Last quarter, students had the opportunity to play “Leaving the Nest” as part of Interplay Extravaganza, a student showcase hosted by the UCLA Game Lab. In its depiction of themes such as love and loss, she said the game required a great amount of vulnerability – a level of intimacy in storytelling that Kough hopes to continue in her future works. The animated narrative focuses on a pigeon and his relationships with other birds as he leaves his home in the city, she said. “Once I have the story, that’s actually where the art comes in.”įor her story-based game “ Leaving the Nest,” Kough said she focused on nostalgia and sadness as the core emotions of the piece. “(Creating a game) always starts with a feeling – I usually latch onto some sort of feeling, … and then from there, I start free writing, just spewing out whatever comes to mind,” Kough said. In addition to utilizing motion, Kough said she also enlists narrative in order to construct authentic and enlivened characters, with writing playing a key role in her creative process. Kough said she saw engaging with multidimensional art as an opportunity to inject life into her characters, finding beauty in developing dynamic art. “When I learned I could make games, that meant I could bring the environments in my head to life (so) that other people could be in them just like I was in my own head.”įor Kough, her imaginative personality led her to art at a young age when she said she created and acted out stories about cheetahs and horses with friends in the park. “I just had this fixation with bringing all the things in my mind to life,” Kough said. Her involvement in video game design stemmed from a desire to share her creative visions with others, she said. Kough has created works ranging from seconds-long animated pieces shared via Instagram to a story-based playable video game, and she said she is currently in the process of developing an interactive virtual reality game. The fifth-year design media arts student said she has found joy in the ability to tell stories and create complex characters through animation and game design.

13 at 9:07 p.m.ĭelaney Kough is bringing her imagination to life.

When game characters in real life 18