Senior Thesis: World Building

This is my initial drawing of the world of Marahame. It was one of several sketches that I made throughout high school of imaginary worlds. My name is Dalton Ackerman and I love world building. Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and The Elderscrolls are huge influences that inspired me to create stories and concepts of my own to build an imaginary world. This is something I have been passionate about and active in doing since early high school. Currently I am finishing out my senior year as an interactive multimedia student at The College of New Jersey. My focus is in graphic design and 3D animation and after school I hope to work in the visual effects industry.

This project gave me an opportunity to showcase what I can accomplish in a year with the knowledge gained at TCNJ and my design talent. I knew that I needed to pick something that I was passionate about if I was going to have the drive to complete my goals. So I looked back at my old drawings and decided that I wanted to give a literal third dimension to this world that I had been creating on paper and in my mind. I decided that I should design the world in 3D software and came to realize that Unity would be best to showcase that. I would write stories and create visuals that would immerse the viewer in this world and take them on the journey into my mind.

My biggest challenge was in the ambition of my project. The task was literally enormous. Sixty percent of the work that I did was planning how to build a continent the size of North America on my capable, but meager laptop. The viewer would have to be able to zoom out to see the full picture, but also be able to zoom in and inspect the detail of the terrain. I originally planned to be able to zoom in so much that you could see villages and people. I realized however that for it to be to scale that I would not be able to do this. So I transitioned to creating clickable text for each region to load a separate level with a zoomed in area of what was clicked. This again proved to be a stretch and a confusing route for what should be a simple all on the table type experience. I did not want to have to explain the workings of that interface and help people navigate back to the main map. I finally settled to focusing on the stories and the immersive nature of a free flying overview of the world. Troubleshooting and visualizing how all of this was going to work and in what capacity was the hardest part. I was simultaneously learning three different game engines as well as two different work flows to import in to each. It was very difficult to figure out what was best when very few people had documented doing a project like this before. Ultimately I just had to choose a way to do it with as much background knowledge as I had time for and make it work that way. The final project was something that I am extremely proud of and gratifying to be able to see such a large project that I completed.

I had the opportunity to show my project at the Interactive Multimedia Senior Showcase that my department hosts to display our year long labors. So all year, as we planned our projects we also planned the show and how we would display our works. I displayed my world on a large monitor in one of the studio rooms with several of my classmates. The guests were able to test my work by exploring the world themselves and listening to the stories that went along with it as well as view several pieces of my concept art for Marahame. The feedback I received was very positive and people were excited to be able to interact with the map.

Future students, the most obvious advice is to start early and to plan things out. If you are working with a lot of software as I was definitely run through the import and export process to see how it will work. Create a pipeline and a workflow, trouble shoot that to make sure your vision will work and then go into specifics. There is not enough time to perfect something that you will realize two months before won’t work. Plan early and execute several times in very simple form. Use the last several weeks to work out kinks and have your projects basically done so that you can still enjoy life and work on all the other senior responsibilities you will have. Also, pick something you love and something that will be ambitious for you. This entire process is an invaluable learning experience.