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Once Upon a Forest
While
Praystation was Davis's messy scientific testing ground, His catalog
of Flash studies, OUAF (once-upon-a-forest.com)
was his polished showcase where he'd put his discoveries to use.
The name is a reference to "Once upon a forest and many blades
of grass ago," the first sentence in Stardust and Twilight
Ashes, the children's book Davis couldn't get published when he
was at Pratt Institute. The images, sounds, and subtle animations
of OUAF were inspired by nature and its movements. It was a strange
and organic, yet elegant and beautiful design.
As OUAF grew, Praystation began to wither. Instead of taking down
Praystation or merging the two sites, "I thought they should
become opposites." Said Davis, "Once Upon A Forest would
be pretty and high-color, with eerie sounds. It would be vibrant
and organic. Praystation would be technical. It would be metals
and robots and circuits." Praystation became the grey, linear,
scientific test bed for experiments 
that
would later turn into designs for OUAF or commercial clients. OUAF
blossomed into its own world, lead by the fictitious creator Maruto.
Maruto is just one aspect of Davis; like an alter-ego. He wanted to create a world that was not bound by time, space, location, race, language, etc. Davis doesn’t know or specify where Maruto is, and he never knows what he will do next, so there are no expectations. There are no limitations on Maruto, no compliance to standards required. It's infinite freedom for design to occur.
Once Upon A Forest is a breakthrough in web design, but because of its nature it is also controversial.
"I was going to give you this thing," Joshua says, "but there'd be no help, no instructions, no FAQ. There's an email function, but you'll never get an email back from Maruto. Once Upon A Forest is a digital black hole. I wanted this thing that you could play with, that had movement and sound, but it would be up to you to decide what you think it is, or what you need it to be."
For
some users, this type of website must come as a shock. We're all
used to websites that are designed to throw information at us in
the most efficient way possible. But a website that tells us nothing,
that forces us to explore? It’s a foreign concept to most
commercial designers, but Davis has proven that it works: "[OUAF
is] a site that offers questions but doesn't give out any answers.
I have made hundreds and hundreds of people confused, and in that
confusion I've created an interesting space and a provocative experience
for anyone who logs on." He continues by explaining:
"So many people who work for studios get these clients saying you have two seconds to capture people's attention, so make something so easy and so basic that we get them before they're gone. Once Upon A Forest is the nemesis of what people think the web should be. And the average user stays thirty minutes, then emails wanting to know if they've missed anything."
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