uncoveringproject-judith

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Music for Ideological Warfare

Image via Public Image PR at https://www.publicimagepr.com/and-he-wore-a-mask-staysafe-stayhome-staythefuckhome-devo-punkrock-wearamask-wearahat/ New wave band DEVO—one of the musical inspirations for the world

A weirdly narrow-minded aspect of Project: JUDITH is its music scene. Its co-creator and I have some favorite genres and wanted to represent that in our world, but by segmenting such a diverse artform, we are presented with the task of giving music an important purpose without undermining the world’s scope.

To solve this problem in a uniquely questionable way, we kept the world's music scene highly centralized and interdependent. This means that all four of our bands exist in a commentary "bubble". Whether they know it or not, many of their songs commentate on each other and the people behind them. Most characters involved have personal reasons to contribute to this musical dialogue, but regardless, centralizing most musical expression in this way leads to what I can unprofessionally say is some messy exploitation of mass communications. In other words, this is where the ideological warfare part of the title comes in. If one were to piece together every one of the four bands' exploits, they could map out the motives of multiple characters, their evolving relationships with each other, and the clashing views on a fictional religion that radiated into the most backwards dystopia ever.

Real-Life References

Now that I’ve discussed how music in Project: JUDITH works, I’d like to share some of the real-life references we used as inspiration for our musically-inclined storytelling. A word of warning: these songs serve as elements to an ideological framework that we have connected through narratives. Without this context, the following are going to feel like some wacky selections. 1) Whip It — DEVO

What do a hot-headed wannabe preacher and his brother, overzealous chemist, disillusioned family man, and and a tough-skinned orphan boy have in common? They were inspired by Whip It. The way the song was marketed begs a lot of question. Depending on who you ask, the undertones of the music video either contradict or complement the theme of the song. The problem Whip It and its music video present, the intersection between thought stopping and sexual desire, plays a big part in one of Project: JUDITH’s bands, the New Traditionalists. They were built upon the bass player’s false interpretations of an ancient god and his hopes that achieving unimaginable power would blind him to his own faults and bring those he’d distanced himself from back to him.  2) Channel Z — The B-52′s

An intentional reference within this song to another band I liked lead this song to inspire the decade-long dialogue between two childhood friends of my fictional world. While one of the characters was pulled into the New Traditionalists, the other reformed a band that was in need of a new drummer. The former was forced to play lead guitar to whatever the most prominent band members wanted to put out while the latter poured his feelings into writing songs with a sci-fi inspiration, much like this one. For years, they referenced each other in song lyrics and stage performances until one of them struck a chord with the other.

3) The Passenger — Wall of Voodoo

Sometimes you close your eyes while listening to a song, letting it unravel into a story as it goes along. There’s something captivating about this one for me; it sounds almost otherworldly. While modern sensibilities might lead us to associate its lyrics with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I had a much more romanticized vision of what the song could be about at first. I combined both my original interpretations and how I came about it to create the guitarist of Project: JUDITH’s third band. He’s just a guy. One who runs away from the problems he doesn’t want to fix and thinks he can be selective about what he addresses by romanticizing the possibilities. That approach is all well and good for him until it becomes a matter of life or death.

4) On the Outside — Oingo Boingo

I’m saving the most absurdist plotline for the bottom of the list. This one calls for some of the most obvious parody in Project: JUDITH—we have to have some fun. it directly references the origins of the band. Before it was called Oingo Boingo, it had the much longer title of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Call us opportunists, but we added to the world’s trend of using media to tell stories in order to commentate on the nature of late 20th-century fads. Our Band #4, simply dubbed The Mystic Knights as a reference, breathed life into a group of tabletop role players at a company’s IT department. Their counterparts from a swords-and-sorcery world saw short-lived but notable fame, releasing some albums and even a forgettable cartoon series. On the Outside works well as a reference point to this since it discusses the fast-paced and often cryptic and fleeting nature of popular culture for those...well...on the outside.

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My First Fan-Accessible Franchise | The Road to Project: JUDITH

There is no denying that in media, one element trumps them all for us beginner storytellers. The secret sauce that makes a piece of media work in our favor is the accessibility of its plot and world. 

The first fandom I actively participated in belonged to a lesser-known TV movie franchise that still fits the bill of a movie ripe for fan content. Using Descendants as a reference point, here are some of the characteristics I’ve come to identify within fan-accessible franchises.

Audience: Descendants, like most fan-accessible media is targeted at a tween audience. Tween stories like this one often center around fitting into a new world: a perfect scenario in which to introduce original characters.

Setting: Magical, but relatable seems to be the name of the game here. Fandoms thrive within an ecosystem of fun, magical places that still have parity with the real world. Descendants, like Harry Potter, offers a magic school to combine both the mystical and mundane.

The Shared/Identifiable Character Trait: Ask yourself, “What do all or most have in common and how is the main protagonist unique?” In Descendants, most characters are children of Disney villains. The main protagonist is the daughter of two Disney villains. The first characters one makes will often blend into the magical crowd while still retaining something that gives them their own story.

Image via Inside The Magic at https://insidethemagic.net/2021/03/descendants-announcement-lp1/

Judging from the abundance of fan content on pages like Amino, I’m just one of many. Has the Descendants franchise or any similar media prompted anybody else to go on a wild storytelling journey? 

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Striking Balance with Buildings

Curating the details of an occult character, building or otherwise, asks that you, as a designer, ask yourself some complicated questions and feel some complicated feelings.       When you chose the starting conditions for your new video game save—assuming that you want to play fair—you strike a balance between making a cool and powerful character and making one whose flaws will help keep the game challenging. If you want to play fair at treating your characters right, too, you need to abide by similar rules. It just gets more difficult to give your characters a suitable handout when you’re the player of the game and its developer.

Left: Used with permission from jazzdrabbit via https://www.instagram.com/p/CKEXfycp__e/; Right: image via D23 at https://d23.com/d23-first-look-the-new-test-track-presented-by-chevrolet/

     My artist friend was the first to share the idea of what he calls a “building-to-life” character with me in 2018. Above is a graphic depicting one of my favorite of his characters, Chett, alongside what he tends to transform into nightly: the Test Track thrill ride at Disney World. Much of the lore surrounding Chett and similar characters was developed by him and expanded by yours truly. However, he currently retains the rights to the lore we built upon the attractions offered at Disney parks. A world like the one we contributed to challenges the traditions set by making human characters. It ups the difficulty on the character creation game by yanking away the tutorial (by which I mean the framework of human development) and giving you unfettered access to God Mode.

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My Weirdest Sources of Inspiration, Part 1

Often times, it’s hard to think up a character concept you haven’t already employed before. In this post, I’d like to share a few sparks of inspiration that have helped me get out of the dull, muted color world of unimaginative thinking in Part 1 of a series.

Buildings

© Annette Lamas, November 27, 2019

     Remember that question on every third grade reading test that asked you to describe the author’s purpose in writing a work? Extrapolating human-like characteristics out of building operates on that same logic. Whether a piece of architecture was built for utility or entertainment, its purpose, design, and history tell a story. Some buildings like the one above (the Journey into Imagination pavilion at EPCOT) are made to convey stories through the props and animatronics they house. Others take some analysis and research. All can be the beginning of a great story.

Wikipedia

     I’m not just mentioning the popular website because of our propensity to jump down Wikipedia rabbit holes, valid a practice as that is. One boring March evening, I opened the Wikipedia page of a musician whose songs I’d been getting into at the time—I highly recommend listening to Love Shack on loop by the way. Copying the website to my computer and essentially creating my own editable version, Some mad science was in order. I began making ridiculous edits to its biographical section until I had something that was entirely unique, using the original text as only a vague suggestion. I’d like to make a post delving into the immediate result of my weird literary science, but for now, all I’ll say is that although it calls for some very necessary refinement, you’ll be surprised by how far your new story will take you..

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Glorified Bases? | Validating Character Creation in The Sims

     While discussing my recent Sims creations with an acquaintance over Discord, He brought forth a topic that has stuck with me ever since. He posited the idea that Sims—the simulated little humans for which the video game series gets its name—all look the same. He explained that these dull-eyed creatures couldn’t be built upon to express the design of characters because they were all too similar in appearance, making every character look same-y and stale.      This got me thinking about a similar paradigm: bases. This post by Popo-Licious explains the term for the uninitiated, but the argument against bases mostly comes down to the fact that they are stolen pieces of art that are often traced over to create the effect of originality.

     Is it possible that creating Sims is simple art theft on a massive scale? I made the same original character in 3 Sims game to illustrate why not. The tools used in Sim creation are so influenced by the time in which they were made that asking whether representing original characters in the games is possible, let alone lazy, might be the wrong question.

© Annette Lamas, October 21, 2021

Making Sims isn’t art...well, not traditionally speaking      The main argument against bases states that while they allow novice artists to experiment to an extent, they’re as good a teaching tool as a paid essay writer. Using a base is most comparable to creating a Sim with in-game face templates. Where these two cases start to diverge is at the more advanced phases of Sim creation. Open Create-A-Sim in the Sims 2 and 3 and you’ll be met with a list of vaguely-named body and face sliders. The Sims 4′s version of the tool, while a little friendlier toward novices, requires the player to drag their creation’s features like putty.

     None of these tools were made to mimic the exact skillset used by artists; they exist to offer players a means of character creations unique to video games. While clicking and dragging might not require the precise hand-eye coordination of drawing, being at one with video game character creators is absolutely a form of art. It takes a great deal of skill to translate values like “cheek bone size” and “chin underbite” into the features of attractive and diverse faces. Limitations play a big part      When the Sims 2 released in 2004, fans rejoiced that it was now possible to select a Sim’s hair color and style individually from the rest of their faces. The game only shipped with 5 hair colors and some very questionable cuts. Each release from The Sims 2 (2004), The Sims 3 (2009), to The Sims 4 (2014) made evident two often dueling forces in any video game, especially those focused on creation. These forces are the styles popular at the time of release and the technical limitations imposed by the game, the client computer, or both. These limitations are unique to making original characters through in-game character creators, but they pose the creator the challenge of trying to recontextualize their OC (original character) into the cultural zeitgeist in which the game was released.

Split the timeline with dubious fashion      Above, you can see my recreation of the same basic composition of my character, G. Williams, in the last three Sims games released. Pixel-peepers among you might have already picked up on the changes in image quality over the hears, but I gave Williams a cellphone to help illustrate a visual timeline between releases of Sims games. Each game sports a distinct clothing and hair catalog influenced by popular trends and brands. The Sims 2 received an H&M fashion set while its sequel was graced with a Katie Perry-branded pack.  You can enter the game with an idea of what you want to make, but your idea will always be shaped by the clothing available to you, whether you’re limited by the packs on hand or what was on brand a decade ago. Your finished product will be tailor-made for the game to such an extent that it may not entirely represent your vision. While this sounds like a severe blow to games like The Sims, the quirks of character-making enable looser interpretation of one’s OC, meaning that creators can explore styling their character to fit the game instead of vice versa. You might not launch Skyrim to turn your futuristic cyborg character into reality, but what you get in exchange for limiting yourself to a time, place, and computer program comes in the form of some fun storytelling, a change in perspective, and accessibility.

In Closing      I use perspective is a copout a lot. If Project: JUDITH had a catchphrase, it would probably relate to how often I bring up the word. While it might get tiresome of the friend who has to hear me employ it constantly, perspective is what allows all kinds of storytelling to flourish. I didn’t write this post to justify or encourage using bases, but I don’t aim to demonize tools that can help bring the technical aspects of storytelling to the masses. I for one have had a great time making some characters from my stories in Sims games, but as anyone who choses to proceed should internalize, character creation is just the beginning of uncovering Project: JUDITH.