PARKOUR RESEARCH

Monday, December 9th

"The method is practiced by overcoming obstacles in the natural and urban environments through natural movements and various techniques such as jumping, vaulting, balancing, and by doing parcours. The principle idea is to become strong physically and mentally, with the goal of being useful. 'It’s a weapon in disguise. We train and when one day we encounter a problem we know that we are able to use it. It can be the art of flight, of the chase, of helping someone with a problem, or something ordinary.'"

Since I know essentially nothing about the subject, I decided to start with the definition. From what I found on parkour.com, the sport has originated from army training, and is used for getting from point A, to B in a creative way, by overcoming obstacles using your body in natural ways. The athletes are called tracers, or traceuse, because they are drawing a line between the two points. To understand better, I decided the most logic thing would be to watch some videos and see what I can take from there.

Parkour Research: Bio

I decided to draw the bars in my sketchbook and try to trace the line the tracers are drawing with their body in each set of movements. It is really hard to transpose a 3D full body movement into 2D, but what I've noticed is that the lines look somewhat like a graph.

Parkour Research: Video

Parkour Research: Bio

For this second video, I decided to try to trace both the hands (orange) and the legs (blue) while the tracers were performing the actions, the hands with my left hand, and the legs with my right hand. It's a bit of a mess, but it helps me better visualise their movement, compared to quick twists and turns. I think it helps me because the trace stays there, after they have moved on.

Parkour Research: Video

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Parkour Research: Gallery

To better understand parkour and its athletes, I decided to watch this competition that took place recently in Italy.

It actually captivated me, and after the first few athletes, I was able to catch the idea and notice their mistakes, point out where they did good and see their own reactions to what they did. While some athletes had planned out their movements, there were some who were just making the most out of the course. This is really interesting to see, that you do have a choice. If you want to prepare, you can prepare. If not, then just have fun. This is very much like our game, so it seems the concepts fit together very well.

One of the athletes mentioned at a point "being light on your feet" is very important. This is going to be useful when developing in Unity and creating the character designs. I can see a bouncy creature doing these movements.

"Free runners are only limited by their location, and imagination" this is interesting as well. I can see why free runners would be limited by location. They need obstacles, objects, in order to improvise. This will be a tough thing to implement in this case, as our first player doesn't have anything in front of him to be able to improvise upon and do parkour movements. Parkour and free running typically takes place in urban areas, so what do we do when we don't have this? I think we can make the player do flips, as in gymnastics, but that wouldn't be parkour anymore. We will have to discuss this soon.

"It’s all about how you express yourself, stand out from the crowd, which is why it’s so hard to judge." There are 5 criteria that are judged in this competition:

difficulty, what you do and how hard is it
execution, how you land, has to stick
flow - how you move, to pause is to falter
creativity - how unique, how they use the course
overall appearance

We can you this system when designing the obstacles and sounds.

Parkour Research: Video

"You get out there, in your environment, and it’s like a canvas. You are the artist, and you go out there and you can just create using your body and movement whatever you want. that’s very freeing."

It's refreshing to see what a sport is from the point of view of an athlete that practices. Maybe we could use this 'painting' technique to create the obstacles, like the way I did in the sketches above. Maybe this would help in solving the 'no obstacles in front of you' issue. It could be something like a fountain pen on a paper:

Parkour Research: Video

The first player could be tracing a line while they are in the air, and the second player should overcome the line. They could either go above, or under the line, etc. This is, of course, just an idea. I haven't thought about all the changes that would come with this, but it's something I can show to the guy at the next team meeting.

"I like that feeling of just being in the air for as long as possible, that feeling of weightlessness, of almost freedom. That feeling, to me, is what excites me the most." Again, this confirms that our concepts are blending well together. Parkour, or free running are about freedom and imagination. Our musical instrument will allow for the space in which the players can be creative and have the freedom necessary.

Parkour Research: Bio

"What is parkour without obstacles?" According to this practitioner, it is just running. Can we change this perspective? How can we avoid just running? Is gymnastics what we need to develop the game further?

Parkour Research: Video

Parkour with obstacles in motion - a new challenge, unpredictability.

Parkour Research: Video

Perhaps the answer is Floor Exercises. As you can see in this video, Nadia is able to float through the air, she does flips and spins and movements, having no obstacles. Her flow is incredible, and it looks like she is weightless. I think this will help us. Using gymnastics for the first player is what we actually need. The first player can do parkour movements, but that's because they have obstacles. The first player will have to do floor exercises, which can be equally beautiful.

IDEA: give the player a weight, and the more constant they are in doing movements, the easier it will be for them. If they stop, it will be harder to connect movements.

We will have to make sure they all tie in together perfectly, however. Having a bunch of controls that do random movements will not help us achieve what we want from the project, so when developing the controls, and movements, we will need to make sure that they have a sense, and that the player can sense what a certain combination will do.

Parkour Research: Video

PARKOUR RESEARCH

I decided to draw the bars in my sketchbook and try to trace the line the tracers are drawing with their body in each set of movements. It is really hard to transpose a 3D full body movement into 2D, but what I've noticed is that the lines look somewhat like a graph.

To better understand parkour and its athletes, I decided to watch this competition that took place recently in Italy.

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One of the athletes mentioned at a point "being light on your feet" is very important. This is going to be useful when developing in Unity and creating the character designs. I can see a bouncy creature doing these movements.

​

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"It’s all about how you express yourself, stand out from the crowd, which is why it’s so hard to judge." There are 5 criteria that are judged in this competition:

difficulty, what you do and how hard is it

execution, how you land, has to stick

flow - how you move, to pause is to falter

creativity - how unique, how they use the course

overall appearance

​

We can you this system when designing the obstacles and sounds.

"You get out there, in your environment, and it’s like a canvas. You are the artist, and you go out there and you can just create using your body and movement whatever you want. that’s very freeing."

​

"What is parkour without obstacles?" According to this practitioner, it is just running. Can we change this perspective? How can we avoid just running? Is gymnastics what we need to develop the game further?

Parkour with obstacles in motion - a new challenge, unpredictability.

​

IDEA: give the player a weight, and the more constant they are in doing movements, the easier it will be for them. If they stop, it will be harder to connect movements.

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