This is the shortest possible update of the pilot DIP process.
A module of the super-epic Lahore Fort Project is the method I have suggested to use game creation workflows to digitally preserve buildings and sites. In October of 2022, I, and a team of animation students were given the opportunity to put this theory to the test and try to make it happen.
Priscilla Nascimento, Iza Jurczuk, Jordan Klipp and Delancey Hobbs on our first day at the Genesee Country Village and Museum pavillion.
Thanks to this smart and resourceful group, we were able to test out different types of scanning methods, compare them to other capture processes and settled on a combination workflow that uses the best of LiDAR and photogrammetry to help refine and import this building into Unreal Engine.
For the exterior roof scan, we “borrowed” a drone and pilot from the RIT Center for Imaging Sciences and got to explore GPS-based scanning for geographical terrain.
In the few weeks that remained, we were able to cobble together a small demo to show off how much fun it could be to experience a scanned location in an interactive environment!
Thanks to RIT, the Genesee Country Village and Museum, and the Center for Imaging Sciences this method went from being theoretical to prototyped!
What a wild ride!! If you’ve never had a chance to go, I highly recommend attending the Game Developer’s Conference. Feel like stepping it up? Go as a speaker!
There were a number of awesome things about this conference, not least the fact that 2022 had a much bigger in-person attendance than any post-pandemic year. After being really isolated through the pandemic, this was both an exhilarating and terrifying experience.
Getting to spend a week immersed in the world of game creation, watching and learning from the gurus of the industry and being surrounded with that level of talent is inspiring on so many levels. I attended talks about the state of the industry, learned about art, management, marketing, and the metaverse.
For me, the GDC was (is) the most prestigious place I had ever gotten to present my idea. Even carzier was the fact that there were a few other talks related to cultural heritage development and preservation. Knowing this made me feel like my idea had real merit!
My talk was scheduled for Friday afternoon, the last day of the conference in the final timeslot of the conference. That entire week, I vacillated between gratitude at the idea of not drawing any attendees for my talk, and the imagined horror of potentially having to present to an empty hall.
I rewrote my speech about a hundred times and kicked myself for applying to speak in the first place. After all, I was presenting an idea that was remarkably simple in its technical scope. I had zero proof-of-concept examples, other than some minor tests based on my own photography of a monument. My research and references focused more on games and non-academic worlds than on actual real-life cultural sites. I had nightmares about being booed off stage by game professionals who were angry that I had wasted their time with a dumb idea.
The rest of the time, I attempted to network with people in the various social events of the week. I talk to my students a lot about the importance of networking. I need to go over my notes more carefully next time, because I’m still really bad at it! 🙂
Friday afternoon came, I was nervous but ready, and the doors opened. I was shocked when one stranger walked in, then flabbergasted when more and more attendees started coming in. Ultimately, the crowd was about two to three times the size of my average classroom, and I began to speak.
The thirty-minutes just flew by and I completed my speech without being booed. Then I got questions, and more, until we ended up being moved out into an overflow room!
My mind was buzzing with excitement. I made a bunch of connections with people excited about this topic and excited to explore opportunities to collaborate. The craziest moment was when I was approached by the Director of the Cultural Antiquities Task Force from the US Department of State to explore ways to support my project both through funding and through introductions!
Brimming with hope and the possibility of making significant progress on this project, I barely needed the plane to fly home!
Somewhere late in 2021, I was on a “search-apply-receive rejection” roll as I continued to develop the Lahore Fort Project. As I became more comfortable with my rejections, I became braver and started applying to more competitive awards and opportunities too.
Enter: my application to this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, commonly referred to as the GDC. And if you do not already know what the GDC is, here is a short description.
Literally, biggest Gaming Conference around. In order to qualify to be a part of this event, you have to submit to a multi-stage peer review process, and your reviewers are going to be straight-up Gaming Pros who are insanely smart and at the top of their fields.
Knowing all of this, I felt quite safe applying to present the Lahore Fort. I figured I’d have two or three rejections before actually catching anyone’s attention.
SHOCKED!
HOLY SMOKES I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!
And I’m actually writing this post months after the actual event, so believe me, the shock LASTED quite a while!
I’m happy to report that I presented my Digital Preservation Project at the Global XR Conference in Dec of 2021. New year, lots of hope! Exciting to get feedback from a European conference and see what other researchers are doing in this space.
The presentation should be available online to view for free in the coming months.
As the semester begins to wind down, my research starts to kick back up into movement. Isn’t that always the case?
Well, I’m pleased to announce: this week I got to present The Lahore Fort Digital Preservation Project at two different venues!
The first was to a cohort of Museum Science students in Dr. Juilee Decker’s classroom.
The second was at the 6th Frameless XR Symposium at RIT!
After giving these talks, I have realized a few things:
First, I need to refresh my public-speaking skills… spending a year+ in pandemic isolation has really affected my level of comfort in front of big crowds.
Second, despite spending almost 11 years as an educator, my style of address is still distinctly more “art” than “academic”. I blame this on the fact that my medium of communication is art, not words. Also, having learned English as a second language, I don’t always understand the gobbledygooked nuance of academic jargon.
It doesn’t matter. Adaptability is a special skill that children of migrants develop young. I get better each time!
Though this post was prompted by Marvel characters, it speaks to the overall issue of how Hollywood seems to be addressing diversity as a whole.
This new trend of pulling various well-established characters out of a whole set of proverbial closets is disturbing at the very least. At worst, it is the basest and least effective way to diversify existing franchises. We’ve been seeing this for a while now, old TV shows are being rebooted in a new “diverse” light. Characters are being re-gendered, re-oriented and wrapped in new exciting racial identities with no regard to what it says about the characters, and no actual understanding of how adding a label to a person should affect storylines.
It makes one wonder whether these amazingly talented teams of creators are unaware of the implications of these changes, or if they just don’t care enough. Why are these teams so hesitant to do the very difficult work of writing authentic (and new) diverse characters into their existing storylines?
As all diverse people know, our diverse labels affect more than our appearance. We have different experiences, based on what type of diversity we represent, we make different choices in our lives and overcome a huge variety of unique hurdles to get where we are. Our experiences make us more resistant to certain types of pressures, and more vulnerable to others, and just throwing a color and an orientation onto an already established character is not a good solution to representing the complexity that comes with said labels.
Shallow changes don’t make Diverse Characters
Take, for example, the recent “coming out” of Loki, Marvel’s very popular part-time villain character from the Avengers and Thor series.
Yes, it is wonderful to see a major character in the Avengers suddenly represent the LGBTQIA+ population, however, was the villainous God of Mischief and Sower of Chaos really the best way to represent the community?
Am I the only person troubled by the idea that the Marvel team translated mischief and chaos into bisexuality? Considering how Bisexuality has for decades been a disputed orientation, even within the gay community, do we really want to tar this population with yet another connotation? Instead of shallowly indulging the diversity movement with these “blackface” rewriting techniques, how about actually creating something new?
The world has finally begun to understand and accept that diversity is not a costume and cannot be worn or discarded whenever necessary. It is not okay to dress up like a Native American or an Arab for Halloween anymore, and recently we have seen a lot of bloodthirsty call-outs to that effect. While I do think the bloodlust is overkill, the basic idea makes sense.
Still, nobody seems to notice that just recreating formerly white characters with a new orientation or a different gender (looking at you, Thor!) or adding in a little exotic blood is just as insulting as not diversifying at all.
I get that there is a need to correct the past, and that many teams are desperately looking for ways to prove that they support the presence of the “other”. However, it is important to note that the field of character design generally comes with a great deal of back-end development (or it should). An average character bio will start with basic delineations; age, race, gender, orientation, geographic location, maybe political leanings or economic status, but can get as in-depth as outlining favorite foods, allergies, medical history. Everything is on the table and anything can be relevant in the creation of a character.
Why? Because any or all of these factors will control the character’s motivation. And in story, motivation is everything.
Take, for example, Peter Parker aka Spider Man. Orphaned at a young age, economically precarious and raised in Queens, NY by his aging Aunt May. The boy was an outcast because he was super smart (a nerd), which initially made his life hell in high school until he was caught in a strange accident that gave him superpowers. It was this sharp mind that ultimately helped him process his poor choices and the empathy that comes with having experienced loss (thanks to Uncle Ben), that helped him take the noble route to superhero-dom. Had his background been more privileged, he could just as easily have been a villian instead. In fact, I’m pretty sure Harry Osborne was created to specifically illustrate that fact.
This unprivileged background and sharp mind is why Spider Man was able to be diversified into a Multiverse of characters, because his “whiteness” was not a huge contributor to the storyline. Because poverty and brains do not belong to any one race, and there are millions of smart young teens in the world who experience bullying in their lives. Unfortunately, this method of recreation should be considered the exception, not the rule in the road to diversification.
As expensive and painful as it may be, the fact is: if you want to create diverse content, stop rewriting characters that already have an existing and extensive legend. I don’t want to be reflected in your cast-offs, I want to be represented in a brand new icon, the way that poor, bullied nerd from Queens was represented 50 or 60 years ago. I want to be represented not as a big lump of, “oh this is now a gay character” or “Congratulations, Thor is a woman now”, rather, as a character that was written to be a woman and is built to represent the complexity of my gender.
I don’t want to be reflected in your cast-offs, I want to be a brand new icon.
Any organization that is actually serious about diversity and diverse representation will put their money where their diversity statements are, and actually invest in creating new content. Taking the easy way out only makes the problem worse.
Hosted by UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library and faculty from the College of Arts + Architecture and College of Computing and Informatics. This event was made possible with a grant from UNC Charlotte’s Chancellor’s Diversity Challenge Fund.
Invited Panelists:
Latoya Peterson, Glow Up Games, CXO/Co-Founder Tara Mustapha, Code Coven, CEO and Founder Eve Crevoshay, Take This, Executive Director Mark Barlet, AbleGamers Charity, Founder Atia Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology, Associate Professor Mark Reisch, Rochester Institute of Technology, Assistant Professor
This panel was an exploration of the issues that plague the game industry today, and the kinds of research and movements that are growing to meet these challenges head on.
My most notable phrase of this event was “You can’t Google Authenticity”, which is honestly one of the most difficult things to remember during a production cycle.
Follow this diverse group of creators (and gamers) in their journey as they strive to make this industry more inclusive and more impactful on a global scale.
Questions? Contact the Diversity in Gaming organizers: Julio César Bahamón (Computer Science) – jbahamon@uncc.edu Beth Caruso (Atkins Library) – Beth.Caruso@uncc.edu Tiffany Davis (Atkins Library) – tdavi186@uncc.edu Heather D. Freeman (Art & Art History) – heatherfreeman@uncc.edu Christin Lampkowski (Atkins Library) – clampkow@uncc.edu
I was invited to speak to the Body Art and Culture class at Ringling College of Art and Design to discuss how to design diverse characters and accurately represent a culture without falling into the trap of appropriation.
This was a journey into the processes our team developed as we designed the characters for the Iroquois Creation Story.
This film was an exploration in multimedia convergence, where 2D characters interacted with 3D characters, and live actors balanced in fantastical spaces. Yet, in all this, every step of the process aimed to center the culture that the film represented, often subverting animation practices to accommodate the needs of the story and the characters.
I couldn’t resist rendering this little section out in a 360-viewable format. It literally took 20 minutes to render out each frame, but it’s wonderful to be able to save this progress in a way where you can pause the video and just use your mouse to “look around” the scene.
Just think, once this is in VR, you’ll be able to choose where to go and how close you get to anything!
