Although the redesign has been in the works for a bit, today I finally relaunched the Seymour Deeply website, which includes the full graphic novella/webcomic, a revised trailer, a team page and a page that details where Seymour Deeply is being showcased around Los Angeles in the next few weeks leading up to USC’s graduation.
First Move is the interactive portion of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts’ First Look festival, a showcase of the past year’s best student work (which includes First Film, First Pitch and First Frame). First Move 2012 takes place on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 7:30pm in the Directors’ Guild of America Complex, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046. First Move 2012 includes several different types of projects from across the Interactive Media spectrum. From small, independent undertakings by individual students to masters theses and advanced game projects developed over the past year by teams as large as forty students. And, as quoted on the site:
. . . several unique projects that push the boundaries of interactive media will be showcased, such as the highly acclaimed augmented-reality game Reality Ends Here and the stereoscopic experiences Seymour Deeply and Shayd.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please stop by and see all sorts of interactive media goodness, including Seymour Deeply!
For those who have been asking, “Hey, when can I see this amazing thesis project that you’ve been working on and has been sucking up all your time?” I now have more information to share.
Seymour Deeply will be showcased at the 2012 USC SCA IMD Thesis show, Other Worlds. You can learn all about the show, the location, dates, times, etc. as well as all of the other incredibly interactive projects that will be shown there by visiting the show’s webpage here.
In the meantime, check out the totally awesome poster for the show, designed by IMD alum, Ala’ Diab.
I’d like to share one of my new favorite sites, which combines transmedia, fan work and comic books. It’s a re-imagining of the Justice League as grade schoolers and its both poignant and adorable. If you haven’t see “Little League” by Yale Stewart yet, you simply must go now.
A sample of the wonderful webcomic, "Little League"
Not that I have been able to maintain a true and complete development blog here on this site as might have wished, but I do hope, now that I’m in my second semester of development on the project, to update the page semi-regularly with news, setback, advancements and perhaps some art and screenshots.
The development team behind Seymour Deeply is amazing and deserve a shout out. Primary among them is my producer, Konstantin Brazhnik, who has been able to reign in the monster that this project threatened to become. The there are the amazing developers who have helped (both this semester and last): Nathan Burba, Ayesha Mazumdar, Andres Ramirez, Talgat Duisenov, Winters Lu, Ran Zhai, Ryo Chibo, James Chang, Ino Mantaring, and Chao Zhang. Fellow designers, whose input has been invaluable: Jimmy Gorham and Patrick Meegan. My artists and animators: Willie Hoffman and Elyse Kelly. And my sound designer, Matt Soule.
Development has been coming along apace. We almost have a fully functioning redesign of the first level up and running (all the pieces are in place, the compiling of those pieces still needs to be done). Levels two and three are also coming along nicely. I’ve found a really wonderful artist, Miss Tak, who will be handling the art for the comic book extension of the project. I hope to have some of the teaser art up here in the next few weeks.
Finally, for now, a preliminary screen shot of the first level, rendered in anaglyph. The final project will not (I emphasize NOT) be in anaglyph, but for screenshots, it works to denote the stereoscopic nature of the piece. This image shows some programmer art (new textures will be coming in soon) but this lays out some of the gameplay of level one as the player (as Seymour) receives his heart’s desire and gets to touch the stars.
Preliminary screenshot of level one. Yes, if you look at it with standard Anaglyph glasses, you can see the 3D effect.
Seymour Deeply is actually both a “who” and a “what.” Seymour is the title character of my MFA thesis project of the same name.
As part of my Masters of Fine Arts in Interactive Media, I am required to complete not only a thesis paper, but also a thesis project. My interest in using stereoscopic 3D as an integral part of a narrative lead me to develop what has now become Seymour Deeply, the project. The project is an immersive interactive storybook using stereoscopic 3D combined with Microsoft’s Kinect for gestural interfacing.
The story of Seymour is a retelling and continuation of the Jack and the Beanstalk fable, but from Seymour’s point of view. Seymour is the son of Stanley Deeply, who many may remember as “The Giant.” Seymour longs to escape his family’s plans for him (Stanley wants him to continue the family tradition of being a gold farmer – seriously, why else do you think they have geese that lay golden eggs) and become an astronomer, touch the stars and explore other worlds. His plans start to shift, however, when a handsome youth from The Belowlands arrives in the back acre of his estate, climbing a beanstalk. Even though the laws of Abovia forbid any contact or fraternization with those Below, Seymour finds himself connected to this youth, Jack, and soon realizes that his feelings of attraction are reciprocated. Jack returns home briefly, but his love for Seymour (and his mother’s insistence on more golden geese) soon sends him back up the stalk. His reunion with Seymour is short-lived, though, because Stanley has discovered their forbidden love and chases Jack back down to The Belowlands. Jack’s neighbors, wary of more visitors from above are already chopping down the stalk. Jack barely, but safely, makes it to the ground. Stanley isn’t so lucky. Now, in mourning over the loss of his father and seemingly separated forever from his true love, Seymour Deeply begins a quest to reconnect with Jack, acquire more magic beans, and find his way down to The Belowlands and to Jack.
Early Concept art of the Worlds of Seymour Deeply
Seymour Deeply is conceived as a transmedia project. The story outlined above will be told in comic book form as both a webcomic and as a limited run printed comic for the 2012 USC Interactive Media Thesis Show, Other Worlds. The story continues as a playable interactive experience, where the player takes on the role of Seymour through several levels of the narrative. For the first level, Seymour (following the customs of his people when a new head of the family emerges) is granted his heart’s desire – in Seymour’s case, the ability to touch the stars. The player, as Seymour, gets to generate new stars and form new 3D constellations. He soon realizes, however, that the objects being formed are actually related to his true heart’s desire, Jack. Then, Seymour must take the drastic step of cultivating rare magic beans (which are only formed and collected during lightning storms). Once these are collected, Seymour is able to deliver them to Jack–who grows a new beanstalk so Seymour can escape and the two of them can be reunited.
Seymour Deeply will premiere as an installation in the 2012 USC Interactive Media Thesis Show, Other Worlds, opening May 4, 2012 and running through USC’s commencement on May 11, 2012. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please stop by as we’ll be open every day (times still to be determined).
Yes, despite my promise to myself of last January to resolve to post more often to this blog, I’ve been remiss. I’m trying it again this year, since there’s so much to post about. I will tease that I am in the middle of working on my MFA thesis project, Seymour Deeply. More about that will come later. I also want to talk about the bold move that DC Comics made this past September by fulfilling the plan first presented by Marv Wolfman back in the early ’80s and the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and rebooting their entire comics universe. We’re several months in now. How’s it going? And I finally would like to talk about my continued interest and involvement in transmedia storytelling (having had a fantastic class with Henry Jenkins this past fall and working on a fantastic transmedia pitch, I’m eager to discuss it further.
I’m back. And I’m blogging.
Just a quick post to say that I’ve made some quick updates to my past projects page. I intend to update it even more and hopefully embed playable links right in the page as well.
I am thrilled to post that my game, Elephant in the Relationship, has been selected to be shown at Game Show NYC, a games, education and art conference.
Initially conceived as a serious game in Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop class, the Elephant in the Relationship team (Andy Uehara, Casey China, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz and myself) has worked to sculpt the game over several iterations and various playtests.
Elephant in the Relationship is a game for 2 to 4 players in which players try to communicate deeply troubling relationship issues. Players take on the roles of two people in a personal relationship and turn the drama of a potentially risky (or intimate) interaction into spectacle for a group to enjoy. The game fuses Pictionary-style drawing and guessing mechanics with elements of doll-play and improvisational theater, asking players to place themselves into a difficult emotional scenario with their partner.
So it’s already 2011 and I’ve realized that I have been horribly, horribly remiss in updating my blog. I despise New Year’s resolutions, but I’m making a promise to myself to try to update my blog at least once a week this year. Surely I have enough going on in my life to write about something interesting.
