The cliches are all here - Waking from a Dream is an exercise in expressing my millennial angst and disillusionment. To pre-visualize the project, I created a single storyboard of my own timeline, beginning with my priviledged upbringing and bright outlook on the future as a teenager, followed by my descent into rage against the establishment, greif for our stolen future, and despair as COVID-19 snuffs out our slightest hopes for political and economic stability as I finally graduate college.
My original goal was to create a series of 3D sculptures to illustrate these moments in my life, but due to a combination of personal factors and lack of inspiration, I ended up choosing to follow a more narrative route. The style of encountering text boxes one by one in a dark, forebodeing environment was influenced by Undertale, particularly my choice of changing fonts to illustrate a shift in tone from the narrative voice on the walls.
I modeled the sparse bedroom to imitate my own living space right as I moved away to college, which is more or less the time in my life that things really started to unravel. Once this clean, bright space is left behind, the mood turns immediately shadowy and doubtful, despite the encouragement from the narrative voice. I timed the discovery of the political storyboards with the edge of the floor, which up until now was the only thing left reflecting the gentle lighting from New Art City. When observing people testing my environment, this seemed to be an effective choice as most people paused to investigate or hesitated to cross into the empty space beyond.
Speaking of testing, I acknowledged early on the risk of people getting lost in my virtual space and being unable to appropriately follow the narrative, especially viewers unfamiliar with three-dimensional conventions I take for granted. However, this notion of feeling almost lost was so key to my experience that I decided to only make small modifications and subtle guidance elements after my initial testing - once people got started in the right direction, things (usually) went more smoothly.
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