a sword and sorcery adventure game

made in Unity

ongoing

The Blademistress Trials a video game currently in development by myself and my partner, Jack Becker. It’s a Legend of Zelda-like adventure game featuring sword-fighting and time travel.

Set in a world of floating islands, Mun, a young swordswoman meets an angel, Antiquity, and they depart on an adventure about time, immortality, apocalypse, and learning to let go.

Coming soon to itch.io and Steam.

an interactive AI dance installation
made in Unity, using the Microsoft Kinect and Rokoko Smartsuit
at Expressive Machinery Lab @ Georgia Tech
2018 – present

LuminAI is an interactive art installation in which participants can engage in collaborative movement improvisation with an artificially intelligent virtual dance partner. The line between human and non-human is blurred, spurring participants to examine their relationship with AI-based technology and how it can be expressive, social, and playful.

The LuminAI installation ultimately examines how humans and machines can co-create experiences together as equals. By observing users and dancers with the Azure Kinect and Motion Capture, participants are able to creatively explore movement while having fun. LuminAI’s virtual agent analyzes participant movements through procedural representations of the Viewpoints & Laban movement theories (from theater and dance) and improvises responses from transformed memories of past interactions with people. In other words, the agent learns how to dance by dancing with us.

LuminAI was recently showcased at Kennesaw State University’s dance performance : “LuminAI” in May 2024.

Publications:

2024. Chengzhi Zhang, Chelsi Cocking, Milka Trajkova, Zoe Mock, Gemma Tate, Cassandra Naomi Monden, and Brian Magerko. Fostering AI Literacy with LuminAI through Embodiment and Creativity in Informal Learning Spaces. In Creativity and Cognition (C&C 2024).

2023. Milka Trajkova, Manoj Deshpande, Andrea Knowlton, Cassandra Monden, Duri Long, and Brian Magerko. “AI Meets Holographic Pepper’s Ghost: A Co-Creative Public Dance Experience.” In Companion Publication of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2023)

2020. Duri Long, Lucas Liu, Swar Gujrania, Cassandra Naomi, and Brian Magerko. “Visualizing Improvisation in LuminAI, an AI Partner for Co-Creative Dance.” In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO).

part one of the Terminus storyworld
made in Twine
fall 2021

Trucy Carlisle is second heiress to the Nwaeri-Carlisle Corporation. After a torrid fight with her aggressive and frequently apathetic father Robert Carlisle, she’s kidnapped off the streets by the Glass Rose. After being told that her father refused to pay her ransom by their leader Marcellus, she joins the Glass Rose to spite her father and help the rebels steal a device known as the Bio-encryption Key.

You play as Trucy and navigate her through escaping the bonds of the Glass Rose and the heist of the Nwaeri-Carlisle Tower. While doing so, your relationship with your father and mysterious Marcellus hangs in the balance, and not all is as it seems.

Part one of the Terminus storyworld, On Stained Glass, available to play here. Part two, At All Costs, written by Mitchell Phillip.

a Submotion Orchestra album cover remix.
made in Photoshop
fall 2021

For this album cover, I’ve chosen to remix an album cover of a favorite artist of mine, Finest Hour by Submotion Orchestra. Submotion Orchestra is a UK-based electronic group with very heavy R&B and jazz influences. The original 2011 cover features an old version of the band’s iconic dandelion icon in black on a red background. To remix it, I’ve taken a photo of a real dandelion and altered it to match a similar aesthetic of both the Finest Hour cover with a similar teal and red color scheme of another album, Alium. Further still, the band often chooses to portray themselves as a lineup of 6 or 7, with their singer being the only one of them not portrayed entirely in silhouette. At the bottom of my remixed cover, I’ve placed such an image of the group made to blend into the shadows of the background.

a small game of bonds and exploration
made in Unity
fall 2021

Tree Hill is a single scene made in Unity, where you walk along a large sphere of a world. You encounter a ghost, made up of stars, and follow it to the other side of the world. Using realistic lighting and atmosphere, you see the sky turn from noon to dusk to night as you travel along to the other side of the sphere following this mysterious ghost.

It utilizes HDRP’s advanced lighting to create the gorgeous effects and light rays filtering through the trees, while using Visual Effects Graph to create the particles that make up the mysterious ghost.

a representation of a long journey.
made in After Effects
fall 2021

In this piece that I dub: the Recursive Selfie, I take the images and inlay them in each other to represent my experiences and changes as a person. To further this message and create marketability, I’ve overlaid a few phrases about experience and growth. These phrases, like “I am greater than my experiences,” and “We are not defined by others,” frame my journey in a way that should provide inspiration that resonates with the growth of most people. The animated typography that moves with the images helps create a narrative of life lessons that change and develop as one gets older.

a comic about loss.
made in Maya, fall 2021

For this piece, I utilized Maya to create the environment for this scene shown in the comic.

In each panel the environment, tree, and leaf are lit differently
with volumetric fog, ambient and directional lighting.

After being rendered in Arnold, they were assembled into this comic format.

The piece evokes the fear and anxiousness as a result of climate change and the wildfires.

made in Unity, using the Ideum Touch Table
summer 2021 – present

TuneTable is an interactive tangible tabletop experience in which users can collaboratively create sample-based music compositions using computer science coding concepts. The experience is designed to broaden perceptions of CS, encourage interest formation in CS, and facilitate learning of some introductory computing concepts. The TuneTable design team has explored a variety of different design iterations for the installation.

Xylocode is the most recent iteration of TuneTable. Due to COVID-19, the design team explored how to implement the project in an online web app that could eventually be converted to a tangible tabletop installation. You can play with Xylocode here.

Showcased at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, April 2022

a visualization of Who Knows Who in Hollywood
made in d3 using javascript and node.js
spring 2021

This visualization, lovingly named Auteur, maps the relationships between actors and directors. Named after auteur theory, the theory that directors are the central creative force in the creation of film, directors and actors often have a few actors and cast members that they turn to to create their films. As such, Auteur looks to examine the primary question: “Who works with whom in
Hollywood?” It does so by creating a node graph between actors and directors, with the films/shows they’ve worked on serving as the links between them. Actors are shown in gray, directors in black, and individuals who are both actors and directors are shown in yellow.

Users can click nodes and and links to view the actors, directors, and movies associated with them. This shows the details of their selection in the window in the bottom left corner. This features a list
of movies that the actor or director has worked on or cast members in the movie selected. These are also links, so that you can trace a path through works to see connections. Also, as the connections in the film industry are tightly interwoven, Auteur also boasts a number of filters for
both ease and increased depth.