Tagged: Augmented Reality
CritLit Circuit: December 2017
So December was a busy month – and it’s still here, believe it or not! Plenty had changed since my last exhibition in July – I was starting to hand illustrate most of my assets, I had removed and rehashed big sections that I had shown to previous audiences, and I had more puzzles to show.
I was also exhibiting to a broader audience – from VR/AR to Board Games, Game Books and Console/retro games. As a whole, these events allowed me to understand a broad range of expectations – both as an AR game and as a gamebook.The feedback, then, was even greater than I could have ever hoped to get. Coming Home fits such a niche area – and the general consensus from the two events were very different, I have to say.
I thoroughly enjoyed the conventions, even if I did have very little sleep before both of them! I got to try out some great card games and indie video games, meet great people and managed to get in a bit of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and ARMS! There was even a video game music orchestra, which is right up my alley!
Another highlight was Ian Livingstone’s talk on the history of Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy – so inspiring and heart warming! I also managed to get a Gamebook signed by him as well!
I’m planning for some events coming soon, so do stay tuned for more updates as they come! Hope you had a great holiday/day(s) in general!
Suzie
x
From Dragonmeet
From WeGeek Utopia
The History of the Bookmark
As I’ve been developing and designing a range of AR Bookmarks (or what I call the Book.AR.k), why not share the history of such a universal and practically timeless gadget from its conception? In this post, I will trace its story from its physical to its digital form!
Humble Beginnings
Bookmarks can be traced back further than we might think – with indications that bookmarks first emerged in the 1st century AD as an accompaniment to codices. Codices, plural of codex, (coming from the Latin caudex – meaning block of wood, which also could be used in a pejorative way i.e. blockhead!) were books made of paper/vellum/papyrus with its contents handwritten.
In Egypt, near Sakkara, the earliest bookmark was found – dating from 6th Century AD and made of ornamented leather.
In later centuries, when you consider the rarity of the earliest print books, it makes sense that they would want to protect them from physical wear and tear – and the bookmark could freely mark any page the reader wanted without doing so. Queen Elizabeth I was one of the first to own a bookmark (or “bookmarker”) by the Queen’s Printer, Christopher Barker. The bookmark in question was fringed with silk.
By the 1880s, the woven silk bookmarks were becoming replaced with the stiff paper and cardboard versions that we’d be more familiar with today.
Nowadays, many styles of bookmark are available – made in either metal, cardboard, fabric or plush. They can come in many shapes and sizes – even in a clip or magnetic form.
From Physical to Digital
Bookmarking functions can be found in every browser today, but the first design for a digital bookmark actually preceded the World Wide Web. Craig Cockburn proposed a touchscreen device called a PageLink in 1989 – similar to a hybrid of an ebook reader/browser. His patent, although applied for, was never produced.
Instead, it was the browser Mosaic 1.0 in 1993 that popularised the type of digital bookmark that we know today – called a Hotlist. It would change colour depending on whether the link had been visited before – tracking the history of where the person browsed.
Nowadays, due to the heavy use of mobile phones, bookmarks are often synched between device and laptop/computer, enabling a consistent presence of searched and curated information.
So why the Bookm.AR.k?
When designing the Book.AR.k, I put forward the most important question – what does mixed reality add to the experience? If a physical bookmark has AR content, what helps and what hinders its original function – to mark the place of the reader?
If we go back to the precious nature of the printed book and the need to preserve it, attitudes have changed since then. We can sometimes be accused of folding our book corners in lieu of a bookmark, as well as scribbling in the margins.
So why not have clear notes that are linked to the bookmark? Why not integrate a digital system – one that autosaves and stands the test of time of wear/tear, and stays in one consistent place?
I’ll have another page, depicting all of the bookmarks in the range (plus one I’m extremely excited about, the specialised D&D edition) in a lot more detail.
I hope you enjoyed this rather different post!
Suzie
x
Introducing Coming Home – a video!
So we filmed a brief outline video of how Coming Home, our interactive AR novel, works along with the app and as a stand alone piece. Thanks go to Jorge Ba-oh for editing (he runs a neat T-shirt business called TeeChu, selling geek and gamer merch!)
Hope you enjoy it! x
Update: VRUK: Fest!
First of all – hope you all are well!
From the 6th-7th July, I exhibited Coming Home at VRUK Fest – the very first time exhibiting! It was a whole cocktail of emotions – but the sweetness was the overwhelming flavour.
My background has been in theatre – and something that always worried me was whether I dropped props. I was a little secure when it was myself and gravity – throw other things into the mix and the fear of me messing up would go up a degree!
I realised it was definitely the case when displaying something I had written and coded!
However, it worked – not 100% accurate, but workable for a demo – which I was so happy about! Everyone was so understanding, attentive and I met some incredible people who taught me so much and gave me food for present and future thought!
The feedback was great too – and it was definitely to work on presentation and the way the book is laid out. My mind has been fully entrenched with language and words – but not necessarily where they lie or where they could be positioned to bring out the full potential of the AR extension. I’ve been sketching up some ideas since then – and I can’t wait to show them to you!
The people, demos and talks gave me so much inspiration and motivation in a relatively new field of opportunities – there’s a lot of things to prove and a lot of things to develop. It seems the most exciting time for this technology to develop on its own merit as well as to rejuvenate and/or transform existing media. I feel very privileged to be a part of it.
Thank you to RaveInnovate and VRUmbrella for giving me this opportunity!
Suzie
x
Mind the Gap – AR books pt.2
Long time no see! It’s been a while since the last blog post, so it’s time for another instalment of Mind the Gap! This post in particular will refer to the work I’m doing on the Coming Home series – if you want to know more on the project, here’s the link. I’ll be doing some dev logs on the site very soon.
AR had a profound effect on me when it came to disrupting or stifling presence – that it could make its mark on the moment unlike the “soma-esque” escapism of VR. AR feels like the technological manifestation of when a memory is tagged onto a particular place or object, and it could be used for a myriad of purposes. It can write or try to rewrite a connection to something you may see everyday in a much more explicit way than other methods.
Because of that, I wanted to be very careful when preparing an AR book.
I love books, like a lot of people. I escaped a lot in books, stories and characters during my childhood and teenage years to this day (though nowhere as near as much as before) – so in order to augment a medium that wants the consumer to fill in the gaps with their own imagination, the overlay has to be painted with a light hand.
So with Coming Home – a mixture of prose and free form poetry – there had to be a lot of balancing. The AR had to add something, for sure, but I didn’t want it to act as a distraction from the words that were already there. The cover was the simple part.
But what about the printed words themselves? Would there be only pictorial representations of the words, or would there be other parts of the story through words and sounds?
The solution finally came to me – the idea of multiple narratives in AR.
It’s been done so many times in regular novels – with either the strength of the voice or the typography marking out each character.
This time, however, there could be as many as you wanted (within reason), by selecting a character at the beginning of the book – the reactions to one main text changing, depending on who was chosen.
In this way, not only would there be a standalone book, but the AR would add depth rather than the whole story. There’ll also be some bonus content (spoilers!).
I’ll be writing more about how the book design goes and any news for demos (an interesting idea for an AR book – we’ll tell you when we find a solution) both here and on the Coming Home site!
Suzie x
Critical Lit Games 