headlines about features that have been removed from video games sequels and/or updates, or just video games being shutdown in general.

Lateral thinking

This chapter mainly concerns suspending judgement until later. I find this to be especially applicable to the beginner’s mind: as a beginner, one has very little idea on what is appropriate for a situation, so when a beginner propose solutions it can vary from semi reasonable to outrageous (kinda like how adults see children and their big ideas). It can be useful to adopt this mindset as experts, since these ‘naive’ ideas tend to be on the right track but something in the details make them not feasible. The important thing is analyzing these details to eventually arrive at the right solution.

Art & fear

Art and talent being a pair feels like a tale as old as time. What I find most annoying is that people from my childhood used to jump at any opportunities to judge artwork. It’s not really a problem if someone can draw well, but for people who just want to dabble in it for fun (like me) it was hell: every time I tried to draw something new, I would get some scathing comments about how I should just stick to what is necessary (i.e., enough to pass art classes) rather than make new stuff. That plays a huge role in me not being interested in creative stuff from middle school all the way until university.

Awesome guest. I like how committed he is to each of his work (2+ years of research prior) and how he has a very clear idea of what the work means and how it could transpire. He seems to be very in tune with his own craft, not afraid to do things others would consider to be offensive (e.g., acting out the stereotypes) or too intimate.

After some ‘why’ journeying, our group landed on the concept of incompleteness. To tackle this, we came up with a list of possible incomplete things to make:

1. We cannot fully build a model

2. There’s a game that doesn’t end
3. Cooking without the necessary ingredients
4. A comic that is not fully drawn
5. A story that doesn’t have an ending
6. Half a picture
7. A family where the dad is missing
8. An apartment with no furniture 9. Having one good quality but not the other, e.g. a genius who is shy
9. Berlin without the graffiti
10. A complete idea but you remove something from it

I decided to go with 6. My own interpretation of this is that an incomplete picture (half picture) has to have a clear idea of completeness (i.e., it is missing something concrete). So I experimented with various ways of obscuring scenery.

Drawing over the main object

randomly drawing over half the picture

using window blinds to block

using wall to block

using thumb to block

tree blocking my selfie

I like how she focused quite a bit on the technical aspects of her instruments since her background is in engineering (the materials, the shapes, how it is made). It’s also fantastic to see the community aspect of her work, especially with regards to her hometown. It gives her art some very powerful purpose.

All my whys and creation for this are recorded in the docs above. I wanted to dive a bit into why people may think that video games are harmful (because I love video games and this narrative has been said to me since forever). Since the end result is YOLO (You only live once), my mind immediately jumped to a bucket list of things to do before I die. But then I realized that I hate doing things only once. If something is worth doing once then I think it is worth doing multiple times. So I decided to make sketches of tokens that would help me decide what to do when I am bored and indecisive. All the activities are things I enjoy doing. I also included a dice at the end in days that I feel extra indecisive. The dice would help me pick a token, or if it lands on wildcard I will just go ask a friend what I should do.

This chapter reminds me of an aspect of teaching in a different book (How Learning Works) that I have read for a course, where they emphasized that the way professors (and experts in general) organize information and the way students (and beginners) do it are totally different. For experts, information is organized in a huge interconnected web, whereas for students it is generally a lot of small bubbles. The main strength of the former is that it is quite robust, but the latter is more malleable since they have less information and more gaps between them. I think this is why teaching lateral thinking to young people is even more important: we can give them more ways to connect information and create webs rather than eventually settling on the same web that is passed down from professors. In this sense, perhaps we can think of gaps in these webs as spaces to explore and create and even teach students to intentionally leave some in their mind.