by Xingyu(Sindri) Zhou, Yutong(Jenny) Li
Q1: Since the goal of IMGD5200 class is to establish an interactive media library, we need to delve deeply into the essence of interactive media. Could you share some of your profound insights on interactive media? Like, what is interactive media to you personally?
"Interactive media is anything that allows people to communicate better and deeper with each other and the world around them, we are not just interacting with games or film we are playing or watching, we are interacting with each other’s ideas. Since the beginning of the internet and the term interactive media, people held the hope that global communication would increase global awareness and make the world a better place. For me, I’ve always been concerned about healing our planet and for people globally to have a voice to draw awareness to things that matter to improve the human condition – interactive media continues to be my hope in this regard. Interactive media has helped us as a global community to make strides in improving our planet’s condition, albeit slowly, (too slowly) due to corporate greed’s unwillingness to seriously invest in sustainable options over short-term gain. I think the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a great example of Interactive Media and its reach to help make the world a better place."
→Could you share some interactive media works that have made a strong impression on you or that you particularly enjoy?
"If we widen the definition of interactive media to include film, which is often considered passive media, I believe that is in interactive and was inspired early on by films. As a child I saw the 2D animated feature The Jungle Book (the original Disney feature) and it directed my passion, career, and livelihood, discovering that simple drawings on a large screen can make an audience experience a range of emotions. Books, films, music, plays, and exploring nature on a hike through the mountains, they are all interactive and media can be used to further interact with these experiences. Hiking is one of the best interactive media experiences anyone can have, we are able to pull up bird calls and botany records for plants as we walk through forests it’s great! As for 3D games, one game that stands out is the Mass Effect series. The amount of choice that game gives you and the dedication by the developers to flesh-out seemingly endless narrative trees based on potential choices by the player is commendable, but that’s the technical stuff. However, all that technical stuff is what allows players/the audience to have a deep and poignant experience with the game. You have burly military men pick up the game because it looks cool with space marines and you can have…relationships… with aliens, but then through their journey as commander Shepard they might come to the personal realization that they are actually gay or that they never considered living conditions or motivations of people on opposing political parties and it might change their views – not just of the world, but of themselves. That’s a really powerful thing. Mass Effect is cool because, I believe that although it has many themes, one of the biggest is that we all need to work together to make the galaxy a better place. I hope more people realize that unlike in Mass Effect, we only have one planet that we get to live on, and we need to protect it – not from unknowable space monsters, but from the most selfish parts of ourselves."Q2: As a member of the IMGD faculty, how do you see the connection between interactive media and video games?
"The IMGD program continues to create amazing games that cover a variety of genres, styles, social issues, and environmental issues. One of my colleagues is secretly teaching her students how to organize, as in the kind of organization that is required for a positive labor movement, by teaching how to run ARG and escape rooms. The MQPs (Major Qualifying Projects – senior thesis) this year show that games are more than just ways to pass the time, Clean Sweep is trying to improve visual representation of minorities, on top of a number of issues they are trying to address. Then there is Bed & Beakfest which blended social issues of gentrification, socio-economic inequality and anti-capitalism into a cozy cooking and management game that subverts the genre because money doesn’t matter the community does in their game. Not to mention the visual art was very well researched and developed based on the art that has developed over the past 200 years from minority communities in America.
If Interactive Media, in my definition, is supposed to allow people to communicate with each other by sharing ideas and giving you space to explore those ideas, then the games we are making in IMGD go hand in hand with museum earthquake exhibits and augmented reality exhibits that allow you to wear the ancient Egyptian jewelry on display. We get to connect with people of the past and present and think about what was shared with us on our own terms. The connection is fundamental and inseparable."Q3: We know that technological innovation is crucial for the development of interactive media, such as early computers, 3D Animation and now VR and AR. Besides these, are there any other technologies that you think have had a significant impact on interactive media?
"AI is having a significant impact on many industries and games are no exception. Any future tech will be influenced by the use of AI. No matter if one agrees with the use of AI or not, the two things that are constant are the amount of resources needed to run AI, on a global scale, and the carbon footprint continues to grow at an alarming rate. For all of the 'innovations' on sustainability with the use of AI also increases consumption demands.
On a more positive note, there have been more and more strides taken in the world of accessibility considerations, although things are still not as good as they can be. With text to speech readers becoming more available and easy to use it is making life easier for the visually impaired and others. There is a term that I forget because I don’t study it, but the idea that making life easier and better for people who aren’t physically typical or neurotypical actually helps make everyone’s life better. It’s something like the curb theory, where before, sidewalks didn’t have the lower lip on the curb for wheelchair accessibility, but since it has been added everyone uses it from parents with strollers to deliver drivers with dollies and carts filled with packages. The reality of the situation unfortunately is that AI, and its horrible impact on the environment, has had, and will continue having a significant impact on IM and GD for a very long time."Q4: Regarding the future trends in 2D and 3D animation, how do you think they will evolve with the advancement of technology? Do you believe there is potential for new forms or techniques of animation to emerge?
"As far as animation, or filmmaking in general, enters the debate of AI and its effect on industry and the art of filmmaking. Whether we agree or disagree with the use of AI in animation or live-action film production – we must remember that AI is just another tool and not a replacement for production artist or a substitute in creating good stories (yet corporations and film studios continue to try.) I see AI as a very limited tool because it requires an insurmountable quantity of data - that is quickly and expediently being scraped and we, as a global society, cannot create new fresh data (art, music, films, books) fast enough and AI is already scraping its own creations diluting the useable information, a sort of in-breeding if you will – and nobody wants that, except for maybe corporate greed. I think it is called model collapse, when the AI folds in on itself because it starts learning from its own data points…
But back to animation…
I am optimistic, not that technology will inspire or help new animators in either 2D or 3D, what I am optimistic for is young artists to be tired of seeing the same old things being created by the tools we have become over reliant on. My hope is that more young animators will want to invest time in traditional hand-drawn or at the very least hand-drawn tradigital animation where they get to make the decisions about how their animation and poses look – not a machine.
It is slower, that is the issue at the heart of all of this industry-wise, time is money and all that, but I am an artist not a CEO interested in shareholder feelings. It takes time to make good work, to explore. I am seeing more and more great 2D animation come from games, big things like CupHead whose animation director was one of my former students, to our own homegrown games like Bed & Beakfast. Good animation is finding its way back into the mainstream. I think it has a lot to do with many painting and drawing artist types wanting to make things but finding the skill ceiling too high on many 3D software, and you know what, that’s okay. They aren’t giving up and doing something 'easier', they are making the decision to remove something that impedes their creative process and voice. If they really wanted to use 3D, most of us artists are stubborn, so they would find away. I am biased though, I love 2D animation, it’s where my heart will always be.
In conclusion, I hope that advancements in IM and GD will make more room for and support more of the traditional artforms from the past. Games have really started to do that for 2D and the look that these small studios are going for, that is full animation in most cases, is not something that can be done with the current standard industry animation tricks. You actually have to get in there and draw."Q5: With your extensive experience in the industry, what do you consider to be crucial aspects within the animation filmmaking process?
"The most crucial aspect of the filmmaking process – is story, not technology. I have worked in the film animation industry for a while and whenever a new innovation, technique, or software was introduced into the production pipeline it was always hailed by the powers that be (studio executives) that we can now make films faster, better, and cheaper - this has yet to happen because with new innovations, software, and tools (such as AI) there is always a lot of work and technicians required just to operate the tool, make corrections to whatever the tool produces, endless rewrites (by humans even if assisted by AI) and scenes to be redone.
With all of these innovations making movies are even more expensive and take just as long as traditional methods – especially if we are talking about a narrative structure. There just are no shortcuts to writing a good story. With animation, a good story is even more important than in live action film making, I’d even say animated films and games are the same in this regard. You see, in animation and in game production, there are no 'happy accidents' you draw the frames you are going to draw; you design the mechanics and levels you are going to. Everything is designed from the ground up, and as mentioned before, it takes a lot of time. Why are you going to invest all of the time it takes to make something if the story is not good? And if the story and/or narrative concept is not good, well then, it doesn’t matter how skilled of an animator, programmer or voice actor you are – whatever you make from that bad story is going to be bad.
Story, and good writing are crucial."Q6: About our ongoing creation of the IM library, it primarily consists of a formal display webpage and an interactive scene constructed within Minecraft. From your perspective and preferences, what suggestions do you have for our new IM library that we are currently creating?
"I never played Minecraft. I love video games and there are so many games I have and trying to find the time to play these games is difficult, a common issue many of us have – I still want to play all of Mass Effect without stopping for a year in the middle and the whole Fallout series among others, but by the time I complete one of these games I can complete a short animated film or read a number of books that sit on my bookshelf still unread waiting for me. Going back to your question, I think that the IM library should be accessible to those who are not as familiar with video games or Minecraft. I am a L4D, RDR2, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Skyrim kind of gamer, and I am more interested in exploration and combat (fighting zombies or robots) than I am in building, crafting and 'grindy' collection, so I know there are plenty of people who play games out there who haven’t played Minecraft. My biggest suggestion is just accessibility, if Interactive Media is communicating and share our thoughts, ideas and experiences with each other, don’t let it be insular or only available to people who already know their way around these ideas. Make it so that people like me who have a hard time with keyboard and mouse can enter the conversation too."
— Xingyu(Sindri) Zhou, Yutong(Jenny) Li
For more about Professor Edward Gutierrez, please visit https://www.wpi.edu/people/faculty/ergutierrez
Availability: WPI Collection
Citation for IMlibrary commentary (MLA): Li, Jenny. Annotation of “Interview with Professor Edward Gutierrez – Deep insights into interactive media, film and animation.”
