Study Task 6 - Planning a Practical

I intend to visually and practically investigate: Interactive Storytelling 

In order to do this I will: 
Examine key aspects of existing interactive stories, such as choose-your-own-adventure books, visual novels and interactive video games, and then recreate a short story using these mediums.

Primary Research: 

• Create my own interactive stories and find out how effective they were by presenting them to a target audience and getting them to rate it/answer a questionnaire,
• Create a 4 panel comic with one blank panel and ask a target audience to fill it in,
• Create story panels in grayscale to put emphasis on lighting and composition.

Secondary Research:

• Look at screenshots of visual novels and video games presenting choices, compare techniques and replicate,
• Read interactive stories and play interactive video games, as case studies, to analyse techniques used to pace story, present choices and how the choices affect the narrative.

Media and Processes:

• Traditional: Textual story, interactive comics, storyboards that fold out,
• Digital: Visual novels, flash games, 4 panel comics - fill in the blank panels.

Context:

• Recreate existing textual stories into interactive stories using what-if scenarios.

Study Task 5 - Practical Approaches

I intend to investigate how interactive stories present choices, and whether these choices make the story experience better than traditional storytelling. I aim to explore how the effects of the illusion of choice on readers, and how they make moral and ethical choices. I also intend to look at interactive storytelling more practically; how they are paced and presented. Storyboarding techniques that can be adapted to help with composition of visual storytelling (graphic novels, comics, visual novels, video games). This relates to my research since it helps me refine the choices I present in the interactive stories I make and learning the rules means I can understand and adapt with the medium.

I plan to create a narrative and present it as both a traditional linear story and as an interactive story too. I will also make a variant of this story where all there are multiple choices but they all ultimately lead to the same ending and compare it. I also plan to comapre different mediums of interactive storytelling, exploring both traditional mediums like text and comics and digital mediums like visual novels and maybe a simple, experimental video game. To rate the effectiveness I could present questionnaires and polls to an audience. The end product could be an interactive video game/visual novel or an interactive comic/novel.

Study Task 4 - Introduction

I first wrote brief overview of my proposed research topic, "Can interactive story-telling efficiently tell astory?":

I plan to explore interactive storytelling and how it conveys a story and how this different form of delivery makes or breaks a story. I plan to look at the one of the main key mechanics of interactive storytelling - choice. I intend to explore the value of giving readers a choice, or at least the illusion of choice and how this affects the overarching story experience. Some other mechanics I will look at are composition, pacing and ethics/morals. I aim to look at a multitude of interactive story templates and mediums; visual novels, ‘Choose-your-adventure’ books, interactive comics and video games are a few mediums I plan to recreate short stories in. I will recreate the same story in these mediums and plain text as a control to experiment with which works best. My final product could be an interactive story told using many mediums.

I then rewrote it into an introduction/summary for this project:

Ever since early-man gathered round a fire to tell stories of harrowing experiences and thrilling wonders, storytelling has evolved exponentially. It has, in essence, become an art form in itself. Story is an age-old, generally recognized key factor of narrative-driven animation and has the ability to make or break an animation. That said, there are still innovations happening in story, literature and animation. One such modern development of storytelling is the ability to give the reader limited control over the direction of the narrative. It is a storytelling technique that the reader can interact with. Since the first ‘Choose-your-own-adventure’ book in 1976 by Edward Packard, interactive stories have been adapted to fit modern formats.

Interactive storytelling can take on a range of media and formats such as text-based ‘Choose-your-adventure’, visual novels, interactive comics, and choice-driven, point-and-click video games. Over the past few years, it’s popularity has grown but traditional narrative still remain mainstream. Is interactive storytelling a viable competitor to traditional storytelling? To what extent does interactive storytelling tell a story efficiently? This project aims to explore the various methods of presenting an interactive story and how they are different, for better or worse, compared to traditional storytelling.

One of the main mechanics looked at is the presentation of choice, or the illusion of choice. The value of giving readers a choice will be assessed for how much it contributed to making a narrative immersive, interesting and memorable. The moral and ethical aspect of choices too will be explored by use of prototyped interactive stories that will act as polls. The final outcome of the project would be a polished narrative told in different interactive mediums, to gauge which works best and why.

This then continues on to triangulate my finding on the aspect of choice in interactive storytelling.

Study Task 3 - Image and Theory

Suggestions from peer feedback:

• Primary research:
• Make my own story:
• Ask participants to write/draw the missing paragraphs/panels of a short story/comic,
• Questionnaire
• "Did you think your choice mattered?"
• "Which version (interactive or linear) did you enjoy more?"
• Rate out of 10
• Instagram poll

• Secondary Research:
• Comic composition
• Examples:
• Telltale Games
• David Cage
• Until Dawn
• Screenshots
• Media:
• Virtual novels
• Play interactive video games
• Read comics
• Recreate existing stories with 'what-if' scenarios

Choosing a Proto-question

I narrowed down my interests into two topics:

• interactive storytelling
• Shape dynamics in character design

I ended up choosing interactive storytelling as it was closer to the overlying theme: technology.

After discussion, the refined question became:

"Can interactive story-telling tell a story efficiently?"

Animism and Sentient Spaces

I realized I actually use animism a lot in my previous animations:

(Example of an animation i made the previous year that experimented with animism)

This time I wanted to blur the line between sentient and non-sentient even further so I chose not to give Talko eyes at all:

The idea of sentient spaces was slightly confusing to me, are they alive or not? and if so are they capable of sentient thought? In the end, I chose to make the space harmonious with the character, emphasing and exaggerating its actions (like the emotion garden in Coraline):

Study Task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts

More than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional FormBarry Atkins (2003)

Concepts
Computer games are a significant form of storytelling, and are different from novels, plays and films.

Key Quotes/Key Points
“If the computer game is another form of fiction, … , then it is different in more than mere technicalities of form from film, TV or prose fiction.”

“There is a presentation of chance over design”

Examples
"the digital Lara Croft is a digital actor"
(p. 31)

Real World Examples
Video games that offer choices/question morals;
Telltale games; Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead etc
Infamous
Mass Effects series
Life is Strange
Visual novels

Interactive Books;
Choose your Adventure books
Usborne Puzzle adventure books

How this is related to animation and my theme
Interactive storytelling in video games;
Could be future of storytelling?,
More effective that impersonal/detached/ non-linear storytelling?
Why it works; illusion of choice? replayability? moral exploration?

Study Task 1 - Initial Ideas

Highlighted are topics I'm particularly interested in

I am most interested in gaming and interactive storytelling, and immersive animation, since it has many aspects I could investigate:

• The future of immersive animation
• Technique for animating for video games 
• Presentation of interactive storytelling

I could also extend my results using polls, surveys and experiments

Visual Evaluation, Selection & Summary

Robots have always been hyped and glorified by pop culture over the years, be it time-travelling robot assassins, A.I. overlords or simple household assistants. But somehow, they have consistently remained as characters of interest in comics, novels, films and animation with a whole range of roles and archetypes. The visual journal aims to investigate how robots are represented in visual media, and how they appeal to their audience. It looks into both physical features and behavioural characteristics of robots, and how they are suited to their intended purposes. The works of Matt Groening in Futurama, and Andy Suriano in Samurai Jack are some notable examples where robots are cast as the deuteragonists, antagonists and even protagonists in some episodes of the show. It has also been stated by novel writers and animators alike, that great characters are key to great story-telling (Morris, 2013).

In conclusion, I believe the visual journal performs well, and does what it was meant to - breaking down the elements of appeal in all sorts of robots. I feel the progress in the journal is clear, in the sense that the drawings near the end are better looking in terms of appeal and purpose, and so, ultimately, I believe the research was successful. The practical survey distinctly stood out as something worked well, as its results had both unforeseen and obvious correlation. It could, however, be improved by asking more people, and asking them to draw a more specific type of robot. Also, the grouping and categorising might’ve been limited but it allowed for the groups in question to be analysed deeper. The theoretical research working to make the practical research was something I found interesting, especially its scientific aspects. I feel the next step to take to further this work would be how to efficiently break the rules of appeal, and to explore movement and gait of these robots.


5 things that worked well:

1. The practical survey was efficient in that it yielded obvious, yet interesting results.
2. The combining of robots to create multiple robots helped bring out positive and negative design aspects.
3. The flow of the journal shows improvement as design aspects become recognisable and are used.
4. The use of media, like tracing paper to analyse drawings and images while keeping them original so they can be viewed without bias.
5. The breaking down of artists' characters to analyse robot characteristics.

5 things that I would change:

1. I would ask the participants in the survey to draw different types of robots too, such as a fighting robot or an assistant robot. 
2. I would also try to survey more people in order to get more accurate results and a wider range of robots.
3. The section focusing on texture and materials could've explored more textures with secondary examples and references
4. I would separate the robots into more groups for purpose and explore them.
5. I would use more media to depict the robots, like paints, pen and digital instead of just markers.

5 things I want to further investigate:

1. I would take a historical approach to this and look at robots from the past, more specifically automata.
2. I would apply the same process and motive, but with monsters and fearsome beasts.
3. I would break the rules, essentially design robots that look friendly but act violently and vice versa.
4. I would also focus on the movement of the robot, more specifically it's gait.
5. I would look at how to create appealing robots that are plausible in real life.

Study Task 4 - Practical Research Statement

Context of Practice - Visual Journal Blogging

Initial Thoughts

My first look at robots in general made me realise that there are quite a few categories of robot. I divided them in terms of their appearance; cutesy and armoured.

I picked two prominent robot characters that were iconic during my childhood; Robotboy and XJ-9, and I noticed multiple similarities. Colour, shape, and function, and so to test this, I fused them together to see how different they would be. 

Primary Research - Practical Survey

To simply find out what the 'public' thinks of robots, I asked a few of my colleagues to draw what they a robot was.

A quote relevant to this seemed to predict what the results would be:

"When you ask most people what a robot is, they’re going to describe a humanoid robot. They’ll describe a person made out of metal. Which is essentially a mirror for humanity."

- Wilson, D. (2016)

 The results had lots of correlation:

One iconic type was the classic boxy type:

A lot of them are humanoid, even though real life robots are rarely so:

Some were either cutesy or bizarre (or both):

An interesting pose, that correlates between them, was the s-arm pose:

 Combat Robots

Pop culture simply loves the idea of robots fighting. They're dispensable, upgradable and have peak performance.

I particularly like the voxel art style of the video game, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone, especially in relation to the 'robot look' and I liked how Megaman was simplified in the pixel version so I fused them together in Autodesk Maya. 

Eyes as Indicators of Intent and Purpose

One of the primary purposes of robots, both in fiction and non-fiction, is companionship. They serve as trusty, know-it-all guides in many situations.

I chose to focus on their eyes, as robots have all sorts of interesting eyes. And as a companion, these robots must express themselves too, so I experiment with expressions using a single eye, it's position. Colour too conveys what type of robot it is.

However, this idea of eye colour can also be applied to fear inducing-robots. Red is usually associated with danger and death and so red eyes are used on robots meant to kill.

Analysis of shape and edges

Another pattern I noticed was the use of shape in respect to its purpose, more specifically whether the line was curved or straight. The works of Matt Groening in Futurama and Andy Suriano in Samurai Jack are prime examples of this.


Matt Groening uses sharp edges and straight lines to depict hostile, malevolent characters, such as Boxy (left) and Beelzebot (right).

 

And friendly, sensuous characters have plenty of curves like Hookerbot (left) and Monique (right)

While characters that have don't have one-track minds, or are neutral have a combination of curves and straight lines. (from left to right: Roberto, Bender, Hedonismbot)

 



Andy Suriano draws plenty of hostile robots for Samurai Jack, and he rarely draws shapes that have right angles. His robots also lack symmetry. This intentional flaw is iconic of the art style and makes the robots more tactile and gritty.

Peer Review 1

 

These reviews were used to highlight and select areas of interest that I then compiled in my Practical Research Statement.