May 30, 2013

Giant walking robots, dream fairies, museum adventures, laser light battles and interactive video platforms – this year’s exhilarating Digital Media senior show has something for everyone! The event will take place Saturday, June 1 in the Bossone Research Center with an expo from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and a formal stagepresentation from3 p.m. to 5 p.m. featuring five gaming, animation and web development projects.

For “ANS Explore,” Digital Media students built a mobile application that guides young children and their parents through an interactive experience of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. The project creates a fun and educational experience for visitors as they venture through the museum and learn about its exhibits.

“Within a Dream,” an animated short, explores the powerful nature of dreams and their ability to inspire personal change. The story features Simon, a rebellious boy who takes his mother for granted, and Stumblebumb, a dream fairy with some questionable work habits. One night, Stumblebumb accidentally misplaces a dream he was supposed to deliver to Simon.

Called "unprocessed television," student-designed online news and culture network “Scrapple TV” features a unique distribution method via a responsive web platform. In addition to the website design, students created a customized client dashboard and plugin that allows user clients to maintain and manage their businesses without technical expertise. “Scrapple TV” won the Westphal Award of Merit at Drexel’s Research Day 2013.

The event will showcase a fun and fast-paced, “light versus dark” multi-player game called “fLight.” The game places two players inside a motion platform and instructs them to attempt to light beacons as five other players on iPads do their best to stop them. The two teams struggle against each other to alter the illumination across the game’s dark and mysterious landscape. The production team behind “fLight” won the Drexel Research 2013 award in the “Computation and Modeling (Non-Bio)” category.

Finally, the Digital Media students will display “Mechination,” an intense action game that breaks away from the trends of modern shooter games by employing less violent gameplay and a bright, vibrant aesthetic. In the game, players control a hulking combat machine called a “Mech,” as they try to survive an endless invasion of enemies while battling for the highest score. The game allows players to craft and personalize their Mechs to best suit their own play style in surviving the invasion. Mechination’s production team won the Nina Henderson Business Challenge for its business plan.     

The Edmund D. Bossone Research Center is located on the south side of Market St., between 31st and 32nd Streets, Philadelphia.