♥ LOVE GENERATION ♥

If you have been reading my blog since the beginning, you must think that I met only birds and butterflies and trees in Australia.

While it is true that I have really sought a connection with green..

yet people have played the most important role of my exchange & when I say “people”, I mean every kind of people, such as:

…People that I have been living with:

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The disfunctional but awesome house. yeahmate..

…Friend that I have been living with:

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My beloved Annie, my gifted housemate who proofread almost all my papers (thank you goddess) and tried to teach me how to cook (today, after one year, she said that I was a lost cause in that domain) and who fed me and who parented me, and who accepted me as I am and who love for who I am (that is, a monster blanket).

This girl, she is going to be a outstanding journalist, I mean, she already is. You should look at her posts that she has written for the world peace organization. They are brilliant!

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU – THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING

Even though your eyes bled everytime you had to read my prose. “But Henceforth, WTH?” HAHA especially in the middle of the night. Sorry for that. “What is wrong with you using all the time brackets girl???!!!”


…People that I met at the beautiful center of the Olympic Park:

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Here is an excerpt of my emotional speech that I made last Monday :-‘)

(…)And then I met you guys.. You all have been so encouraging, caring and inspiring. I really treasured each of our meetings and I think that it is wonderful that we can share such precious moments and be friends even though we don’t come from the same country or even the same continent, we don’t have the same age, the same background, the same hobbies, the same icome or whatever…and I am convinced that this diversity is what make the beauty of our organization (…) Thank you again for everything, I will never forget you!

See you in Paris or anywhere

Promoting World Peace, one step at a time ♥


…People that I met at Uni:

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…Teacher that I met at Uni:

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This guy is so cool 😀 Almost as cool as my tutor of my women studies unit! I have to make a drawing of her one day.

If you want to buy this cool shirt, go ahead, it is here, it is cheap, it is for the good cause!

…Friend that I met at Uni:

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This is Alison also known as MY FAVOURITE  ♥♥♥

I could declare my friendship once again here but I know that you know already how awesome I think your are 😀


…Person that came from Lausanne with me ou pour ne pas nommer:

SOFIAAAAA or the sunshine of my exchange!

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“Les grenouilles à Bondi Beach”

Thank you for making me sandwiches (which ends up under a chair during a course of fundamental of computer science, remember? aha…), thank you for the road trip, thank you for your humour, thank you for editing my research paper about backyard gardening and José Bové the day before your exam. Thank you for all our French sessions or our grand-mother’s walks, Thank you for all the nights at the library (I am talking about the first semester of course ;-)…

Thank you for being here, it was great to have you and you are a great friend as said the song “Whenever I am with you, I feel like I am home again” so I guess, that is why I am not worried too much about coming “home” because I know that you will be there ♥ can’t wait for our romantic-bobo weekend

… Person that were friend’s friend and then become my friend

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Sofia & Alex, a morning somewhere in Byron Bay

…& all the people that were in exchange as well, people that I worked with for group projects, people that helped me, people that I helped, people of my district, people that I met on holidays, that I travelled with … etc.

All in all, all the people that I met in Australia have been so important for me. I am so lucky and so grateful for meeting you. Thank you for your patience and care. You have brought me so much and I have learnt so much from each of you. Including a little bit of English in the process 😉

These last couple of weeks have been sick; I had such wonderful time and so much fun at all my farewell events! Thank you so much all your personal, meaningful and infinitely precious gift as well: I have been spoiled and I feel like it is my birthday (but I now that I have already shipped all my stuff, I am praying that I won’t be overweight at the airport haha…). I feel blessed ♥ & I am going to miss you so baaad.

BUT you are all welcome in France (or Swizterland) and I would love to play the travel guide, especially for you dear Ali 😀

ALALA TROP D’LOVE (this is it: I am high on sugar because of the cake completely destroy)

PS: They say all the time that Australia is a multicultural country. I wasn’t sure about that until I looked at my drawings and I realized that I had been experiencing this multicultural aspect throughout the year without noticing it at all. Probably because I was too busy myself to deal with the cultural choc héhé. But now that this is the end, I realize that I have never met nor get along with so many people from such various horizon in a such short amount of time (expect when I was in primary school I guess). That is what love generation is about ♥



However, since we are talking about people, I shouldn’t restrain it only to the people of Australia:
People from home (France AND Switzterland) have actually played a massive role in my exchange (and even people that are neither in Australia nor quite at home at the moment (Bah Victoria quoi, comme d’hab’ ;-)).

Thank you everybody, from the bottom of my heart. I probably wouldn’t have survived without your support, encouragements, friendship and love. Thank for all your emails, text message, video calls, phone calls…When I think about it, I am truly grateful for the new technologies such as Skype, Whatsapp and WordPress which have allowed me to keep in touch with family and friends. But thank you also for the tangible such as all the parcels, postcards, letters…and  thank you for the “intangible” (it put it between comma because I could definitely feel it) such as thoughts, positive waves, chanting etc.

& I TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SAY A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO THE FOUR ARBORES OF MY LIFE!

I LOVE YOU!

I won’t comment each of the following drawings because it is almost one in the morning (UPDATE: it is almost two in the morning) (UPDATE: it is almost three in the morning, holy shit!) and I still have my last post to write (and I have to finish packing tomorrow…..). I am just a bit annoyed that I didn’t manage to collect and put all of the drawings: some of them have been physically sent overseas without being scanned because I was in a rush, or some of them got lost in a vacuum (Lisa, I am talking about yours :’() some of them are not quite completed.. bref

Bon allez, je vous laisse regarder les images et je vais arrêter de parler *Ahhh*

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And I will finish this massive article with a self-portrait that I made from a picture of me that Sue took during my trip to Melbourne:

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(Nice trip by the way :-))

Allez bisous ♥

PSS: Pour être honnête, j’ai un peu hésité avant écrire cet article parce que partager des dessins de personnes non fictives c’est un peu comme poster des photos d’elles et avec tout ce bordel de protection de données et de ce que peut en faire les “bad guys” je me disais que ce n’était peut-être pas un bon plan après tout.

Mais en même temps avec tout ce qui arrive de terrible dans le monde, je parle bien sur de ce qu’il vient de se passer en France mais aussi de partout ailleurs, ben je trouve que ce serait dommage de rater une occasion de célébrer ma joie d’avoir rencontré des personnes aussi chouettes et uniques et de célébrer ma chance d’avoir un créer un lien profond avec des personnes venant de quatre coins du monde.

Aussie Birds

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This beautiful bird with red chicks is called the cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus), also known as the quarrion and the weiro (I must say that I prefer the French name: Calopsitte élégante ou simplement Calopsitte ou encore Perruche nymphique)

Hello my dear,

Can’t believe that one year has passed (I feel like I have been saying that every time I wrote here)

I have only three days left in Australia :’(boohoohoo :’) 😀 :/ ? (what do you think of my representation the concept of “mixed feelings” in emoji language?!) so, for the occasion I decided that I would publish one post per day (so three posts if my maths are good).

But I warn you: I am going to write all of them now, while we are in food coma after the coolest tea party of my life. My housemate made a crazy icing (I shouldn’t have looked at what she put inside though) on a crazy cake that another housemate had done yesterday at night instead of working on her thesis (I am kidding of course ♥). Just by looking at the cake and especially by tasting it you can say that they put their heart into it. By the way, this masterpiece will require a post in itself (as well as your scones Rebecca. I am fan of you. You rock.)

So we had a cake that weighted two stones. Besides, I have been quite enthusiastic at the cheese shop and… Anyway, now it is 8p.m and we are all dying on a couch watching Wall-E and waiting for the inevitable sugar hangover to hit us and finish us off.

What a wild Friday night!” woohoo 😀

All that to say that after these three last posts in Australia I am taking a break of this blog for three weeks because… I am going to Japan before coming home!!!

It is going to be amaaaazing because those who know me well know that it has always been my dream because I don’t know.. I have always felt a connection with this country. It must be :

  • Because of all these mangas (shit yeah) that I read throughout my childhood, teenagehood and early adulthood (because I AM an adult now! Dit-elle, avec détermination et puis un fort accent français)
  • Because of the Spirited Away and all Miyazaki’s movies
  • Because of my passion for origami, for sakura and cherry blossoms, for Haïkus, for kimonos, for kawaï shits (you know what I mean vilaine soeurs), or the idea that I have of Japenese garden… etc etc.

I AM SO EXCITED!

Also, it is going to be amazing because I am going with the coolest people ever (comment je fayote! :D)

Bref.

In the meantime, I would like to share my drawing-birds-obsession. There we go:

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(trop stylé! Par contre, en vrai, il a toujours l’air de mauvaise humeur..)

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Introducing the Red-winged Fairywren. This one is the cuttest thing I have ever seen ♥

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Peacock – although it is not specific to Australia. Oh well ♪♫

To finish:

Remember my game design class? Of course you remember, I can talk about nothing else but this unit…

Well, for the last assignment, we (my teammate and I) managed to imagine, design and to implement a video game with an environmental scope (Nana, are you proud of me?). How do you like that! It is called:

“Silent Spring”

(againn??!)

Here is the high concept:

 You are a bird, a plump yellow canary that is singing and flying around a big apple tree. Apples are growing on the tree and you have to eat them before they become overripe and fall off the tree onto the ground. At the same time, a naughty kid is trying to stop you: he is trying to stop you from singing, stop you from eating the fruit on the tree and stop you from flying. He gets his slingshot out, and tried to hit you with projectiles.

Once you die, the game goes silent, with only falling fruit to be heard.

This is a game with environmentalist scope behind to heighten awareness to the people about the damage that they cause to the earth and nature. Eventually, this is a tribute to Rachel Carson, one of the first environmentalist activist, who published in 1962 “Silent Spring” in which she denounced if conditions do not improve, species would die and we would witness a silent spring.

I was in charge of the tree, the growing/ripping/falling apples and the flying bird. I think that it is the first animation I have ever made so I am quite happy with the result (see below). And overall I think that we made a good job. Well done partner if you read this post! (no comment on your last minute style that caused my heart attack though)

Bon. On a un peu, voir carrément exagéré dans le cahier des charges surtout quand il a s’agit de justifier nos choix de design… J’ose même pas le relire en vrai haha

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“Cui-cui” in French and “tweet tweet” in English

 

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“I can fly”

Blue Mountains and Three Sisters

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Scenic Three Sisters

Coucou !

Exceptionnellement, je vais écrire cet article en français. Parce que je viens de terminer mes examens, mon semestre, mon année, mon bachelor (hallelujah) et aussi parce que je n’ai pas beaucoup de temps et que honnêtement j’ai la grosse flemme là. 😀

et puis zut à la fin, je n’ai pas besoin de me justifier, ici, ça reste mon blog tout de même.

Or… I could make a mix between French and English (le truc trop chiant à lire haha).
Anyway (bon j’arrête mes blagues), février dernier, je vous parlais d’un petit voyage que je venais de faire au Blue Mountains. J’avais promis d’écrire un article à ce sujet et bien sûr, je n’en ai pas eu le temps. Mais c’est parce que qu’il y a tellement de choses à dire là dessus (et parce que comme vous le savez, je me suis fait matraquer par l’Uni) (olala c’est fou qu’à chaque fois que j’écris en français, j’ai direct envie d’écrire en langue verte, à savoir de dire tout plein de gros mots. C’est mal. I will work on it. But not today).

Allez, je vous préviens, ce sera un post patchwork. Mais puisqu’il faut bien commencer quelque part, commençons par une petite explication du nom des blues mountains. Pour cela, je vais citer Kat qui a su être simple mais efficace:

“Nature is cool! Oil droplets released by the eucalyptus trees scatter short wavelengths of light creating that beauteous blue haze” Kat S, 34 weeks ago

Voilà pour l’explication biologique qui nous éclaire sur étymologie du lieu.
Moi quand j’entendais parler des montagnes bleues (montagnes bleues ça sonne un peu moins bien en français, mais bon, il faut savoir être consistant parfois….) je m’imaginais un truc comme ça :

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Lettre à Grand-Mère, semaine inconnue, j’ai perdu le compte.

Alors qu’en fait, c’est plutôt comme ça (je n’ai toujours pas d’appareil photo du coup navrée pour la qualité hs):

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Bon on comprend quand même d’où vient toute cette histoire de bleu (« and stuff »).

Et du coup, allez savoir comment mais ça m’avait fait pensé aux esprits de la montagne du film “Princesse Mononoké” réalisé par mon très cher and beloved Hayao Miyazaki.

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Soul of the blue mountains

 

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Ouais, je sais que je pars en live là, mais.. restons concentrés, et puis restez avec moi j’ai encore plein de trucs à raconter 😀

Toujours dans les montagnes bleues, une des plus grosses attractions du coin et je dirais même de l’Australie est la vue panoramique des trois sœurs or Three Sisters.

Voir photo ci-dessous ou voir le dessin du début de l’article.

Faut dire que c’est joli ♥

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Et la pluie et le vent et le temps ont érodé un même grès (roche détritique de la catégorie des roches sédimentaires, traumas de mes cours de géomorphologie).

Allez, une petite photo vintage pour la route:

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J’avais entendu parlé d’une légende aborigène qui expliquait la formation particulière de ce rocher mais j’ai lu ensuite que cette légende avait été construite de toute pièce par des non-indigènes pour attirer les touristes. *soupir*

Bon apparemment ce lieu a tout de même une signification spirituelle et culturelle pour certaines tribus mais je ne connais pas les détails.

Enfin ce qui était aussi hyper cool, c’était « The Giant Stairway » de 800 marches, qui part de l’Echo Point et qui va jusqu’au fameux rocher. Enfin c’est plus cool à descendre qu’à remonter surtout sous un soleil de plomb mais c’était une marche impressionnante.

Et puis j’ai bien sûr été touchée par ce rocher (ça se dit ? Peut-on être émue par un rocher grammaticalement parlant?) parce que nous somme trois sœurs et que du coup à chaque fois que je voyais « Three Sisters » écrit quelque part (c’est-à-dire à peu près partout) je pensais à mes deux sœurs et à nous trois (c’est à dire à peu près tout le temps).

Comme en voyant cet hôtel par exemple.

Comme en voyant cet hôtel par exemple.

Dans ma lancée des trois sœurs, j’aimerais aussi partager des tableaux que j’adore peints par Colleen Wallace Nungari, une prolifique et talentueuse artiste aborigène :

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Dreamtime Sisters, 2010

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Dreamtime Sisters

Dreamtime Sisters

Bon je me suis limitée à trois (parce qu’on est trois) mais en vrai j’aurais pu vous en montrer mille. C’était dur de se restreindre 🙂

Encore trois sœurs! Décidément! Et puis “Three” ça ressemble à “Tree” et dans la famille on aime bien les arbres. Et on dit toujours qu’on est les cinq arbores. Etrange… Surtout qu’il paraît qu’il n’y a pas de coïncidences dans la vie \0/

Purée, je pensais que ça allait être plus facile d’écrire en français, mais je galère aussi.. (la meuf)

Ce n’est pas tout mais je dois vous laisser, il faut que je fasse mes bagages, je pars demain pour les territoires du nord et Uluru (hiii)

En tout cas vous avez dû remarquer que je parle souvent de montagnes dernièrement. C’est vrai que les Alpes me manquent (et le fromage aussi mais c’est une autre histoire) alors du coup j’ai dessiné beaucoup de montagnes.

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Raah, j’arrive pas à m’arrêter mais puisqu’on parle de montagnes bleues, je ne peux pas ne pas parler de Louis le Brocquy. Son tableau « Greatlake Glendalough » (ci-contre) de 1991 a inspiré ma Maman les magnifiques aquarelles suivantes :

 

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Auteur: Maman

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Auteur: Maman

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Auteur: Maman

Oulala c’est ce qu’on appelle un gros article. Je suis éreintée maintenant 😀 Et complétement à la bourre pour aller voir Doris au cinoche.

Allez bisous et à très vite les copains! Virtuellement et dans pas si longtemps, on se reverra même dans la vraie vie! Unbelievable !

One day in Cabramatta – Another Atypical Assignment…

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The following is an excerpt from our -professional- report and a deep (lol) analysis of our sense of place.

“The area seemed mainly Vietnamese although we did observe a few Chinese places as well. It was interesting because some of us felt like we were overseas somehow. Alison, who was born in Australia, was not surprised because she is used to it. However, Hugo being from England and Elsa being from France* were more surprised to find this micro society within Australia.

We took some pictures below the arch of friendship (or Pai Lau), just before the freedom Plaza.

This arch, with the quote “The World is for us to share and to respect”, seems to welcome every visitor no matter where they come from. Moreover, other inscriptions written in different language can be observed on the façade, and after further research, we learnt that it is written in Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and English. This symbolizes the harmonious and multiculturalist aspect of Cabramatta and Australia in general. ”

*from France AND Switzerland 😀

One thing that I understand now is that historical trajectories are embedded into every cultural landscape and you could ‘read’ it as you would read a text somehow.

You could. It doesn’t mean that’s easy…

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Related to the topic it would have been relevant to put “Love Generation” from Bob Sinclar but I prefer to share with you this song from an Australian Indie pop band (= gros gros hipsters) . ♪

♫ welcome to the world of our love ♫

Bisous!

Happy Cacti (Cacti = Latin plural of cactus)

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My cactus has been published in p.4 of the Grapeshot issue of May!!!

Grapeshot is the cool Macquarie university paper, run by its students 😀

I am super proud. \0/

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“Hellooo”

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*Miou Miou*

The design of these cacti have been inspired from a drawing that I received for my birthday last September (see below). It has been made by my beloved neighbour, friend and soul sister, Nana ♥

Thank you again.

You should check her blog by the way. It is super cool!

Nana

“Welcome the merciless battle of natural elements”

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“Fire vs. Water, with the dawn of time came the earth’s never ending war.  Their coexistence is impossible as neither can survive while the opposing element is in full force.

Fire vs Water, Townsfolk vs Arsonists, you must choose. The townsfolk will control the raging waters and arsonists will control the rampant flames.

Fire vs Water, to survive you must use your element to protect your life and eliminate the enemy.

Fire vs Water, Welcome the merciless battle of natural elements.”

Another assignment. Youhou. But this time, it was a group project. We had to design a card games that uses resources system and that should encourage social dynamics among other things.

I had to fin the story (and to design the cards as you can see). My housemate helped me with writing the metaphor of the game and that was tough because I wanted to make the duality Fire vs Water very clear but at the same time we couldn’t get out of our minds the prophecy of Harry Potter “Neither can live while the other survives” : we just couldn’t come up with another expression.. alala

But we did it! An my team mates were enthusiastic about it!

Only two group projects left!

Si non:

Yesterday in my game design class, we were talking about world building and characters (fascinating topic by the way, especially when we studied how Tolkien did to imagine and create a such rich and complex world). Anyway, the teacher asked me who name a hero (l’angoisse!), and of course I said Harry Potter. I don’t usually participate in class but everything I do is to talk about Harry Potter haha… (because after he asked me to name an mentor and I let you know who I picked…).

In short, I am well but :

 

Game Design is still serious (and still time-consuming…)

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Game Design is Serious

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I have just finished the design of the first level of the zombie survival game.

You must ask what the hell that assignment is (and so do I)

But after putting my heart and soul (and holiday mf) now that it is finished, I feel like I could fly or jump in the field surrounded by butterflies and unicorns and stuff. #cuicui

No, seriously I have to explain what has happened because “c’est juste une immense blague” as I would say in French.

 In short: I took this game design class because it is been a while that I am interested in serious games as something that could heighten awareness among people about significant causes (such as environmental, feminist etc. 🙂 and I thought that serious games could bring something relevant to the party.

So I looked at the unit guide of the class to see if it could indeed teach me some fundamental concepts of game design such as challenge/risk/reward/flow and so on..

What an opportunity! This class seemed gather all I was hoping for: theory, practicals, projects and fun and everything. Except for one thing, indeed, in order to be allowed to attend this class, one must have done a prerequisite.  I looked at it and it seemed to be like an easy first year programming class. “Nah easy..” I thought, “I have done heaps of programming in the past” (at this point you might guess that life has punished me right after for my arrogance haha). Sooo, I asked for equivalence to the convenor who gives it to me without discussion (his bad) and that is how I started joyfully my game design class.

From the first week, I realize that the first-year-easy-class-requirement was in no way a programming class but it was “Introduction to video game”. Just my luck! In this class, students had to learn how to use Unity, which is a software that lots of game designers use to develop video games.

I should I have read the signs, but I haven’t. SOOO first obstacle: I had to catch up one semester of practicals in one week which was pretty stressful but at the same time quite fun because Unity is fairly well designed actually and the tasks were “cute” somehow. Like, I had to create small 2D game that reminds me doodle jump.

However, slowly but surely, I realized that the class that missed (Introduction to video game) had actually well prepared students to find and create the “fun” in a game which is what all it is about.

Nevermind” I thought “I can be funny sometimes

HUGE MISTAKE

Soo after being exposed for 5 weeks of mountains of further knowledges about game and game design, the time has come for us to do the first assignment:

Your job is to design the introductory level for a zombie survival game set in the Australian outback.

 

The game starts with the player waking up in bed in the farmhouse where she lives. It is the middle of the night and zombies have invaded the house. The story requires the player to reach the shed outside the house where their truck is parked and drive off into the bush.

The game is a first person shooter. The main mechanics are moving and shooting.

The player moves at 4 m/s (metres per second) and can sprint at 8 m/s for 10s bursts with 30s cool-down time.

Zombies walk slowly at 2 m/s. If they see the player they will chase them.

The player starts at 100% health. They lose 10% per second while being attacked by a zombie. There are wall-mounted first-aid cabinets which heal 20% health when the player picks them up.

The player is initially unarmed. There are two weapons to introduce in the first level: a crowbar and a shotgun.

That was it. That was the moment I knew I was in trouble, especially when I read “First Person Shooter”; because I had a vague idea of what it was and because I had already known that in no way it way my area of interest.

Nonetheless, I persisted (obstination bonjour) and I decided to take on this assignment as much as as I can. Naturally, the beginning was horrible. After hours on unity, I couldn’t come up of an idea of a farm, of challenges, of fun. More important, I couldn’t understand where the fun was in all the violence of this kind of game. I was completely blocked so I asked my teacher how I could do, knowing that my fraudulent background of non-gamer. Among several good tips, he advises me to try to play a FPS game (that was also the advice that Papa gave me). So, on that note, I bought “Left 4 death” because, according to my classmates, “that’s the best mate”.

Holy Moly ! That game was horrible! I didn’t survive more than 11 minutes. XD. Physically in and emotionally, men, too much tension for me. Anyway, trying to play was a bad bad bad idea: not only I wasted 20 bucks for a game that I would never play again but I was still stagnating for my assignment and I couldn’t see how I could design a FPS game without playing it.

My tutor (cool guy) and my teacher (cool guy) rescued me and told me to think about the level as a story, and to think about the experience of the player before anything else.

remember that zombie movies are often about suspense. It doesn’t have to be constant fighting, room after room. Rather than adding more rooms, space things out. Make the player walk down a long dark empty corridor, uncertain of whether a zombie is going to appear from a door beside them. Or take them outside and make them walk through the trees in the moonlight. Think about your dramatic arc, it shouldn’t be all fighting all the time. 

These words unlocked the situation and I just did it. And when I say “I did it”, I did it well 😀

Nobody could stop me: I was experiencing “the flow” several time while doing it and feeling that while studying is just crazy! ( I am being weird, I know)

Overall I spent more than 50 hours (surely more but I stopped counting after that because it put me down haha) and all my holiday (just before the break I was like “yeaah, I might go to Tasmania or Urulu, you know.. we have so much time after all” HAHA). But despite that, and despite the fact that I still don’t like first person shooter game, I had fun doing it and I learnt heaps of things.

As I told my tutor: it is going to be the worse zombie level ever designed but at least I manage to explain why, I have done my best and I made pretty story boards. ♥

Happy ending!

(now I start to worry about the next assignment which is a group project where we have to create a multi-player game (like world of Warcraft but in 1000 times crappier of course) but one thing at the time, let me celebrate my victory of the day).

I hope you will enjoy some elements of my work (I didn’t put the screen shot of the “real” farm that I made in Unity, but I can tell that the final render was almost scary) (actually I scared myself while playtesting my own game) (And I almost cried when I reached the truck for the first time) (that is the thing: I designed a game too hard for me to achieve haha. My teacher says that that often happens in this industry but usually it is the other way around: like.. people design game too hard for the average person)

Let’s start with my kick ass map ! You can’t see on this scan but for the lights I put Glitter stickers. That was my personal touch. The corrector is going to be sooo blasé. xD

 

Map_Level - Copie

And here are the famous story boards: Fruits of My Labour.

StoryBoardLegend

Antechamber 1

02

Livingroom

03

Corridor 1

04

Dining Room

05

Interior Courtyard

6

Office

08

Terrace

10

Antechamber 2

Part one

11-1

Part two

11-2

Part three

11-3

Cowshed

12

Antechamber 3 13

Barn or the final battle14

The Shed (the end) :’)15

You can guess that the design of my player (especially when he or she is relieved) is inspired by “Leveinar” or Chansey in English or Lucky in Japenese. It has always my favourite pokemon. ♪♫ If you are nostalgic about the time where you used to deal card in the school yard or if you just want to know more about Leveinar follow this link.
113

Summary of action:

arc

And I want to finish by thanking my beloved housemate who bought me a flying pig (and material to do hot chocolate) to cheer me up while I was dying at the beginning of the assignment. 😀 I am so blessed \0/

20160426_163125

Hello youuu

About Symmetry

Elea

The deadline for posting expired a while ago, I knooow. But I had my master applications and stuff which were time-consuming… and most importantly, Uni has been killing me –again-. No seriously, even though I am super enthusiastic about what I learn, I still have to get use to this new system where you have to submit things all the time. Anyway, I said that I would stop to complain about Uni work because after all, I like what I do. =)

Before talking about the precise content of one of my lecture, I’d like to share some experiences of my learning process here.

In my maths class, the first assignment was a group project for which we had to do an oral presentation (Good heavens!) about symmetry. More precisely, we had to show how symmetry was important for our understanding of the world and in which ways it had influenced (and is still influencing) other domains than mathematics such as physics, music, biology, architecture or art…

I let you guess what my parts were… Symmetry in Architecture and Art!

Woohoo Surprise

As usual, I did not manage to K.I.S.S kiss kiss ♪♫ (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I started by look at the wikipedia page about symmetry then, 3 hours later, I was reading a book (massive brick of more than 1,000 pages) about the secret and the mystery of the Taj Mahal. Well, the Taj Mahal is related with symmetry somehow, it is one of the most famous example of bilateral symmetry in architecture (Bilateral or reflectional symmetry is when you can draw a line in middle of an object and when the two halves reflect each other, see the drawing). By the way, the drawing of this article is for one of my friend who made an exchange in India last year.

ANYWAY, I have learnt heaps of stuff about symmetry and I started to be quite big on it, but just thinking about me, speaking in English in front of native speakers frightened me. I wouldn’t know explain why, but for me, it really makes a difference for me whether I speak with natives or international/exchanges students, so that’s why I wasn’t super confident for this presentation.

Eventually, I don’t know how but we did very well! Just before, I felt like fainting and during the presentation, I could see that sometimes the audience couldn’t get everything that I was saying but, as one of my friends told me, in English as long as you really have the intention to be understood, people will understand you. I experience that fact all the time actually 🙂

Now, I’d would to talk about symmetry in itself. It is a massive subject and I won’t even try to cover all of it but I want to talk about some aspects that I found really interesting and made me think a lot. Warning, the next part is a bit indigestible. \0/

You know, usually, when you start a research paper, you often use lam catchphrase like “Nowadays, the technologies are everywhere” of “With the globalization blablabla”. As I begin to get how it works here, I started my essay by: “Observing nature or society, by studying biology or languages, or just by looking at his or her reflection in a mirror, allows one to understand that symmetry is present everywhere and in everything”. At first, it sounds boring but when you think deeply about it, it is striking how symmetry is really everywhere, either in physical object or abstract idea.

For example, in architecture, Symmetry is a concept major in all cultures throughout time and is used as a tool to provide a particular experience to the user and a way for the architect to express particular ideas.

What kind of idea you might want to ask? For example, the reflectional symmetry (the one you can see on the Taj Mahal) is the most common form of system found in architecture. BUT WHY?  reflectional symmetry appears to have been historically valued in architecture mainly for aesthetic reason; although a building has to be functional symmetry seems to create shapes that are considered to be harmonious and beautiful, at least to the human eye (Williams 1998). (why?)

Okay, that is maybe common sense, but another theory argues that humans design and create building as in their image. In other words, people are surrounded in nature by symmetrical elements and are themselves symmetrical, thereby influencing the way they design objects, buildings and even cities.

And it is true when you think about it: so many objects that we design are symmetrical like cars, lamps, phone, pretty much anything! That would explain why so many buildings display reflectional symmetry in all cultures and all time periods. Many other different type of symmetry can be observed in both ancient and recent architecture such as chiral symmetry, spiral symmetry, rotation symmetry etc. Each kind of these provides a particular effect to the building and has an impact on the final renderer. For example, the spiral symmetry that can be observed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York is used to symbolise the concept of continuity (William 1999). In short, symmetry provides tools for architects and artist to express their conception of the world but also to create unique experiences for people who admire them (okay, it is a bit too much).

Symmetry is really something that we take for granted but when you start to challenge your imagination and try to imaging the world without symmetry, it can be very very confusing (and interesting). To begin with yourself, it you weren’t symmetrical, what would you look like?

However symmetry as the only way of make thing beautiful is an idea that has been challenged in the 21st century but I won’t enter in the details (just look a picture at another Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, you will understand what I am talking about).

Okay, now I spent too much time on Architecture and I don’t feel brave enough to do the job for the Art. I will just say that mathematics and Art in particular can influence art. For my oral presentation, I focused my analyse on Escher (Dutch artist, born 1898 and died 1972) who was inspired by nature and in some cases architectural pieces that contained symmetry (la boucle est bouclée). He was very famous for his tessellations (a tessellation is when a shape is repeated over and over again covering a plane without any gaps or overlaps, and obviously, it contains symmetry). Since tessellations are unbounded objects, drawing them was his way to express his idea of infinity. Eventually, I think that Esher was interested in describing the reality through the mathematics with symmetry but also with other mathematical concepts. Voilà voilà.

When I did the research about art, I realised that symmetry plays a big role in my own drawings. Is it because I draw my inspiration from nature which has symmetrical elements as I said? Or is it because I observe society which is based on symmetrical systems? Or is it because I have been learning that symmetry is what gives harmony and beauty to the world though my education?

Is it really the case or is it another social construction?

I don’t know but I let you reflect upon it.

Cheers,

Elsa Symmetrical Lioness.

PS : I have just finished The Pillars of the Earth written by Ken Follet. It is a story about power and faith, about obstacles and betrayal, about victories and courage, about war and peace… It took me half the book (= more than 500 pages) to be on it but then, I have been obsessed with this it. Besides, all this matters of cathedral has inspired me. Here is the Cathedral of Chartres, another example of symmetry in architecture btw 🙂

 charteschartres (2)