COP2: Death of the Author

In Death of the Author, Barthes raises the idea that the creators behind work do not matter, that in modern society the ideas behind art, and the place or person it comes from do not matter. Barthes states that; "It is Language which speaks, not the author" (Barthes, 1968). This idea would mean that a piece of work should stand on its own merit, and its interpretation should be up to the reader. He also makes the argument that as a culture, the focus is too heavy on "the explanation of a work"(Barthes, 1968) with the addition of an author, the work becomes more an analysis of a character than the work itself; "The image of literature to be found in any ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, is passions, while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire's work is the failure of Baudelaire the man, Van Gogh's his madness, Tchaikovsky's his vice" (Barthes, 1968). An argument can be made that this is an outdated view on the topic. In The Designer as Author, Rock agrees that historically Anonymity in ancient art served as a form of authenticity, and that the idea of authorship came about in the Renaissance with scientific texts, as they demanded an authors name for validation, giving the opportunity for punishment and scrutiny for inaccuracy. Rock states that "Text became a kind of private property, owned by the author, and a critical theory developed which reinforced that relationship, searching for keys to the text in the life and intention of its writer" (Rock, 1996). However, Rock questions the legitimacy of Barthes writing due to the political state of world at the time. He states that because of it was written in paris in 1968, during the midst of a social revolution, it isn't surprising that such writing would be produced. "The figure of the author implied a totalitarian control of creative activity and seemed an essential ingredient of high art" (Rock, 1996). With the idea that authors are some kind of enablers of a cultural separation in art during a period of social unrest it is no wonder that Barthes would sell authors in a negative light. Rock also argues that in more recent years, a single author is no longer the way work is produced, he states that "most design takes place in a collaborative setting" (Rock, 1996) either with a client relationship, or a studio setting. But this is exactly what Barthes argues would be a better method for us absorbing works when he states that "the author is thought to nourish the book", but "the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text"(Barthes, 1968) leading to the text being "Eternally here and now" (Barthes, 1968).


Barthes, R. (1968) "Death of the Author" in Image Music Text, (1977), London, Fontana Press

Rock, M. (1996) 'The Designer as Author', Eye no. 20 vol. 5 1996.

COP2: Visual Response 5: The Narrative

I was quite surprised at how difficult the writing of the narrative was, coming up with an idea for a narrative was fine, i'm proud of the idea i developed, but i feel as though most of that has been left in my head as my writing skills aren't particularly great. The most easy part of character development was the smaller NPCs as their personalities were as simple as listing small character traits, and still gave enough information of the kind of character they are.

I tried to ensure that there were story elements that could help explain game mechanics, and poke fun a little at the traditional conventions of video games, such as the goal pop up window that is quickly removed. I also thought that some kind of upload screen could help give the impression that the player is controlling something more than just a game, similar to that of Super Hot.

Attempting to write a whole narrative for a game and characters for said game made me realise the amount of work that goes into writing characters, it has definitely made me want to try again in the summer when time constraints aren't as much of an issue and i can make mistakes without worrying about module requirements.

COP2: Visual Response 3: Backgrounds

I had initially planned on creating backgrounds for my visual response, and though my first background turned out very nicely, the time constraint made me rush, and my second background was of much lower quality. Since the time constraints i have set on myself to get on with other modules along side this one is quite soon, i have decided to stop.

At this point in the blog i had written a paragraph about how the backgrounds weren't essential to the story, and the story was what i wanted to focus on, but i decided that that would be a stupid thing to say. From my experience with interactive media, the best games slide in extra little bits of setting and story information in their backgrounds, and i had planned on making some backgrounds that slowly showed more and more destruction as the player gets closer to the end, similar to Dishonoured. I was going to try and show how small areas where there aren't any hostile NPCs were going to give of a sense of comfort similar to that of the settlements of Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light. It would have added to the sense of discovery and problem solving as the player themselves spot things in the lore that weren't initially obvious. 

I feel like this failure occurred for two main reasons, 1) My time management became terrible, no excuse for that, i just need to make sure it never happens again. And for 2) i feel like i severely underestimated how much work goes into making a game. In the first draught of my essay plan i was going to write a paragraph on the work load being a problem, but i decided to scrap it as i didn't feel like this was an important issue with the industry. However attempting to develop the plan for a game, which when compared to my peers animations, doesn't seem like very much, was a much larger job than i initially anticipated.

Overall i am disappointed in myself for not achieving what i initially set out to achieve. I am proud of the character designs i have created, and the writing i have created for them, but i had planned to do much more.

COP2: Visual Response 4: final GDD

COP3: Proposal

COP2: Engagement 2: Censorship And Truth

Though a very difficult lecture to sit through, i found it very interesting. Censorship and Truth covers things such as cover ups of war photographs for politcal reasons, shock advertising techniques and the censorship of art, particularly works of younger children.

The lecture ends asking the question: how much of the media should be believed, however i feel that an increasing amount of people are beginning to question what they receive from media more and more. If this is not the case, then kill me now.

I personally feel that the censorship in media such as photography is slowly becoming less and less of an issue, particularly with the increasing use of the internet, however the internet itself has problems with such a problem itself, such as content creators, particularly reviewers of videogames and films whose videos are removed without so much as a warning by youtube using the excuse of copyright, despite many victims never breaking any copyright laws.

The lecture also brought to mind a documentary on the US film rating system called 'this film is not yet rated' , which, while not complete censorship, highlights the fact that rating systems can be abuse by their appliers in order to meet their needs, such as a judges homophobia leading to a film receiving a rating which means it isn't shown in cinemas at all, simply for including a homosexual kissing scene.

All in all it was a concerning lecture, however i do not feel that i will be affected by any of this in my professional career, as political animation is not the niche i would like to have as a creative.

COP2: Engagement 1: The Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom is an idea that the entire way teaching exists should be flipped on its head, instead of teachers leading a lessons it's student lead. And instead of the curriculum being decided by someone higher up behind a desk it'd decided by the students.

This lecture had huge effect on me, and i left the room feeling pumped up. On a more personal level it made me feel more comfortable and confident with speaking up when i disagree with practices that affect my wellbeing and learning abilities, which in turn has made me much more confident when giving feedback to peers, particularly those i work closely with on group projects. It also made me regret not looking into alternative methods of education before deciding on a university.

All in all this lecture gave me hope. With stories about the student uprising in france, and the supportive nature of offering free education to everyone gives me hope and confidence in others, for when i leave university and begin working as a professional.

COP2: Visual Response 2: Characters

After developing an idea for a narrative but getting stuck, i began developing the characters. From what i learnt from my reading, and from undertale, i knew i had to make a handful of characters with very strong personalities. I did this by first scribbling down some ideas for unique characters, and necessary characters for the narrative.

I wanted to keep the amount of characters small as to not overwhelm myself, and really focus on individual characters. After this i began scribbling down some ideas for characters. A lot of this stemmed from previous character designs and research, as i used a character i developed for COP1 and a character i developed for Character and Narrative earlier this year. Below are my initial sketches.

These were the final character designs I created. I made sure that they all looked distinctly different from each other as to not get them confused. I will then use the characters colour pallets to help determine what background colours to use for each of their areas.

After developing the main characters i had to develop their personalities. This was a lot more difficult that i first expected. Some characters were easy, particularly the character the player plays as, as a blank slate is the perfect main character to help the player imprint themselves onto it and help create immersion. Some were easy because i already had a character in mind, such as the little pill robot and the hippie gardener robot, who i knew exactly what roll they would play and their personalities to begin with. However I really struggled to come up with a personality for the bad guy or the CRT head guy. Perhaps because i had to develop so many characters at once.

The next characters i developed were the non essential background characters, which were made in the same way, first sketching out, then making proper character designs with colour on photoshop, then coming up with some character traits.

I based the designs on real world robots, with a little bit of my creative drive thrown in. I then also developed the enemies you would face in the game by adding some elements that could link back to the main antagonist.

When it came to deciding on personality traits, i simple wrote down small thoughts of quirks they could do. As they aren't main characters i didn't have to write in some kind of personality trait that was required in the story. I had the most fun designing and writing these characters. 

COP2: Visual response 1: The Plan

For my visual response I wanted to really explore all that I have picked up from researching narrative in videogames, and to do this effectively I felt that this could most effectively be done if i began developing my own video game narrative, including character designs and level designs. My key influence will be Undertale as it is the game that i did a close reading of, therefor know plenty about it and why it is such an effective storyteller and successful game, though I shall also look at other successful videogames in my library in order to keep my game from being a direct copy.

These were my initial ideas.