In this project, I will explore the search for nostalgia in video games and what types of elements from retro futurism has had an impact on game titles today.

It is impossible to talk about the search for nostalgia without also mentioning music and films, but I will try to keep it as game related as possible

??First I will try to define what is nostalgia and connect it to video games??

The worldbuilding is crucial in my project to set the time, place and story so the viewer can connect with it.

# TO DO

Showcasing enviromnent art:
https://cghero.com/articles/presenting-unreal-engine-art-scene

For rendering: Forground, mid and background!
24 frames per second!

- [x] Sand ground
- [x] Rocks scattered around
- [ ] Those bushes that are around
- [x] Canyons in the background
- [x] Straw ball that flies across the screen
- [ ] Dirty Glass
- [ ] make it feel like we are on a planet?
- [ ] planets in the sky
- [ ] falling str VFX?
- [x] twilight zone reference
- [x] Stand for gas pump
- [x] diner sign
- [ ] Diner top details rusty
- [x] a bush leaf thing for liam
- [ ] submarine
- [x] Phone booth blue
- [ ] details roof more +
- [ ] details roof textures
- [x] Desert road: research and model
- [ ] New details PhoneBooth sides
- [ ] Stars
- [ ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjMFCOdN2sk
- [ ] Gas pump new?

- [ ] HOME: Ratchet and clank
- [x] Red dead redemption

- [ ] Substance painter: render shots of :
- [x] Arcade Machine
- [x] Whimsi Botica
- [x] Table
- [x] Sofa
- [x] Chair
- [x] Chair x2
- [x] Phone Booth
- [x] Gas Pump
- [x] Diner Sign
- [x] Diner

- [x] Roof details textures
- [ ] 4K texures of a lot as well
- [ ] metal structre background
- [x] Make floor inside diner more dirty

HALFWAY: SECTION TWO

- [ ] HARVARD:
- [ ] image references
- [ ] get every game from screeenshots as well
- [ ] SKETCHES:
- [ ] Gas pump
- [ ] light pole
- [ ] Whumsi Botica
- [ ] arcade machine
- [ ] diner
- [ ] vegetations

#### The Goal

The goal is to create a game world the player wants to play. I am creating a concept. To show how good I am at worldbuilding and environment design to trigger viewers to want to tinterract with this world if I only had the proper team of programmers behind me to help me out.

### What is nostalgia?
When I ask my parents what is nostalgic to them, they say 1 Kroner's ice cream, the teen club house around the corner and a time without phones and Facebook. As it will be different for everyone what it is,

**The origin of the word nostalgia and what it means today:**

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“The word ’ retro’ has a quite a specific menaing: it refers to a self-conscious fetish for period stylisation (in music, clothes, design) expressed creatively through pastiche and citation. Retro in its stric sense tends to be the preserve of aesthetes, connoiseurs and collecors, people who possess a near-scholarly depth of knowledge combined with a sharp sense of irony. But the word has come to be used in a much more vague way to describe pretty much anything that relates to the relatively recent past or popular culture.”

- p. 12-13 Retromania pop cultures addiction to its own past - Simon Reynolds

"Nostalgia as both word and concept was invented in the seventeeth century by the physician Johannes Hofer to describe a condition afflicting Swiss mercenaries on long tours of military duty. Nostalgia was literally homesickness, a debilitating craving to return to the native land. Symptoms included melancholy, anorexiam even suicide. Up until the later years of the nineteenth century, this malady (in retrospect, obviously psychosomatic) remained the concern of military doctors, because maintaining morale was crucial to successful warfare.
So nostalgia originally referred to a longing to return through space, rather than across time; it was the ache of displacement, Gradually it shed these geographical associations and became a temporal condition: no longer an anguished yearning for the lost motherland but a wistful pining for a halcyon lost time in one’s life. As it became de-medicalised, nostalgia also began to be seen not just as an individual emotion but as a collective longing for a happier, simpler, more innocent age.
xxv
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<font color="red"> "Why nostalgia? My point of departure is following claim: The fragmentation of the world we are nostalgic for presents us with privileged temporality, which brings together, in a particularly vivid manner, the limits of imagination in the face of the diminishment of memory. This tension between timeliness and unreality is central to the logic of nostalgia. Indeed, the power of nostalgia depends as much on the evocation of place as it does on the time in which that memory occurred, forcing an image of the past in which time is literally held in an unreal place. One way in which we see this is how nostalgia relies on an image of the past as temporally isolated; that is, as fixed . The fixture means that place, as a temporal episode, singular and irretrievable, is preserved. Fixing place in time, place is thus fixated on. As we will investigate, the bind between fixing and fixation intensifies as the integration and continuity of the past undergo a loss of transparency.""
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Trigg, Dylan. The Memory of Place : A Phenomenology of the Uncanny, Ohio University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mmu/detail.action?docID=1773381.
Created from mmu on 2023-08-01 12:29:16."
page 161

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"Nostalgia is a form of reaction to the velocity and vertigo of modern temporality. It rejects its insistentlypositive valuation of the temporary and transient. In the face of this valu-ation, a desire to imaginatively return to earlier times is then felt to corre-late with an acute dissatisfaction with the present, and to involve anattempt to recapture a putative continuity and coherence unavailable inthe fragmented modern or late modern environment (Smith, 1998; Lowen-thal, 1989: 21). This is one side of the story. Nostalgia may also be seen asseeking a viable alternative to the acceleration of historical time, one thatattempts a form of dialogue with the past and recognizes the value ofcontinuities in counterpart to what is fleeting, transitory and contingent.Longing for an idealized past has been considered in two, quiteopposed ways. On the one hand, it can be viewed as potentially danger-ous in that it closes down the transactional value of the past in the presentand results in various degrees of social amnesia (see e.g. Doane andHodges, 1987)."
(Pickering and Keightley The Modalities of Nostalgia page 923)

"Nostalgia gets a bad rap, but it can be creative, even subversive. The fact is, certain periods in the life of an individual or a cul- ture are more intense, exciting ... simply better than others; the impulse to go back there may be ultimately counterproductive, but it's perfectly understandable. Nostalgia-driven movements can function as ways of getting through doldrum eras, keeping faith until the next 'up' phase. And as we'll see in the next chapter, the past can be used to critique what's absent in the present."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page. 239)
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### Nostalgia as music:

"Simon Reynolds' Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past is as much a critique of the culture industry as it is a scathing takedown of contemporaneity - always plugged in, surface-level, distracted, frantic, and bored. Nostalgia is nothing new, according to Reynolds, and in fact, musicians and label execs alike have been drawing on the icons of the past to sell records for decades. But Reynolds sees the Internet as the ultimate fulfillment of our desire for the wholesale consumption of culture. We binge on music until we no longer have an appetite left, and then we hide in the labyrinth of the Internet where we can be whoever we want."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 54.)

"When faced with an infinite amount of information and, in this case, music, you will never be able to feed on it all, but our blind faith in technology under late capitalism has allowed for companies like Apple to assuage us of the anxiety of choice with inventions like the iPod. Reynolds is particularly critical of the iPod's shuffle function, which "relieves you of the burden of desire itself." Going further, Reynolds describes the typical music consumer in the iPod age as "omnivorous, non- partisan, promiscuously eclectic, drifting indolently across the sea of commodified sound."16 This is the description of the hipster elite, one that treats culture as a commodity and seeks to use the accumulation of cultural capital as an indication of knowledge"
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 55-56.)

#### The Modalities of Nostalgia , Michael Pickering and Eily Keightley 2006
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249680348_The_Modalities_of_Nostalgia
Nostalgia in the modern sense is an impossible emotion, or at least an incurable one: the only remedy would involve time travel" - p.25

"Svetlana Boym, the author of*The Future of Nostalgia*, talks about how it's even possible to be 'nostalcig for a prenostalgic state of being'. And it's true that when thinking wistfully about golden periods in my life, they all share this quality of total immersion in the now: childhood, falling in love, or phases of total in current music."

"Nostalgia became associated with a defeatist attitude to present and future, appearing tacitly to acquiesce in the temporal ruptures ofmodernity by its very assumption of this attitude. Nostalgia was alsoconceived as seeking to attain the unattainable, to satisfy the unsatisfi-able. If a dogmatic belief in progress entailed an ardent longing for thefuture, nostalgia as its paired inversion entailed only an ardent longingfor the past. It is, then, as if nostalgia arises only in compensation for aloss of faith in progress, and for what is socially and culturally destroyedin the name of progress.In longing for what is lacking in a changed present, nostalgia for a losttime clearly involves yearning for what is now not attainable, simplybecause of the irreversibility of time; but to condemn nostalgia solely tothis position leaves unattended not only more general feelings of regretfor what time has brought, but also more general questions for how thepast may actively engage with the present and future." - The Modalities of Nostalgia , Michael Pickering Emily Keightley 2006

"Nostalgia can be both melancholic and utopian." --;;--

### Nostalga for the future

"NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE

'Nostalgia for the future' is a phrase that crops up all over the place yet is hard to source. I've found it attributed to SF legend Isaac Asimov (from his 1986 non-fiction monograph Future Days about artist Jean-Marc Côté's 1899 illustrations of life in the 2000) and to Jean Baudrillard, whose America references a specif- ically European malaise of 'nostalgia for the future, which com- pares unfavourably to American confidence that the present is already a fully achieved utopia. Transhumanist philosopher F. M. Esfandiary, aka FM-2030, talked about feeling 'deep nostalgia for the future' in his 1970 book Optimism One. But equally Richard J. Daley, the conservative mayor of Chicago, once declared that people 'should be nostalgic about the future."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page. 368)

"
Stuckism is almost too perfect as an overall rubric for anti- modernist tendencies in art and pop culture, all those move- ments of resistance against the present-day, the fashionably futuristic. 'Stuck', because they try to rewind the tape of pop history and hold down the pause button on a moment, hoping to make it last for ever. But 'stuck' also in the sense of 'stuck on you': in love for eternity, undyingly faithful to a golden memory,
unable to move on."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page. 366)

#### Future fatigue

"Stuckism is almost too perfect as an overall rubric for anti- modernist tendencies in art and pop culture, all those move- ments of resistance against the present-day, the fashionably futuristic. 'Stuck', because they try to rewind the tape of pop history and hold down the pause button on a moment, hoping to make it last for ever. But 'stuck' also in the sense of 'stuck on you': in love for eternity, undyingly faithful to a golden memory,
unable to move on."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page. 396)

### Stuckism

"Stuckism is almost too perfect as an overall rubric for anti- modernist tendencies in art and pop culture, all those move- ments of resistance against the present-day, the fashionably futuristic. 'Stuck', because they try to rewind the tape of pop history and hold down the pause button on a moment, hoping to make it last for ever. But 'stuck' also in the sense of 'stuck on you': in love for eternity, undyingly faithful to a golden memory,
unable to move on."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page. 275)

#### The Cinema of Wes Anderson - Bringing Nostalgia to Life

"Thinking of Anderson’s films, such as his early tour de force Rushmore (1998), one may immediately call to mind an extreme close-up shot of an actor, perfectly centered in the frame, displaying little to no emotion, or a vivid sense of nostalgia conjured by such signifiers as carefully
curated furniture, costumes and scenery, paintings, photographs, and music that create an Andersonian “mood” for the film, or even Anderson’s penchant for obsessively detailed diorama-like displays such as the cross sections of the boat in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) or the Bishop family home in Moonrise Kingdom (2012)." page - 1

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Video games have tried to capture the feeling of nostalgia. As the first generation of what we can give the term "gamers" are now reaching menopause, we see constant remakes, reboots and other forms of video games that are trying to capture the essence of the life for the original gamer. Remakes like Crash bandicoot and Spyro is hard to figure out who the games are actually for, are they meant to be for those who played the originals as they came out, or are they for the new players? Maybe they are simply for both, the original players who wish to show their kids the same excitement they had for the games and anyone inbetween.

Series like *Stranger Things* appear as the perfect nostalgia induced series for a time that once was.

Books like "Ready Player One" is packed with 80s easter eggs and nostalgia. Ernest Cline displays a deep obsession with the '80s and weaves a story that is packed with '80s video games, music, and movies. Wade Watts, the protagonist, sets out on an exciting adventure in the virtual reality world known as the OASIS, where he must solve riddles and puzzles that strongly draw references from the 1980s. The book honours and adores this time period, capturing its allure and impact on contemporary society. It is a love letter to Cline's own youth and a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
The 1980s obsession in the book also reflects a larger tendency of nostalgia in contemporary popular culture. The 1980s in particular saw a revival in different types of media as the 21st century saw a substantial comeback of interest in earlier decades.

Escape and Comfort: Nostalgia often serves as a form of escapism from the complexities of the present. In a fast-paced and uncertain world, revisiting the '80s can provide comfort and familiarity. This nostalgia-driven media allows people to feel a sense of reassurance and simplicity from a seemingly simpler tim

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Retro Aesthetics: The visual style of the '80s, characterized by vibrant colors, neon lights, and synthwave music, has become a trendy aesthetic in recent years. This retro vibe can be seen in fashion, graphic design, and even architecture.

Revival of Arcade and Retro Gaming: The '80s were the golden age of arcade gaming, and today, retro gaming has seen a surge in popularity. Nostalgic video games, inspired by classic titles, have found new life with modern players.

Similarly to how this book is set in the future of 2045, my world is set in 2075. So seeing how we are already currently looking at the dystopian world of 2044, only 30 years later, the world could change even more very drastically.

## Hauntology

"By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the crisis of historicity in contemporary art had reached a watershed moment. Both popular and experimental musicians mined the immediate and the far-reaching pasts to compose music reminiscent of bygone eras. Film and television classics, such as Miami Vice and John Carpenter's Halloween franchise, were revived as remakes, and pop music began its decade-long-and- counting worship of the American 1980s. It seemed that as culture moved forward into the early 2010s, visual art, film, and music regressed further into the analog past - a move fulfilling theorist Fredric Jameson's lament that "stylistic innovation is no longer possible."3 This haunting of the present culture by the past has often been associated with "hauntology," a term first intro- duced by Jacques Derrida in his prophetic critique of global capitalism, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International. Writing in the early 1990s, Derrida challenged historian Francis Fukuyama's concept that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world is now living at the "end of history" and that global capitalism will forever reign supreme. Hauntology has now widened to include the multiple art movements that magnify the crisis of historicity so preva- lently theorized in particular by Jameson and cultural theorist"
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 30.)

"Enter hauntology, a term that critic Mark Fisher and I started bandying around in 2005 to describe a loose network of mostly UK artists, central among them the musicians on the Ghost Box label (The Focus Group, Belbury Poly, The Advisory Circle et al.) and their kindred spirits Mordant Music and Moon Wiring Club. All of these groups explore a zone of British nostal- gia linked to television programming of the sixties and seventies. Consummate scavengers, the hauntologists trawl through char- ity shops, street markets and jumble sales for delectable morsels of decaying culture-matter. Their music typically mixes digital and analogue: samples and computer-edited material mingle with antique synthesizer tones and acoustic instruments; motifs inspired by or directly stolen from library music and movie scores (particularly pulp genres like science fiction and horror) are woven together with industrial drones and abstract noise; and there's often a musique concrète/radio-play element of spoken word and found sounds."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page 328)

"This in turn begs the question: does that mean that every country, and each suc- cessive generation within that nationality, will produce its own version of hauntology - a self-conscious, emotionally ambivalent form of nostalgia that sets in play the ghosts of childhood? For instance, what would a properly American equivalent of hauntol- ogy look like?an be off dil are"
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page 343)

"SPIRIT OF PRESERVATION
Hauntology is all about memory's power (to linger, pop up unbidden, prey on your mind) and memory's fragility (des- tined to become distorted, to fade, then finally disappear)."
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page 335)

### Futurology

### Hauntology and Postmodernism

"Hauntology is a political and aesthetic update to their theories of nostalgia and history in postmodern art and furthers Derrida's claim that the "future can only be for ghosts. And the past.4
To understand how we arrived at a haunted culture, we must survey the most prevalent cultural mode of the past thirty years - postmodernism - and chart its evolution. Linda Hutcheon and Fredric Jameson, two of the most profound cultural critics in recent history, propose distinct critiques of postmodernism, each grappling with the roles of pastiche and politics in order to arrive at separate theories of history in postmodern art. Hutcheon analyzes Jameson's theory of postmodern pastiche, or the "mimicry of other styles,"5 by maintaining that it is anything but what Jameson calls "blank parody."6 That is, Hutcheon acknowledges the political bite of parody and counters Jameson's idea that postmodern pastiche lacks the humor of parody and is "without parody's ulterior motive."7 For Hutcheon, postmodernism is "more willfully compromised, more ideologically ambivalent or contradictory" and "exploits and subverts that which went before."8 Postmodernism can then be considered a political artistic practice or mode because it undermines the assumptions about art, language, and culture that spectators hold. It challenges art by deconstructing every- thing that came before while still remaining self-reflexive. These characteristics are chief in understanding these theorists' differing opinions of postmodernism and its relation to history."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 31.)

"Like other forms of postmodern art, postmodern films are heavily intertextual and stress the unknowability of the past. Jameson accentuates the imagery of the past in these films (what he terms "nostalgia films") as "[seeking] to reawaken a sense of the past associated with those [art objects]."10 His example is Star Wars, a film that manipulates the images of certain bygone media - the serial adventure, in particular - to create a form of nostalgic art. These "nostalgia films" give the impression of the past through "pop images and stereotypes about the past" because history itself is of course unknowable.11 Nostalgia is commodified via the reevaluation and championing of stereotypes and is injected into films both Jameson and Hutcheon deem as "postmodern." It is no surprise then that Star Wars, with its numerous references to the pop-serial format, was lauded by those moviegoers who grew up watching afternoon adventure stories a couple of decades before its release."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 32.)

"This shift in focus from mining the cultural past for pastiche or parody to mourning a lost future differentiates postmodernism from hauntology. Whereas postmodernism toys with history via an increased skepticism in truly "knowing" the past, hauntology posits that the past notions of the future have in some way failed, causing a disruption of time as an orderly sequence of past, present, and future."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 35.)

### Memoradelia

"'Memoradelia', an alternative term proposed by writer Patrick McNally, captures the sense of a collective unconscious, the ghosts of our life coming back to haunt us, as well as the personal reveries of 'lost time' that this music often conjures like Proust's madeleine cake. But hauntology, a term borrowed from Jacques Derrida's 1994 book Spectres of Marx, is the term that's stuck. A pun on 'ontology' (in French 'hantologie' and 'ontology' sound almost the same because the 'h' isn't pronounced), the concept allowed Derrida to use the philosophically problematic figure of the ghost - neither being nor non-being, both presence and absence simultaneously - to discuss the uncanny persistence of"
(Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber. page 328)

### Consumerism and Capitalism

"Rampant consumerism allows artists to willfully mix media to create a new form of artistic appropriation that erases time and space, a move that foreshadows the hauntology of the twenty-first century. These various forms of postmodern art, according to Jameson, complicate our relationship to history by turning it into a commodity.
Ultimately, the commodification of the past and its stereo- types is still a product of the capitalist market, and these postmodern films reflect such a relationship to capitalism. Hutcheon maintains that postmodernism "wants to use [its] 'insider' position to 'de-doxify' the 'givens' that 'go without saying' in those grand systems" - patriarchy and capitalism, namely.14 Again, Hutcheon writes of the subversive qualities of postmodernism, which challenge the doxa put in place by these grand systems. The result is a critique of capitalism and patri- archy by way of insider subversion, but for Jameson, this insider position is a cause for concern. He calls these postmodern films "a terrible indictment of consumer capitalism itself" and "an alarming and pathological symptom of a society that has become incapable of dealing with time and history."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 33.)

"The spread of global capitalism comes with an increased crisis of historicity in art. Jameson mentions the "new moment of capitalism" as a period ranging "from the post-war boom in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s or, in France, from the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958."17 From this "new moment of capitalism" come the postmodern artists who produce art that is highly self-reflexive and subversive in a
capitalist market. Whether they are categorically defined as Jameson's pastiche or Hutcheon's parody, they challenge artistic norms and complicate the past and our relation to it.
For Jacques Derrida, however, the next turning point occurs. with the fall of the Berlin Wall, ushering in the "end of history" and sparking a new era of global capitalism. A grand critique of neoliberalism's victory with the collapse of the Berlin Wall is at the heart of Derrida's Specters of Marx, in which he first coins "hauntology" as that which "begins by coming back."18 For Derrida, the specter is the spirit of Marxism returning and "haunting" as "some 'thing' that remains difficult to name: neither soul nor body, and both one and the other."19 We can consider hauntology as the past's idealized portrait of a brave, new future haunting the present and also as an update to postmodernism's critique of history."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 34-35.)

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"In addition to dismantling a sense of time, hauntological art breaks down spatial continuity as well. Mark Fisher draws on anthroplplogist Marc Auge's idea of the "non-place" as a product of capitalism and a prime site of spatial disintegration. Such "non-places" are "airports, retail parks, and chain stores which resemble one another more than they resemble the particular spaces in which they are located."23 These locations are signifiers of capitalist consumption in that they serve only to promote the buying and selling of goods. They can be found in multiple places in multiple cities, thus dissolving a sense of place belonging to any one location. Like the Overlook, these areas of consumption seem to lack any spatial tangibility. They are as unreal in nature as Kubrick's menacing and enigmatic hotel. Art and commerce fuse almost entirely in these "non-places" as rampant consumerism reaches a new peak in the era of global capitalism. A consumer wandering through a typical "non- place," like a mall for example, should take note of the sounds as well as the images of such a drained structure. It is no coinci- dence that the shopping mall is a symbol used by multiple vaporwave composers to evoke a place in which their warped
music could be heard"
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 38-39.)

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## Vaporwave Aesthetic

"Second, the vaporwave aesthetic relies heavily on certain images that evoke life under capitalism, both past and present. In particular, vaporwave album covers draw heavily from images of commerce, metropolises, computers, televisions, and numerous other "non-places" and technological media. In this way, these covers usually establish a setting or mood of the album, which arguably serves the same purpose for any other album cover in any other genre of music, but for vaporwave, the album cover is typically explicit in its representation and in thematically furthering the album overall. As Dylan Trigg reminds us, a place can immediately transport us to another time period, perhaps one we never experienced but know well from visual culture, and this form of time travel is usually set off by encountering the imagery of a specific place. For example, the album cover for CULTURE ISLAND by vaporwave producer Miami Vice is a washed out, hazy photograph of palm trees against a setting sun. I have unfortunately never been to Miami, but I have been to many beaches and have seen pictures and videos of Miami in my lifetime. Regardless, the album cover, with its faded appearance, immediately places me on a beach during sundown in some far-distant time period, a time before digital cameras and enhanced resolution. When I listen to the album while looking at this album cover, the effect is multi- sensory - I am recalling a sunny trip to Miami that I never took."
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 43.)

"The Internet allows the past to be easily consumed at any time, and apps like Instagram turn our smartphones into shoddy replicas of dated cameras in order to give us the feeling we're consuming the real thing. We can copy the fashion trends of the 80s and 90s and even create derivative art that reproduces the sights and sounds of the past, but we have difficulty giving up our addiction to information in order to dive fully into the world presented in the "Lonely Town" video. Instead we live in a time without time when the past ceaselessly haunts the present - a fantasy world in which we can utilize the endless capabilities of digital technology while copping the visual imagery of previous decades.
Vaporwave is an excellent example of just how commodified the ghosts of our past are. The earliest vaporwave producers sought to recontextualize our insatiable hunger for the past by delivering nostalgia in its remembered form hazy, looping, distorted, unclear - all while mocking and subverting the entire process. Throughout vaporwave's brief but rapid evolution, it has diverged into two primary artistic modes. The first is a blend of the vaporwave aesthetic with more contemporary beats and production and is often associated with acts such as the Fresnobased producer Blank Banshee. The other resembles the classic form of vaporwave (repetition, pitched samples, little post-production) but is sometimes presented in a more concentrated form"
(Babbling Corpse, Grafton Tanner page 60-61.)

### Vaporwave vs. Synthwave

While vaporwave, a genre that emerged in the 2010s, draws inspiration from the consumer culture and aesthetics of the late '80s and early '90s, creates a dreamy and frequently surreal atmosphere through slowed-down and chopped-up samples. Synthwave is a music genre that looks back to the 1980s for inspiration and features upbeat and nostalgic electronic sounds. Fans of nostalgic and vintage music and design are drawn to both genres. (Vaporwave: Glisos, Laura. 2017)
(Synthwave: Wetmore, Kevin. 2018)

## Worldbuilding and inspiration

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"The setting for a story communicates important ideas and information to the audience. In a story with a particularly strong setting, the world itself becomes as important as any of the characters. This is an idea writers have known about and employed for some time; it is often described as treating the setting as a character, giving it the same amount of attention and development any person in the tale is given. This process is often referred to as world building, especially in the context of fantasy and science fiction."
(Despain, W and Acosta, K. 2013. 2. Universal Principles for Game Creation)

In my world, set in 2075 where humans have ceased to exist we see a desolate and empty world with the remains from us. Just how humans ceased to exist is up to the viewer to decide and figure out of.

The main inspirations come from two people in particular, Wes Anderson and Simon Stalenhag. Wes Anderson's quirky stories, his usage of colours to convey the story and the perfectly aligned camera movements which he has become the auteur of his own art.

**Auteur and Wes Anderson as inspiration**
An auteur is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded and personal that the director is likened to be the "author" of the film, thus manifesting the director's unique style or thematic focus.

"Anderson is thus a classic example of a filmmaker that the Cahiers du
cinéma critics would have labeled an auteur – an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that he is considered the primary “author” of the film." (The Cinema of Wes Anderson: Bringing Nostalgia to Life page 2)

Wes Anderson is the auteur for his distinct filmmaking style. Some interesting aspects of his style include:

Use of Colors: Anderson is renowned for his meticulous use of colors to create visually stunning and vibrant worlds. He often employs a carefully chosen color palette, with pastel hues and symmetrical compositions, adding a surreal and dreamlike quality to his films.
"Anderson’s distinct visual aesthetic, with its use of a color palette that evokes 1970s interiors (Anderson’s films often have deliberate, carefully chosen color schemes – blues, yellows, reds, and oranges, a prominent use of plaids) and his lack of mainstream, traditional Hollywood tropes inspires a sometimes quite virulently negative response." (The Cinema of Wes Anderson: Bringing Nostalgia to Life page 2)

Framing and Symmetry: Anderson's shots are meticulously composed with a focus on symmetry and centered framing. His attention to detail and balance create visually satisfying and unique cinematic experiences.

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Quirky Characters and Dialogues: His films often feature quirky and eccentric characters who engage in witty and charming dialogues. This distinctive style of storytelling sets his films apart and adds a whimsical charm to the narrative.

Playful Aesthetics: Anderson's films embrace a playful and whimsical aesthetic that blends humor with poignant emotional moments. This blend creates a bittersweet atmosphere that resonates with the audience.

I beleive this would be interested to see in the game world.

from: https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/wes-anderson-best-shots/

Own sketch based on Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel:


Given my interest in post-apocalyptic worldbuilding, Simon Stålenhag’s (Stålenhag, 2016) works and the different bookshe has written and illustrated particularly inspired me. His paintings portray a planet that has been ravaged by an unidentified catastrophe, with desertedtowns, bleak countryside, and odd, extraterrestrial technology. Although his scenes are desolate, Stålenhag fills them with a feeling of beauty and wonder, giving a world on the point of destruction a surrealistic quality.


Own Sketches based on Simon Stalenhag's work




All in the Mind
This key shift in the perception of the landscape exists as much as predic- tion as it does continuation and quotation. As the classical reverential gaze toward the landscape was supplanted and refracted into a cultural space that now bears so much more meaning than just "the frontier," thus the statement, "the location of the story is perhaps less important than the perception of that location," holds true here.62 Referring to elements of the "traditional" located within Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, Johnson-Smith rightly sees the science fiction genre as the natural repository not only for the exploratory narrative but also for the attendant visual signifiers. However, in this televisual context it is of course Serling who first reasons that this final frontier is less about an outward exploration than about an inner one a good few years before Roddenberry. Arguably the desert space now exists as a fixed convention of science fiction as much as any postindustrial cityscape, example of automated intelligence, or design of spaceship. If, as Sobchack states, the fantasy or science fiction genre is defined by "a phenomenology of vision,"63 then the barren vistas so unique to The Twilight Zone are surely a prime exemplar of this.
page 19 channeling te future

## My world: Nocturne Oasis: The Phantom Diner of tomorrow

Moodboard :

Wes Anderson
Simon Staalenhag
American Diner
50s vibe - Retro Fururism
Early Hitchcock films
Bowie elements?
Solarpunk

Titles from GhatGPT. **SYNTH**

More Titles for the diner:

Rust 'n' Robo Café
MechEats Diner
ApocRoast Haven
ByteBite Bistro
Steel & Stew Stop
Fallout Flavors Eatery
Circuitry Café & Grub
RoboRevive Resto
Chrome Chow Corner
A.I. Aftermath Diner
Neo-Nosh Nook
Robot Rebellion Rations
MechMunch Café
Apocalypse Automunch
Wired & Grub Hub
Electropocalypse Eatery
TechTavern Diner
Scrapyard Suppers
Radiance & Rust Café
Resilient Byte Bites

Synth Tales: The nocturnal Diner of Tomorrow

Colours

Opening Shot

### Story

<font color="green">

I am lucky, because with camera movements withing UE, I am able to create symmetrical camera movements that would be very difficult otherwise when creating a film

</font>

Play with camera size and make this fit to different "periods"
Daytime can have one camera size, and night time can ahve another

Capture the essence of Wes Anderson, no need to copy his shots by shots

Costumes and set design that look theatrical

Storybook

Symmetry and the framing of mise en scene

The reason to why I am blocking out the world and story before I have the script written down is because I am inspired by Studio Ghibli's approach of working.

Studio Ghibli's method balances improvisation with thorough planning. The studio's inventive method, overseen by co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, combines spontaneity with a solid foundation built around well-developed characters and vividly drawn surroundings.

The process often begins with the creation of the settings and characters by writers and painters. These first concepts serve as the story's framework and serve as the foundation for the development of the narrative.

Once the surroundings and characters are established, the studio frequently uses an almost improvised method to develop the plot. Instead of rigidly following a predetermined script, Ghibli directors and writers leave room for creative exploration during the production process.

(The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. 2013.)

Similarly to how Ghibli creates their stories, I have also started with the setting and characters before I developed the actual script and story.

## Blockout_Storyboard

I am lucky, because with camera movements withing UE, I am able to create symmetrical camera movements that would be very difficult otherwise when creating a film

Play with camera size and make this fit to different "periods"
Daytime can have one camera size, and night time can ahve another

Capture the essence of Wes Anderson, no need to copy his shots by shots

Costumes and set design that look theatrical

Storybook

Symmetry and the framing of mise en scene

### Notes and sketches while I watch Wes Anderson films to get inspiration


## Previz

Link to Previz video:
https://stummuac-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/21407758_stu_mmu_ac_uk/ESh-ER0czQNHsO8QmlMrVh8BGbT_hePLWJ3l6I0G_n9AXw?e=x6rdSI

https://stummuac-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/21407758_stu_mmu_ac_uk/ESh-ER0czQNHsO8QmlMrVh8BGbT_hePLWJ3l6I0G_n9AXw?e=x6rdSI














## Story

**Flawed misfits**
Is a common theme and character traits for Wes Anderson's stories and characters

The main robot protagonist is walking through the desert to find the famous diner they have heard so much about.

SHOW: Maybe a poster on the ground that flies away with the ad of the place

Slow walking, hot sun. dst flying. Slow steps as they are getting closer to the diner.

They see it is deserted, absolutely no one there as they were promised in the poster. they look at the poster again and sees that it has another opening time they were not expecting. they go to the phone booth and has a call. The viewer does not know what they are talking about as it is in a robot language. They go outside the phone booth to the diner signs and stands there while they are waiting for the diner to open.

Fast blink to night time and our robot is opening up their eyes and see the diner light slowly turn on

Sound is suddenly heard from inside and we have voices and whispers and clinking in glasses. It is clear that someone is finally

### The Story written with the help of AI

In the scorching desert, where the sun's relentless rays beat down on the arid land, a lone robot named Rusty trudged forward with a sense of purpose. His metal joints creaked with each step as he journeyed across the vast expanse of sand and rock. Clutched in his mechanical hand was an old, faded photograph, the only remnant of his human companion, an elderly man named Max, who had owned and operated a beloved diner known as "Max's Oasis."

The diner had been Rusty's home for many years, a place filled with laughter, the aroma of fresh coffee, and the comforting hum of lively chatter. But then, one day, the diner had vanished without a trace, leaving Rusty to wander the desert in search of it.

The reason for Rusty's quest was simple: Max had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only the photograph and a heartfelt letter. The note had instructed Rusty to find the lost diner, assuring him that all the answers he sought would be waiting there.

After days of travel, Rusty finally spotted an old sign half-buried in the sand, bearing the faded words "Max's Oasis." With a surge of hope, he followed the faint trail leading to the diner's hidden location. As the sun began its descent, casting long shadows across the desert, Rusty arrived at his destination.

At first sight, the diner appeared to be nothing more than a weathered, abandoned shack. But Rusty knew better. As the day transitioned into twilight, the desert around him came to life, and the diner awakened from its slumber.

Soft, glowing lights flickered to life inside the building, casting an inviting warmth into the cool desert night. The diner's neon sign buzzed with electric energy, beckoning travelers from all corners of the desert.

Rusty pushed open the creaky door and stepped inside. To his surprise, the diner was brimming with life, filled with the holographic projections of its former patrons, their laughter and conversations echoing through the air. The aroma of freshly cooked meals and brewing coffee filled Rusty's sensors, evoking vivid memories of the bustling times he had shared with Max.

As he moved through the holographic figures, Rusty searched for clues about Max's disappearance. Each projection shared snippets of their memories with Max, recounting tales of friendships, heartwarming conversations, and moments that had shaped their lives.

In the corner, a jukebox crackled to life, playing a melancholic tune that touched Rusty's metallic heart. The song was a favorite of Max's, and he used to dance with joy every time it played.

With the night passing by, Rusty felt both sorrow and solace in the diner's ephemeral existence. As dawn approached, the holographic patrons gradually faded away, leaving the diner empty once more. Rusty knew he had to leave too, for the desert was unforgiving during the day.

But before he departed, Rusty carefully placed the old photograph on a table, a tribute to the memories they had shared. As he stepped outside, the desert sun began to rise, and Rusty turned his back to the diner, knowing that it would be gone until the next night.

With a heavy heart and renewed determination, Rusty continued his journey through the desert, carrying Max's spirit and the memories of the lost diner in his circuits. He was determined to uncover the truth about his friend's disappearance, one night at a time, in the place where the diner came to life once more.

## Storyboard

***After my robot has chosen the song:***

"The song by the Killers' front man is unabashedly retro and lyrically draws on youthful exuberance and memory ("Spinning like a Gravitron when I was just a kid. / I always thought things would change, but they never did."), but the music video is the most troubling aspect of the song. In it, a teenage girl puts a cassette of Flowers' album into her Walkman, places the headphones on her head, and then dances to "Lonely Town" by herself in her house. The icons of a pre-digital period in history are all present: the Walkman, the dated furniture, the corded telephone, and the handwritten note from her parents ("Help yourself to the fridge! Please take out trash!"). The imagery is indicative of some time before "now" yet still vague enough to resist a specific time period. Instead the video is set in "the past" - an unclear "everywhen" that mashes up 80s and 90s iconography. Her awkward dance moves and uninhibited sense of carefree enjoyment is punctuated by the startling revelation that she is entirely alone. No cell phones, no social media, and no one else around her until the very end when the video turns from a simple dance montage into a cheeky homage to 80s slasher movies. Suddenly we as viewers take on the role of the onlooker"
(page 59. Babbling Corpse)

## How AI has helped me in this project

<font color="green">

It is impossible to be working in the world of art right now without bringing up the conversation about AI. This might be an unpopular opinion but I actually really like AI and seeing how quickly it has grown and excited to see where we will end up in the future.

It is hard to ignore the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) and its enormous potential to revolutionise a variety of creative professions in the modern creative scene. AI-driven technologies have shown they can generate content, analyse data, and speed up the creative process for everything from music to visual arts. Nevertheless, despite its promise, AI should not be utilised to produce finished works but rather as a source of inspiration for ideas, such as mood boards or beginning conceptions.

However, relying solely on AI to produce final creative works raises ethical and artistic concerns.Creativity is a deeply human expression that involves emotion, intuition, empathy, and originality. The essence of art lies in its ability to convey unique perspectives and emotions that connect with audiences on a profound level. AI, as advanced as it may be, lacks true consciousness and emotional depth. Art produced solely by AI runs the risk of losing the human touch and losing the intricacy and richness that make creative works so compelling.

The creative industry should use AI as a collaborative tool rather than as a replacement for human innovation. Artists can produce innovative and ground-breaking work by fusing human creativity with AI-generated inspiration. AI has the potential to advance productivity, expand human creativity, and offer useful insights. However, it must always be seen as an addition to human intellect rather than a substitute for it.

I don't beleive AI images shall be allowed to be used and sold as artworks and I also understand how artists are now taking a stance against it as it can copy styles directly. I do not want to steal anyones style, but being inspired is what I want to do. AI can help with getting quick concepts out that would normally be very bad quick sketches made by myself. I have used key words in my AI prompts to trigger the styles I am inspired by such as Wes Anderson and Simon Stalenhag. I am aware that Simon Stalenhag is very much against AI as well.

</font>

***ADD IN HERE: SOME SOURCES ON AI***

***ALSO, A moodboard of how I have used AI***

<font color="green">

## Following a professional work pipeline

I want to follow a professional pipeline when I am creating my project and video.


As Selby explores in *Animation* (Selby, A. (2013) Animation. London: Laurence King Pub (Portfolio). Available at: INSERT-MISSING-URL (Accessed: July 31, 2023).), there are many different sections of the animation process that are all very important to create a successful animation.

As I am only one person, I cannot do everything in the pipeline and have chosen specific sextions to create a successful project.

Worldbuilding, idea - story - script.
Modelling and texturing and finally, using automatic animations by Mixamo can help me skip both rigging and animating. Finally, The render and composition will make the video flow.

</font>

## Robots and nostalgia

Why does robots give a sense of nostalgia?
Robots are an idea from science fiction and science fiction became big in the middle of the 20th century.

<font color="green">

"Science fiction gained popularity in the 1950s because developments in technology, such as nuclear energy and space exploration, coupled with the end of World War II, ignited the public’s imagination surrounding ideas of space, dystopia, alternate futures, and militarization" (from: https://www.britannica.com/art/science-fiction)

"The Space Studies Board (SSB) was created on June 26, 1958, by the National Academy of Sciences as a result of the IGY and the launch of the first U.S. satellites" (Forging the future of space science : the next 50 years : an international public seminar series organized by the Space Studies Board : selected lecture - page 11.)

The International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958 is when scientists from 66 countries coordinated their studies of the Earth by launching the first satelites, starting the Space Age. (Forging the future of space science : the next 50 years : an international public seminar series organized by the Space Studies Board : selected lecture - page 11.)

With big science fiction titles coming out during this time and robots was already the big science fiction idea about the future like shown in the film *Metropolis* (1927) set in a future New York with a robot as the front.

Even though robots like these are still seen as a future idea, the old design of the machines where we can see strong connections of Art Deco within the robots and other American 1950s themed robots. That is why these robots bring that sense of nostalgia.

</font>

I wish to capture this sense of nostalgia within a future dystopian setting. By exploring different designs that have been used in old science fiction books and films, I want to get inspired for my own robots. Looking at books such as The Usborne Book of the Future is helpful to see what was seen as futuristic before.

From the book:

Gatland, K and Jefferis, D. (1979). The Usborne Book of the Future. London: Usborne Publishing Ltd

"With unprecedented access to the Internet, the flattened desert where past, present, und future comingle, we find ourselves living in a state of atemporarlity, yearning for a time before the present. In the West, the time for which we pine is one before the twenty-first century, which arrived violently on September 11, 2002, and before the rise of the Internet. Capitalism knows this and exploits our collective nostalgia for economic gain, commodifying the very ghosts we clutch earnestly. All of this we do because the world we have found ourselves in runs on the motor of chaotic, neurotic capital that wipes away any meaning other than profit. It is now when the arts must rise to oppose these monolithic systems that enslave the West, when the potentially subversive qualities of a genre like vaporwave can awaken us to the cultural maladies that stunt political discourse and shun human empathy. At the very least, vaporwave is an alternative. It's an alternative to the manufactured products offered by the music industry, and it was born from a community of musicians seeking to make inter- esting music while forging new relationships. Under our current ideological regime, one that falsely declares there is no other option than unfettered capitalism, an alternative is welcoming and must be heeded."
(Grafton Tanner - Babbling Corpse, page xi.)

## 3D Modelling

### 3D modelling Robot

Blocked out:

Inspiration: Grand Budapest hotel butler style

AI: Prompt: Simon_Stalenhag_and_Wes_Anderson_style_robot

Process:


UV map and outline

Animation test on Mixamo:

Comments:
- Bigger hands
- Eyes need to go longer into the head
- Screen on stomach need to be weight painted

Making the height of the robot the average man (175cm)

Animation test 2.0

Optimizing UVs for the texel density

Final UVs_ again!

Finalizing, again!

### 3D modelling Whimsi Botica

#### Texturing Whimsi Botica

Baking: change rez
ID: Colour source: Mes ID/Polygroup
Colour generator : Random
Ambient Occlusion: secondary rays: max
Thickness: --,,--

### 3D modelling phone booth

#### Why telephone box?

Info on telephone booths: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2018/jul/31/ringing-the-changes-for-the-red-phone-box-in-pictures

The colour fort the telepone booths come from the standard British post office red
https://www.myperfectcolor.com/paint/386499-british-standard-colours-bs538-post-office-red#:~:text=The%20RGB%20values%20for%20British,Post%20Office%20Red%20is%2010.71.

"The RGB values for British Standard Colours BS538 Post Office Red are 160, 57, 59 and the HEX code is #A0393B. The LRV for British Standard Colours BS538 Post Office Red is 10.71"

AI:

Sketch:

Process:

Detail_Left:

Detail_Roght:

All Together:

3 UV Maps, comments:

- I Think I could easily have the two details on the side on one UV map

### Texturing Phonebooth and details


Paint peel effect tutorial followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pfhKwyg4Cg

### 3D modelling light pole

#### Why Not just have a normal light pole?
As my environment is quite empty and desolate, the simple design of the light pole can change up the feeling of the environment quite a lot

AI:

Process:

Not a lot of process images as I forgot to take them, but here are the optimized UVs:

### 3D modelling Arcade Machine

# continue here

#### Why Arcade machine?

The goal of nostalgia is to arouse happy feelings and treasured memories from the past. The classic arcade system from the 1980s or 1990s, in particular, can instantly take gamers back to their younger or more carefree years. Arcade machines has distinct designs and is visually appealing. They can provide a standout, aesthetically pleasing feature to the room. Bright colours, vintage graphics, and distinctive cabinet forms can add charm and capture players' attention, adding to the game world's overall aesthetic.
A game inside a game.

Similarly to how you can play an arcade game inside Mo's Diner in *Lake* (Gamious, 2021). I want to have an arcade machine inside my diner:
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWieU96HxBQ&ab_channel=Bry_FoLetsPlay

Also in Uncharted 4, a scene is played where you can play the original Naught Dog's Crash Bandocoot.
From: https://no.pinterest.com/pin/564427765781817922/

Inspiration and using AI to get some general ideas for the model:

Modelling process:

Controller panel

Final 3D model and UV map

Optimized UV map by hiding every surface that will not be visible on the model and crunching them together in the corner so I am able to give more space to the Uvs that matter

To be played on the screen on the machine, Synthwoods, the game I made during my first year of the BA in The Craft of Game Development

### 3D modelling Diner details: stool

UV mapping as I am modelling

Using references to get the proportions correct:

Image found here: https://www.barstools.co.uk/detroit-bar-stool-red.html

Keeping the scale of the Texel density:

Final stool:

Clean view:

New variation of the stool


### 3D modelling Diner details: sofa

References:

Reference for the size:
from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/mmo--140806230860680/ accessed 10.08.2023



optimizing the UVs so all the invisible planes will not need to take up space of the UV map


### 3D modelling Diner detils: table

### 3D modelling Diner

references:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7R-jzZEZHs&ab_channel=MadMorph

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-diner-33545cb09021428b98613f3425210d3f

AI images:



Figuring out where to start when I am modelling de diner was difficult. But with the help of a great talk and interview with Jay Donovan, environment artist for Expression Games, I was inspired to get started. To begin with, I created a moodboard in PureRef on all the references and inspirations I have on the diner. I need to start big and go smaller. Such as blocking out the diner itself in Unreal engine can help figuring out what elements I can get away with not modelling, and what I need to actually work on. I know myself as I tend to care too much about the smaller details, so forcing myself to start big is a challenge.

To get me started on the post apocalyptic vibe, reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman was helpful. Here, he explains how quickly our normal architecture would fall down and crumble if humans suddenly ceased to exist in a blink of a moment. One doesn't have to wait many years before buildings we thought were strong would fall down.

"When the heat went off, pipes burst if you lived where it freezes, and rain is blowing in where windows have cracked from bird collisions and the stress of sagging walls. Even where the glass is still intact, rain and snow mysteriously, inexorably work their way under sills. As the wood continues to rot, trusses start to collapse against each other. Eventually the walls lean to one side, and finally the roof falls in. That barn roof with the 18-by-18-inch hole was likely gone inside of 10 years. Your house's lasts maybe 50 years; 100, tops.
While all that disaster was unfolding, squirrels, raccoons, and lizards have been inside, chewing nest holes in the drywall, even as woodpeckers rammed their way through from the other direction. If they were initially thwarted by allegedly indestructible siding made of aluminum, vinyl, or the maintenance-free, portland-cement-cellulose-fiber clapboards known as Hardie planks, they merely have to wait a century before most of it is lying on the ground. Its factory-impregnated color is nearly gone, and as water works its inevitable way into saw cuts and holes where the planks took nails, bacteria are picking over its vegetable matter and leaving its minerals behind. Fallen vinyl siding, whose color began to fade early, is now brittle and cracking as its plasticizers degenerate. The aluminum is in better shape, but salts in water pooling on its surface slowly eat little pits that leave a grainy white coating.
For many decades, even after being exposed to the elements, zinc galva- nizing has protected your steel heating and cooling ducts. But water and air have been conspiring to convert it to zinc oxide. Once the coating is con- sumed, the unprotected thin sheet steel disintegrates in a few years. Long be- fore that, the water-soluble gypsum in the sheetrock has washed back into the earth. That leaves the chimney, where all the trouble began. After a century, it's still standing, but its bricks have begun to drop and break as, little by lit- tle, its lime mortar, exposed to temperature swings, crumbles and powders. you owned a swimming pool, it's now a planter box, filled with ei- ther the offspring of ornamental saplings that the developer imported, or with banished natural foliage that was still hovering on the subdivision's fringes, awaiting the chance to retake its territory. If the house's founda- tion involved a basement, it too is filling with soil and plant life. Brambles and wild grapevines are snaking around steel gas pipes, which will rust away before another century goes by. White plastic PVC plumbing has yellowed and thinned on the side exposed to the light, where its chloride is"
(Page 17.)

**BLOCKING OUT IN UNREAL ENGINE**


Starting out with very basic shapes:

Having a breakdown over the difficult shape, so starting over with a normal shaped diner:


Door added

Staircase

3D text

Inside of diner is a bit tricky, I have never made an asset in this scope, so I am trying to make it as easy as possible for myself. looking at other games for references of how their inside diner looks like:

Lake

Life is Strange

They both have the entrance on the left -middle of the building, and a wall built out for the behind of the kitchen

Detailing the diner

Sizes:
from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/361906520048948285/

Sizes 2.0
from: https://www.pinterest.cl/pin/handy-info--33847434692173654/

ADD IN HERE THE PROCESS IMAGES FROM THAT

Fixing door

Outside wall details

References for shattered glass:



The UVs of all the windows are overlapping so I only have to texture one of them in substance painter and will be able to reuse all of the UV maps for the rest of the windows

UVs of roof and roof details

Windows are overlapping because I will only texture one of them, and reuse that map

Walls

Door is seperate as I will animate this, so making it on it's own map is easier

Optimizing by hiding all surfaces that the player will not see

Adding details from the phone booth to make it more fun and futuristic

Dinerdetail;
Image from Future perfect vintage futuristic graphics

### Texturing Diner

Just as an experiment to see if my layers work well and the UVs look OK, I brought the full model into substance painter.

# TO DO: Draw over here ideas of how it looks inside

### 3D modelling Main Robot Character

Starting off with very basic shapes for the new model to speed up the process

### 3D modelling cactus

Looking at references of real cactus that would grow in Nevada, America
https://www.americansouthwest.net/plants/cacti/nevada.html

## Texturing

### Texturing Waiter Robot

Tutorial help to get into the flow of Substance Painter again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jl7n6H_Zrc&t=1928s&ab_channel=ArvidSchneider

Using Adobe Substance painter to create the mattextures.

The software is amazing for reading ambient occlusion and curvatures to create natural feeling of for example rust and other wear and tear details

The built in textures work very well and I don't need to change many details before I am happy with the rusty look
also, changing from perspective view to orthographic view helps

Using a stencil to get some clean shapes for the paint job on the robot

adding noise to have some wear and tear

Adding Grunge

The smart automatic colour picker of adobe substance painter that is very effective for choosing parts of the model quickly rather than having to paint over manually

Special effects for the plastic and metallic eye

Adding details manually the colour pciker can't do

Final render:

### Texturing Diner stool

I wished to create my own smart materials of worn and torn artificial leather which is what could work well for the diner chair for example. But with the limited time that I have, I need to realise this is not possible to do now and make my own. Therefore, utilizing the built in smart materials in Substance painter and tweaking the thngs I can is the work process I need to go for

Research on the diner stool chair material:

Built in smart material: Leatherette Damaged

Using AI to get an idea of colours I want to use. Blue and pink:

Using Adobe colour theme picker to get the vibe

Pink

Blue

### Texturing the Arcade Machine

Using an old smart material I have created earlier with stylized effects

It has baked light,
edge wear,
gradient from top to bottom,
edge highlights
and ambient occlusion

Forgotten to take some process images, so here is a big jump
Metal on small buttons, yellow, pink and blue bases, rust add on and patterns

Using my own designed patterns to the base:


Render image:

Testing out my post process tools in Unreal engine to see how the toon shading looks

### Texturing

Creating Seamless patterns that are retro
Tutorial by @GraphicsCreations : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YuugYysHH3g

Retro patterns inspirationf from a company in Helsinki:
https://houseofnostalgia.fi/about-us/



Testing it out in Substance Painter

## Stylized Style using Procedural tools

"Challenges of creating stylized graphics

The challenge of stylized game art is conveying to the player what the assets, environment, and characters are typical with fewer details and put emphasis on the shape, color and form. Everyone knows what a birch tree looks like, you have probably seen one in real life, a movie or a photo. You can only imagine what a stylized birch tree could look like and this will vary widely depending on the pursued style and artist.

Stylization refers to a visual depiction, which represents an object without a full attempt and accurate representation of an object’s realistic appearance. This can include simplifications in shape, lines, color, pattern, surface details, functionality and relationship to other objects in a scene. Which is why stylization is most commonly used to describe an art style that has more cartoony features than a semi-realistic style that usually adheres to realism in details rather than simplifications. As stylized graphic are so varied, there’s no single set of guidelines in creating an art style for games. I divide stylized game art into two categories: Over-exaggerated stylization and Minimalistic stylization."
https://80.lv/articles/realistic-vs-stylized-technique-overview/ - 12.06.2023

presentation about stylized style:
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spring20/cos426/lectures/Lecture-16.pdf

***Show my tool here***

## Animations

Mixamo: sad idle

### Modelling Stylized Assets

A stylized rock in ZBrush:

## Setting up shaders in Unreal Engine 5

Learning materials and their functions from: https://www.artstation.com/learning/series/6E/creating-materials-in-unreal-engine?fbclid=IwAR3YBGqKjSWwkqBl7sqY9axRq0mTFLrw7AqcjBNw-o--eG1mt4XEPnm6lfM

With a Material Function, I am allowing myself to call the events I am creating later in a Master Material

The Master material is allowing myself to re-use function I have already created so I don’t have to keep creating new materials for everything

Now, Setting up a Material instance from my master material, I can change up the maps that I have set up as default as well as changing other setings which I can create myself

Setting up a material function that I can then call in my main material, to create an instance that I will be able to modify easily. The pros of this is that I am allowing myself a lot of possibilities to create changes in the material instances rather than having to set up new main materials each time which will take up a lot of data

Calling the material function in the main material

The material instance with all the possibilites to make changes quickly

The reason to why I am creating a seperate MF to change the opacity is that there has been quite a lot of bugs if I am adding the opacity functions to the original master function. So in this Opacity material function, I am calling the attributes from the original master, just adding the functionality of opacity in case I want to play around with this at some point.

What I realised after following a full 30 minute tutorial on displacement and tesselation to move materials around with the material instance is that these functions has been turned off from UE4 to UE5 and is no longer available to use. This image showing the POM is then useless

### Cell Shading or Toon Shading

From Matt Aspland on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZH4jCO4ZM&ab_channel=MattAspland

Material Domain: Post process and the only thing visible is then emissive colour.

Post processing input of 0 so we wnat the post processing input of a scene texture

If A is greater than 0.5, we are going to be using the normal colour (full brightness) and if less than 0.5, we will be using half brightness

Making sure the sky box will not be affected by the cell shading effect

The way this material works is with a post process wollume where I call a specific material array in the render features

### Outlines

Tutorial by Evans Bohl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvUfnrHcqM&t=29s&ab_channel=EvansBohl

Material Domain: Post Process
Blendable location: Before Tonemapping

Kernel

Detect edges

Defining the thickness of the lines

Fixing the issues of how the the lines are being read in corners

Detecting objects near and far away

### Edge Wear and Curvature

With inspiration from Mark Serena's documentation: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/free-curvature-shader/91962/23

https://www.markserena.com/post/ue_screenspacecurvature/

Also this: https://polycount.com/discussion/202689/fwvn-edge-wear-material-function-for-dynamic-procedural-texturing

### Shader Complexity Node and how this can help me see how optimized my shaders are:


#### Shader Ball


***Talk about how shader balls are used in games***

## Music and Sounds

### Some sontgs to consider:
https://soundcloud.com/andy_l/andy-l-wednesday-night-portafm-jam?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/andy_l/andy-l-train-jam-130518?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/andy_l/andy-l-mems?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/andy_l/ne7-trip-to-the-moon?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/andy_l/andy-l-drifting?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

**Vaporwave music**

"One of the defining characteristics of many vaporwave tracks is this element of repetition, which draws attention to the uncan- niness of audio looping. Usually focusing on one fragment of an entire song, a vaporwave producer will then loop that fragment ad nauseum, often for the length of the entire track. The effect is absurd, hilarious, unnerving, and sometimes boring. Can you really sit through a three-minute song built from a fifteen-second loop repeated twelve times? The repetition in songs by MACINTOSH PLUS, INTERNET CLUB, and Local News are meant to be exhaustive and to walk that fine line between funny and uncanny, and listening to an entire track can waver between transcendental elation and disengaged ennui.
This emotional mixture of unease and humor, boredom and profundity, likely stems from our detestation of repetitive gestures. In her book *On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind*, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis ascribes this aversion to repetition to "the idea that thoughts are not our own, spontaneous, soul- engendered entities, but rather products of some invisible, subconscious script," and likens our distrust to "a fear about automaticity and loss of control."18 Her example is HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. As astronaut Dave Bowman shuts down the sentient supercomputer, HAL repeats the phrase "I can feel it" in a flat, unemotional voice, quite unlike his calm yet rational manner of speaking heard until that point in the film.19 Repetition means mechanical processes are underway. For the human, repetition spells a loss of humanity in favor of the machine. A shuddering, repeating machine such as the dying HAL 9000 presents us with an animated corpse ventriloquized by some unseen force."
(Babbling Corpse- Grafton Tanner page 8.)

"Vaporwave's glitch aesthetic is particularly eerie, with its cut- and-paste editing and pitch-shifted vocals. This "haunted" quality of the genre's overall sound is perhaps its greatest strength in producing an uncanny emotional response. "In science fiction, ghosts in machines always appear as malfunc- tions, glitches, interruptions in the normal flow of things," writes cultural theorist Janne Vanhanen.24 "Through a malfunction, a glitch, we get a fleeting glimpse of an alien intelligence at work."25 That "alien intelligence" could be the very inside-ness of the machine at hand, the interior workings that remain entirely hidden unless we disassemble the tool and risk facing the uncanny in its destabilizing guise. The ever-working alien world is exposed in the information gaps, which yawn more widely when the machine hiccups and stumbles. These glitches interrupt our expectations while deceiving and annoying us. They undermine our notion of what the machine is supposed to do for us, not without us. In this way, our electronic machines take on lives of their own and appear capable of functioning perfectly well without humans - a complete transcendence into other-worldly sentience."
(page 11. Babbling Corpse)

"Vaporwave is the music of "non-times" and "non-places" because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space. The bulk of vaporwave is critical of late capitalism at every stage of its production, from its source material to the way the music is distributed and sold (if at all). As I have stated before, an over-arching definition of vaporwave is harmful, for something so compartmentalizing as a "How-To Guide" for making vaporwave or a one-sentence summation of the genre seems out of step with the anti-corporatism of the vaporwave composers. But identifying the multiple characteristics of vaporwave that critique consumerism and the culture industry can illustrate the political power of this microgenre."
(page 39. Babbling Corpse)

## Bibliography

Author’s surname/s, Initial/s. (Year of publication) Title of book (in italics). Edition if applicable., Place of publication: Publisher.

Tanner, G. (2016) Babbling corpse : vaporwave and the commodification of ghosts. Winchester, Uk ; Washington, Usa: Zero Books.
- Borrowed special book from thhe MMU library

Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
- MMU print book

Trigg, Dylan. The Memory of Place : A Phenomenology of the Uncanny, Ohio University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Trigg, D. (2013). The memory of place : a phenomenology of the uncanny. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.
- MMU pdf

Glitsos, L. (2017) Vaporwave, or music optimised for abandoned malls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://www-cambridge-org.mmu.idm.oclc.org/core/journals/popular-music/article/vaporwave-or-music-optimised-for-abandoned-malls/69219E5A39FAA81223864853F8912910

Wetmore, K. J. (ed.) (2018) Uncovering stranger things : essays on eighties nostalgia, cynicism and innocence in the series. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.
- MMU print book

Despain, W. and Acosta, K. (2013) 100 principles of game design. Berkeley, Calif.: New Riders (NRG). Available at: [INSERT-MISSING-URL](https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/100-principles-of/9780133362688/ch02.html#ch02lev1sec7) (Accessed: August 2, 2023).
- MMU online reading

Reynolds, S. (2011). Retromania : pop culture’s addiction to its own past. London: Faber.
- MMU print book

### Bibliography on Video Games

Gamious. (2021) Lake. PlayStation™5 [Video Game] Netherlands: Gamious Whitethorn Games.

## Other Readings:

Mcluhan, M. (1964). Understanding media : The extensions of man. Berkeley, Calif.: Gingko Press, pp.12–22.
- Jeg har PDFen

Sconce, J. (2000). Haunted Media. Duke University Press.
- Jeg har PDFen

###
TO DO

- Figure out a scene composition - layout of assets - camera move
- execute a linear pan
- The close ups of assets and pull back from them
- technical breakdowns
- lighting tutorials ue5