010: Source Material, Research

As I mentioned in my last post, I draw most of my inspiration from video games that celebrate imaginative exploration and casual interaction (Animal Crossing, Proteus). If you play through my first digital game release, Walk With Me, these aspects should manifest. I hope so, at any rate! Moving forward with Thorn Village, I’ll be exploring these preexisting worlds with a more critical eye, and supplementing the creation of this new space with world-building readings from a few of my bookshelf texts.

The lists below include my source materials (with handy links, if any of the topics strike you for your own studio practice). I’ll be sure to update these lists as my research continues, perhaps on a menu page of its own.

Physical Texts:

Wonderbook, Jeff VanderMeer, 2013
Vacation Guide to the Solar System, Olivia Koski & Jana Grcevich, 2016
Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud, 2008
Making Comics, Scott McCloud, 2006
The Art of Heikala: Works and Thoughts, Heikala, 2019
Basic Witches, Jaya Saxena & Jess Zimmerman, 2017
The New Feminist Tarot, Jean Freer, 1987
Easy Tarot Handbook, Josephine Ellershaw, 2012
[…]

Vacation Guide is one I’ve been meaning to dig into for a long time, and feels relevant to Thorn Village in its unconventional presentation of “familiar” places in unexpected ways. We may not have set foot on Saturn, but we know it exists, and have compiled sufficient data to make this “vacation destination” possible.

(Something tells me that Sym’s place might have some fun with gravity/physics and outer space.)

Digital Texts/Articles/Readings:

Unraveling The Enigma Of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, 20 Years Later, Retrology, 2015
8 Major Milestones in the Brief History of Virtual Reality, Digital Trends, 2017
Accessing VR: Don’t Leave Disabled People Behind, Erin Hawley, 2019
100 Flash Fiction Prompts, Eva Deverell
Tarot Mythology, Hunter Oatman-Stanford
[…]

Digital Channels/Videos/Podcasts:

DJing In VR With Grimecraft + The Wave VR, DJTechTools, 2016
Brackeys Unity Tutorials (Basics – Advanced), Brackeys on YouTube, 2012-ongoing
ElaineDoesCoding Ren’Py Tutorials, Elaine on YouTube, 2017-ongoing
“Game Mode” by The 1A/NPR, 2019-ongoing
[…]

VR is meant to be an experience! “DJing In VR” really opened my eyes to the countless possibilities that virtual environments possess, especially in terms of building community and the accessibility of art/music/performance to a general public.

Visual/Conceptual Inspiration: