Friday 5 March 2021

The Hani App Project

This research is a collaboration with The Global Sound Movement. Audiences can interact in a unique way with GSM sampled sounds from the drums of the Hani Tribe in China to create an embroidery pattern which celebrates their rhythms and traditional costume designs.

Play the Interactive experience here:

https://www.globalsoundmovement.com/bevapp/





“Can gamification be used as an interactive and transformative tool for artistic expression to engage learning, encourage appreciation and to illustrate traditional, historical and cultural related experience?”

Advertising designer Elliot Harris’ animated film of 2002, ‘Burberry-Rain’ identifies the 4 – dimensional properties of Burberry fabric. 

In 2013 Sophia George developed a game based on ‘The Strawberry Thief’ which re-vitalized the art of William Morris. The Hani App moves beyond re-vitalization of a design to involve interaction with sound and illustration of traditional crafts, exploring the use of digital tools to create unique artefacts. This acknowledges and records ideas and objects which may otherwise be lost or forgotten.

See a video of the Interactive experience:




‘The Art of Computer Game Design.’(Crawford, C. 1997)

‘Play, Games and Gamification in Contemporary Art Museums.’(Romualdo, S. 2013)

‘Gamification in the Arts.’ (Bouchard, A. 2014)

An exploratory, prototyping methodology was used in this project, allowing for a flexible development style. Sprite Designs were created in Adobe Photoshop and implemented into the App using Scirra’s Construct game engine. The work was inspired by GSM’s photos and sampled sounds and is available to the public as an interactive App on the GSM website, also in the GSM South China Exhibitions and as a video on Vimeo with images of artefacts that can be purchased from the shop at this link. More details are also found here.




Bibliography for The Hani App Fabric project by UCLan Senior Lecturer in Games Design, Angela Beverly Bush

Bouchard, A. (2013). Gamification in the Arts When and how to use game layers to enhance development and marketing. Available: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51d98be2e4b05a25fc200cbc/t/5231eb70e4b00ee63fc9 50f2/1379003248355/Gamification+in+the+Arts.pdf. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Bush, A. (2019). Exploring transitions between traditional culture and digital media. Available: https://www.globalsoundmovement.com/blog/exploring-transitions-between-traditional-cultureand-digital-media/. Last accessed 19Th August 2019.

Bush, A. (2019). Hani Tribe Embroidery. Available: https://www.redbubble.com/people/luverly/works/35059310-hani-tribe-embroidery. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Bush, A. (2019). The Hani App Project. Available: https://vimeo.com/342287974. Last accessed 19th August 2019. Crawford, C. (1997). The Art of Computer Game Design. Available: https://www.digitpress.com/library/books/book_art_of_computer_game_design.pdf. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Harris E. (2002). Burberry. Available: https://www.behance.net/gallery/1087909/BurberryRain. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Parmar, P. (2019). Journey to the East. Available: https://www.globalsoundmovement.com/china/. Last accessed 19th August 2019. Parmar, P. (2018). The Hani Experience. Available: https://www.globalsoundmovement.com/blog/hani-experience/. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Romualdo, S. (2013). Play, Games and Gamification in Contemporary Art Museums. Available:https://www.academia.edu/16287629/Play_Games_and_Gamification_in_Contemporary_Art_ Museums. Last accessed 19th August 2019. Scirra Ltd. (2019).

What is Construct 2? Available: https://www.scirra.com/construct2. Last accessed 19th August 2019.

Victoria and Albert Museum. (2016). Strawberry Thief iPad Game. Available: https://youtu.be/s5zYxJVOjME. Last accessed 19th August 2019.


Friday 15 September 2017

The backcloth for the Rumour Mill Film is secured in place behind the main Rumour Mill set.
John Smedley's Mill sits in the valley like a sweet bird, resplendent in her nest. The autumn colours reflect the season when I first saw the area and the beautiful trees in the valley surrounding the mill.



The backcloth is following the concept by Director, Bexie Bush to echo the one point perspective and  two dimensional detail of the iconic shots from Wes Anderson films.

My approach as an artist is to draw inspiration from British watercolour artists of the post war period. Looking at the British countryside at a time when roads were quiet and harvests were abundant in both field and factory.
I enjoyed inspiration from artists such as John Nash, Eric Ravilious, Samuel Palmer, and S.R. Badmin. These artists were working at a time when Britain was still manufacturing and exporting a wealth of products.
'In 1950, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the UK accounted for more than 10% of global exports, yet by 2009 that share had declined to just under 3%.' (Ernst and Young)

The work of S.R. Badmin and his detailed illustrations of British rural landscapes in the Puffin book series was a particular inspiration to me in the planning and design of the woodland backcloth.



Art development of the Main backcloth for The Rumour Mill Film
daytime and night time.























Saturday 29 July 2017

UCLan VR House Research Project

The VR House Project was created as a test to use for Criminal Investigation by the Forensics team at UCLan in collaboration with Dr. Brendan Cassidy of Software Engineering.














I worked with Dr. Cassidy and 4 of my 1st year Games Design students in July/ August 2017 to create a virtual reality house that could be used to demonstrate how VR may be useful in replicating crime scenes for forensic investigation.

Article about the actual Forensics Crime scene house at UCLan: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/education/revealed-behind-the-scenes-at-a-preston-crime-scene-house-1-8618256

Here's a playful test import of some Mixamo characters and animations imported into an untextured kitchen scene which the students and I created:
https://youtu.be/9LaJAPGDOhA

Also playfully testing a prototype framework for an immersive home environment. Created as part of an immersive learning framework at UCLan. The UCLan Immersive Learning Framework (UILF) is a collaboration between Computing and Games Design Prototype developed by: Brendan Cassidy 3D models developed by: Bev Bush, Heather Holden, Marco Carmo, Ben Parkinson, Catarina Martins. The only video I have at the moment is of the old UILF house before it was extended to work as a teaching tool (which Dr. Brendan Cassidy called ForeSTT - Forensic Science Teaching Tool).

That video is here: https://youtu.be/98RXHoMoVuc

Dr. Cassidy plans to record a new video as that was extended significantly and was demoed at a European forensic science conference (eafs2018.eu) A SketchFab collection containing some of the 3D models that we created for the VR house.

Here's a collection of some of the 3D models created by Bev Bush and 1st year Games Design students for the VR House:

Here's a presentation about the project that we made to share with our Games Design Students.

































Monday 29 May 2017

Backdrop painting to printed backloth!

The background of trees for the Main Building of the Rumour Mill was sent off to Optimum Signs Printers in Leyland, Preston to be re-created as a 12ft x 8ft acrylic banner to be used as a backcloth.
The banner has eyelets around the rim which must now be secured to a large frame for filming purposes.




















Saturday 4 February 2017

The Rumour Mill Film backcloth art


As part of the Rumour Mill Film, Bexie Bush has invited me to produce backcloth art to be used behind the sets during filming to capture the feel of the surrounding environment.

Many of the pieces can be seen in the image link below in a book that records the first year of
pre-production work.


See the pages of the book below.
























Sunday 8 January 2017

Night time woodland backdrops.

The Rumour Mill Film required a woodland backdrop by night. The same view of the hilside covered in trees but with a night time palette.
Here are some images taken of the artwork.