Project Announcement : Neon Atelier, a VR-based Neon Crafting Experience
This project is in collaboration with Cheung Hiu Ching Apple, as our final year project in Bsc Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, and is supervised by Dr. Jussi Pekka Holopainen.
Neon light has long been icon for Hong Kong's vibrant street sight, signifying the city's economic prosperity with bold expression from the city's many businesses. The neon scenery has been well captured by the Hong Kong movies, serving as one of the visual expression that stands the test of time.
While neon lights are rich in culture context and visual design, it is also based on delicate craftmanship. This inspires us to take on neon light craft as a gameplay experience, and take game as a medium to present a variety of narratives around the vibrant neon light, both of which we found substantial potentials during our ideation process.
For the neon light crafting , fundamental techniques includes elements such as torching, bending and welding of glass tubes, injection of gas for coloring etc. Beyond that, the installation of neon light onto signboards, and signboard onto buildings, are also incredible technical. With respect to our group size and productivity, we plan to focus on the tube crafting part, recreating it into an VR experience with a list of neon light designs as crafting missions.
A digital presentation for neon light tube craft is significant as an safe and immersive alterative to an real neon light workshop. By virtualizing real neon light crafting that involves hazardous part such as flame and chemicals, the neon light crafting experience can be available for kids and more casual people. The virtualization of neon light crafting also allow us to condense and streamline the neon light crafting experience, plus freeing up time for presenting our curated narratives.
For the narrative part, we aim at exploring the context of neon lights beyond Hong Kong movies, which often take them as eye candies within the metropolis labyrinth. This draws us to a variety of alternative perspectives, such as that of the neon light practitioners, conservatism of neon light, collective unconscious of the public etc. We found such perspectives very thought-provoking, providing our players/audience with a more in-depth experience.
In order to present the said perspectives, we plan to add a few NPCs for narrative purposes. With our game setting in a neon light workshop with player as the craft master, there will an NPC as the player's passionate intern assistant. Together with clients of the workshop, these NPCs will brings up different perspectives on neon light topics as the player progress through different missions, facilitate our narrative goal.
With the above vision in mind, our project Neon Atelier will progress throughout 2025-26. This site will serve as repository for the project's progress on narrative and technical aspects, in collaboration with Apple's blog on updates on the visual and animation contents.
Thanks for tuning in. We are looking forward to release more updates soon 🙂
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