SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2015
Today, I'm gon' give you a behind-the-scenes look on Neurotic Neurons, guiding you through my crappy sketches in my crappy sketchbook. Let's start:
So that's my first sketch of the “video” UI I'd imitate for Neurons. Most things remained intact -- the controls being a bar at the bottom, play/pause, volume slider, and the main goal being to help “peeps to understand they can re-wire themselves”.
Some things I cut, though. One - the line “therapy from the neuron up”. I actually did record that line, but cut it out coz I couldn't make it fit. Also, I didn't end up adding an “embed” functionality. But, one thing I added: captions. I was going to leave this off the table, but since a bunch of playtesters requested it, I decided to go ahead and add them. It was a fun coding exercise anyway.
Also, crap. Looking back at this sketch, I just realized I forgot to mention in-video that it was public domain/open source. Oh well.
I figured out the psychology lessons first - the actual narrative wrapper came second. This sketch was me finally deciding what past anxieties of mine to use as examples. Thinking of past anxieties wasn't the problem, it was picking those that were simple, common, and relatable. That means, I couldn't use these past/current anxieties of mine: being a queer in the closet, having sick violent fantasies, a fear of success, am I actually just a terrible human being... Besides, how would I draw an icon of those.
Okay, I guess the fear of holes isn't simple or common or relatable, but SWEET HOLY MOLY I DO NOT NOT LIKE HOLES
Here was me brainstorming the storyboard for Neurotic Neurons...
And here's me finally synthesizing it all together.
The scenes pretty much stayed the same in the final version, with the exception of the last scene I planned: to get the player to connect a “fear” neuron to a “safe” neuron, as a metaphor for finding hope in hopeless situations.
However, solving a “puzzle” where you can only click two things would've been a meh thing to end on. In making Neurotic Neurons, one design pattern I learnt was to always try to have a high possibility space. (If that interests you, I wrote a longer post about all the design patterns I learnt from making NN)
Oh yeah, I was planning to do handwritten thank you's in the credits, because I thought it'd be more “authentic”. However, paper & pen clashed aesthetically with the clean visuals, so, scrapped that.
So that's all the stuff behind the making of Neurotic Neurons, but here's me planning for what's ahead...
I won't go into detail of each individual planned project on this chart, but I will describe what the chart's structure is. At the very top, Big Questions I'm interested in. Then, thinking of projects that I think could answer/embody those Big Questions. Then, actually sketching out & discussing that idea with friends. Then, actually making a prototype. Then, actually fully fleshing it out. (I also wrote a longer post about my creative process, or at least, what I want to make into my creative process.)
As you can see, my “prototype” row is empty right now. Gonna have to fix that soon.