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Art is Opinion

University Level 5 & Placement Assignment

Paint outlandish characters and still-lifes using your eyes!

The art in the gallery you work in has been stolen and you have to replace it. Create portraits, landscapes and still-lifes by drawing what you see or going freestyle using only your eyes and the spacebar. Once completed you can view your masterpieces in the gallery.

Art is Opinion was originally created as part of a group assignment in second year where the aim was to create a game that uses 'experimental' technology.

With that in mind, my team and I created Art is Opinion. A painting game that uses Tobii eye-tracking to control the brush and only the spacebar as a physical button to put that brush on the canvas.

After we received a First for the assignment, we decided to continue the game for our self-directed placement, where we could expand on concepts and release it professionally under the team name 'Coloured Perception'.

My contributions

I used file management to allow the player to be able to save paintings they created and then load them back into the game as art on the gallery's wall. I also worked on allowing the player to change the paint brush's properties to create different patterns that characters can react to.
 

Save & Load Images

Using file management, the player is able to save screenshots of the paintings they have created to set folders (dependent on painting type as PNGs) and then be able to load a set number of images into the gallery scene within their allocated gallery rooms.

Paint brushes

I worked very closely alongside our games designer to implement mechanics that allow the player to be able to change the brush.

The player can change:

  • Brush size

  • Colour

  • Shape

A hint has been added for the first 5 paintings the player creates, as well as a preview of the current brush settings.

Character's portraits

When the player accepts to draw a character's portrait, the player is taken to the paint scene where the character that requested to be drawn loads.

Once the player has finished drawing the painting the character saved your work, the player returns to the street scene where the same character returns with a an initial reaction and description that is randomly selected from a list that will be dependent on:

  • Time it took to paint

  • Brush size

  • Brush type

Other Priorities

Along with creating my own scripts, I have worked with other members of the team to help adapt and debug their scripts to work with later versions of the game.

I helped the project lead with the movement of the characters in the background of the street scene

Coloured Perception

Kane Adams

Gameplay Programmer

Worked on saving and loading of paintings, as well as changing brush's properties.

Coral Weston

Games Designer/project lead

Coral designed the game and planned out the majority of the games features as well as creating the 2D and 3D artwork.

Matt Penmore

Tobii Controls Programmer

Matt implemented the Tobii Eye Tracking controls that allow the player to use their eyes instead of a mouse.

George Martin

Web Developer

George created the Coloured Perception website that is used to advertise games created under the Coloured Perception brand.

Assets used

Mobile Paint

Premade coded unity asset for painting on touchscreen mobiles altered to work with eye tracking hardware

Tobii

We used the Tobii unity SDK to allow us to access the namespaces required to use the eye-tracker hardware for the game

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