TCRE: Violet the Unreal world

Phase 1: The Researcher

First Pie Chart:

• Yellow (10%): This colour evokes a sense of disgust for me, likely because its slightly brownish tint reminds me of something dirty or unclean. Its position between green and pink on the colour wheel might also contribute to a somewhat annoying feeling.

• Green & Pink (50%): These are my favourite colours, representing positivity, nature, and cuteness. Their contrast on the colour wheel, being opposites, adds to their appeal for me, making them both visually and emotionally impactful.

• Dark Blue (30%): This colour brings feelings of confusion and unease. Its placement on the colour wheel contributes to the unsettling effect, similar to how yellow makes me feel uncomfortable.

• Red (10%): Red symbolizes strength and holds significant cultural value. In Vietnamese culture, red is prominent in the flag, the Tet holiday, and symbols of youth, making it a strong representation of action and resilience.

Second Pie Chart:

• Yellow (10%): Elicits disgust due to its dull and brownish tint, reminiscent of something unpleasant. The way it sits between green and pink in the spectrum adds to the feelings of discomfort.

• Green & Pink (50%): As personal favourites, these colours bring a sense of freshness and cuteness. Their combination creates a great contrast that resonates with my positive emotions and love for nature.

• Dark Blue (30%): The dark blue tone causes confusion and discomfort, creating an unsettling emotional response likely due to its placement alongside other unsettling colours like yellow.

• Red (10%): Red remains a powerful symbol of strength, especially rooted in Vietnamese culture, where it represents action, celebration, and national pride.

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Phase 2: Blender and the Impossible

Scene 1: Cellular Inspiration

The first abstract scene I created draws inspiration from biological elements like cells and molecules. I wanted the visuals to feel organic, yet abstract enough to fit the dream-like theme. This scene serves as the foundation of the virtual world, with each object reacting to the audio inputs.

Scene 2: Evolving the Abstraction

Building on the first scene, the second abstract scene takes a step further in experimentation. While the visual concept is grounded in the same cellular inspiration, the arrangement and motion differ. It pushes the boundaries of the original setup, creating a more dynamic environment that reacts more intensely to the music.

Audio-Reactive Test: A Promising Start

To test how well I could integrate sound into these visuals, I ran a render test with audio reactions. The result was promising—Blender makes it relatively easy to have objects respond to audio inputs. However, this test also confirmed my biggest concern: the render times are significant, especially when syncing audio reactions with high-quality visuals.

Phase 3: Violet in front of Green eyes

Violet, The Unreal World explores the emotional and perceptual effects of colour through a visual and auditory journey between two contrasting worlds: the ethereal violet and the grounded green. The project examines why violet is linked to fantasy and the unreal, while green is associated with reality and safety. Inspired by films like The Matrix and Blade Runner 2049, it uses colour manipulation, sound design, and visual effects to blur the line between reality and illusion. Reimagined from a full short film to a focused visual piece, the project highlights colour’s transformative power in shaping perception and reality.

This project explores how colour manipulates perception and emotion by contrasting violet’s surreal world with green’s natural one. Inspired by films like The Matrix, it uses colour grading to transform familiar scenes into something strange, highlighting how simple shifts in colour can alter reality and emotional engagement.

Colour is the core of this project, exploring the line between reality and fantasy. Violet represents the surreal, while green symbolizes the natural and comforting. Inspired by films like Drive and Black Swan, contrasting palettes evoke specific emotions. The violet world uses hue manipulation and overlays to create a dreamlike atmosphere, while the green world remains clear and natural. This manipulation of colour highlights its power to convey emotional and psychological states, showing that colour is both a visual and emotional experience.

In this project, resonance refers to the emotional and psychological effects created by colour and sound design. The violet world evokes disorientation and unease through colour manipulation, sound distortion, and visual effects like glass overlays, drawing the viewer into the surreal. In contrast, the green world uses natural sounds and clear visuals to resonate with feelings of safety and normalcy. The transition between these worlds, marked by changes in sound and visuals, symbolizes the shift from illusion to reality. This resonance engages the viewer, transforming them into an active participant in the emotional narrative.

Concluding Remarks

This project highlights the transformative power of colour and sound in shaping perceptions of reality and unreality. By exploring the emotional and psychological effects of violet and green, it demonstrates how simple visual and auditory elements can profoundly alter our understanding of the world. Shifting from a short film to an abstract visual piece enabled a deeper focus on these themes, emphasizing the crucial role of design in conveying complex ideas.

Phase 4: Naturally Unusual

Violet, the Unreal World explores how colour influences our perception by examining the psychological and emotional impact of green and violet. It aims to reveal the balance between what feels familiar and natural versus what is alien, unsettling, and unreal.

Naturally Unusual is an interactive experience that contrasts the serene with the surreal. Players begin by exploring a vibrant, peaceful forest in a familiar first-person view, designed to mirror the natural world. However, with a single mouse click, the environment transforms as the colours shift to harsh, pulsating violet tones. The once-comforting forest becomes unsettling and alien, distorting the player’s sense of security and transforming the familiar into something strange and discomforting.

Violet, often called “the unreal colour,” plays a central role in this project due to its rarity in nature and its association with the mysterious and supernatural. Unlike green, which symbolizes life and harmony, violet evokes extremes, creating a sense of unease and the unknown. In Naturally Unusual, violet visually represents the unreal, transforming the calm, natural world into something dangerous and unsettling. This design choice challenges the player’s perception of reality, pushing them into an environment that defies expectations and disrupts comfort.

In Naturally Unusual, sound is key to the experience. The green world features subtle, natural sounds like rustling leaves and birds, reinforcing a sense of safety. When the player enters the violet world, the sound shifts to eerie winds and unsettling music, creating an atmosphere of unease and danger. This contrast in audio heightens the sense that the violet world is inherently unsafe.Violet: Represents the unreal, the otherworldly, and the unknown. It is often associated with mystery, transformation, and unnatural elements.

Green: Symbolises nature, life, growth, and stability. It is calming and familiar, evoking feelings of safety and harmony.

Conclusion

Violet, the Unreal World goes beyond being a game—it explores how colour, sound, and movement influence our perception of reality. By contrasting the serene green world with the unsettling violet one, the project challenges players to question what is real and unreal. The development process involved discovery, experimentation, and problem-solving, resulting in a game that pushes the limits of interactive design.

Phase 5: The “Ring In Between” Exhibition

Despite technical challenges, I envisioned a donut-shaped layout for the exhibition, designed to guide the audience in a circular path. At the center is a tree, serving as the focal point, keeping the viewers visually connected as they move through the space.

The circular design immerses the audience in a journey, gradually revealing the exhibition’s deeper narrative. This approach encourages exploration while maintaining a sense of unity around the central element.

The interior was originally designed with a classical, warm tone to harmonize with the natural exterior. However, I realized there was a better opportunity to deepen the project by evolving the interior design, allowing for a stronger contrast and pushing the exploration of the surreal within the building itself.

This screenshot shows the Unity interface, where the donut-shaped exhibition for the Violet, the Unreal World project is being developed. The circular layout is visible in the Scene view, with the green and violet contrast representing two core concepts of the project—nature and the surreal. The inspector on the right displays the material properties of the selected object, “Automotive led lights,” set to a green hue, corresponding to the natural world in the exhibition. The Project section below shows various materials and assets used for the room’s design, reinforcing the visual contrast and symbolic duality central to the experience.

The exhibition’s design uses a donut shape to highlight the contrast between two core concepts: green for nature, safety, and reality, and violet for the surreal and unsettling. This duality, symbolized by the “two sides of a coin,” emphasizes the tension between reality and illusion. The stark contrast between these colours creates a visually striking experience, inviting viewers to explore the emotional and psychological impact of colour in shaping their perception of the world.

Link to works

Exhibition Link:https://www.spatial.io/s/A4-Phuc-cam-dung-do-671e024181b6dc800313d5d9

Game Link:

Blog Link:

• Final Blog: https://www.laureant.com/post/tcre-violet-the-unreal-world

• TCRE Blog Catergory: https://www.laureant.com/blog/categories/tcre