Mackenzie Koch Capstone Project

When you try to explain a video game, how would you describe it? A movable art form that guides its players to a certain goal? A way in which people can discover a hidden message behind its virtual walls? Or a distraction for children that takes them away from greater purposes such as schoolwork, joining teams, or becoming part of a club like many parents describe them as? How about describing video games as a way to increase one’s creativity? Think about it! When you are playing a video game, you become complete immersed into the virtual world. You transform into the main protagonist with one main goal that involves overcoming obstacles to achieve what your characters desires. Now, apply that to the real world.

As I was trying to find information based around this topic, I found many websites that provide me with studies that show children who play video games are more creative in their drawings and how that overcome obstacles in their lives. Children learn to plan, search, and tackle challenges in the games that they can apply to modern challenges such as making decisions and facing consequences. With this, I will be focusing my Capstone project around the idea of how video games increase one’s creativity which allows an individual to advance better in life.

For my project, I plan on creating an infographic animation that will provide the ways of how video games increase creativity in its players and how this increase in creativity helps an individual in the real world. This infographic will include statistics along with animations which will be created within Illustrator and Affect Effects. I also plan on creating a mashup to help show the connection between video games, the players, and their evolving creativity. While the infographic animation explains the idea of video games increasing creativity, the mashup will provide more of visual example of what is going on in the player’s head with the virtual and real world. With my website, I plan to have a layout that will introduce the subject and then have two other links that will have infographic animation and mashup (layout will most likely change as development continues).

 

Video Game Diversity Infographic – Draft 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4pFa15-NK0
This is a 3rd draft of the an infographic I am creating in DTC 201. I chose the topic of video game diversity and I will continue to expand upon the project in the coming weeks.

Capstone Project Final Edit

My Final entry for the Capstone Project. For a better experience its best to watch the video mash up about the history of video games and then the animated info-graphic. The end result of the video turned out much better in my opinion than I anticipated. I found some great music that sets a great mood when watching. The animation took the longest amount of time; just a constant amount of small tweaks here and there trying to make it look fully finished. If I had more time with it I feel like there could have been many more options. The animation also turned more into how video games of affected our lives, not just their general influence in culture. What I mean by this is the positive and negative effects that people suggest are caused by video games. I tried to make the animation look like they were switching from game to game while you were reading the information I gathered. I also ended up going with no voice over for the animation, as there was a lot of text, so I thought it unnecessary to get the information twice. I did however have a voiceover for the video remix to explain the imagery you see. All clips were exported at 720p, if some of the clips look fuzzy in the remix video, its not the video quality but the video games inside the clips themselves, as they were older games.

 

Vimeo Remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teNEfUPeyKg&feature=youtu.be

Vimeo Animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxrs4NwC59Q&feature=youtu.be