I decided to create an immersive scmaltz vortex for Valentine’s Day. I figured the expression of this holiday should be at least as nauseating as the holiday itself. I was inspired by a tunnel-like project I saw on Behance, which had a bunch of rings and circles just kind of whirling around. So I wanted the user to walk through this tunnel and trigger certain elements to tell a story, culminating in the interaction that happens at the end of the scene.
I started by making my assets in Illustrator. I kept everything 2D to minimize stress on my computer.
I had to delete my first attempt at the schmaltz vortex after realizing that it was very small, too small for a human to walk through.
It worked better when I scaled up and simplified everything.
It took me a while to get the hang of thinking in this way. For example, I really wanted the hearts to rise out of the surface when the scene started. So I triggered a “move” action along the Y axis. But this meant I would have to hide the rest of the vortex until the heart opened up. So I thought that I’d do a “move” action on all the rest of the elements. You can probably see where this is headed. That’s why my first attempt failed. I had so many movements that this just kind of got lost. But on my second attempt, things went much more smoothly.
So the idea is that you give your sweetheart this underwhelming card…
But what’s this? A QR code inside?
And then this business happens.