Far more valuable than anything I’ve created during this fellowship are the skills I’ve developed through practice and struggle. Since the fellowship began, I’ve started and completed my largest creative project to date. This fact alone shouldn’t go unappreciated. The lengthier the project, the more it requires of your personal concentration and commitment. I practiced…
Author: Josh Fratis
Networks in Progress
My project mentor, Dr. Steven LeMieux, has been endlessly supportive over the past two semesters. Not only has he been an invaluable source of guidance when I’m forced to make difficult creative decisions, but he has been genuinely, endlessly excited about the development of my project, which is more than I could have ever asked…
Making Progress: Prototypes
My work on The Counsel in The Cave has been about understanding what the story is meant to be, and how to bring that story to life, just as much as it has been about writing and programming the story itself. When I started writing this summer, I thought I had an accurate idea of…
My Cohort: Common Creativity
Since diving into my project, I’ve found the perspectives of other students engaged in creative work to be enlightening. In live, biweekly meetings and online, forum-style project updates, I’ve gained insight into my own creative process by listening to my peers discuss their own work. I suspect this is true, not despite the diversity of…
The Counsel in The Cave
Hi there! My name is Josh Fratis and I’m excited to be a part of the 2022 Creative Arts Fellowship! As part of the fellowship, I’m hard at work creating The Counsel in The Cave, a piece of magical realist interactive fiction about storytelling, graduating, and being lost. Interactive fiction is a style of storytelling…
Finishing the College Decision
I learned a lot from my time working on The College Decisionator. Before this project, I had never done any design or programming work in a professional setting. Working on a real product in a small team was a much different experience than developing personal projects on my own. I feel that while I learned…
A User’s Experience of The College Decision
It’s been well over a month since I started working on The College Decisionator. Though it’s been challenging to rise to the tasks at hand, adapt to the internship’s workflow, and learn new skills quickly, I’m happy to say that the project is proceeding very well. Since we started on The College Decisionator, we’ve been…
Gamifying The College Decision
My name is Josh Fratis and I am a sophomore at the University of PIttsburgh studying Digital Narrative and Interactive Design. I love bringing storytelling to the unique affordances of interactive media. Though my concentration is in game design, I’ve always had a passion for thinking critically about education and the needs of students. There’s…