Month: November 2016

Each character has a number of poses to show the emotions of what they are saying. As the dialogue is merely written, it is not shown how the characters are saying them. The poses show the user the way the character is feeling, and how they are interacting with the user’s character.  As the first-person character does not have an avatar, then the user can put there own emotions into the role and feel a closer connection to the story, as they are not being told how to feel.

  

 

The use of a number of poses also allows the characters to interact with different objects. A character can be shown to be interacting with an object in a number of different ways, in the same way that they show emotion. Although the actions do not happen in real time, the user will still get a feel for the scene due to the images of the characters interactions with the different objects.

Another way of conveying emotions I considered was to use voice lines. By having the dialogue spoken, the emotions and context can be heard within the voice of the characters. However, this would contrast against the written word of the user’s character, as if this role was spoken, it would lower the user’s sense of immersion as it would not be there voice speaking. A way of doing this would be to have key phrases said by each of the characters to further convey their emotions and their characters to the user. This would further connect the user to the other characters, whilst not affecting there immersion with their own character.

 

To create the backgrounds for the story piece, I went to different places in the local area in order to take pictures to use in the story. As the characters are in a live action style, the backgrounds need to be in the same style, else there will be too much of a contrast between the two.

The first place I went to get pictures was the Usher Gallery. There collection of artwork and sculptures created an ideal background from the main galleries of the story location. The second location was the Collection. Although there was an ideal gallery of paintings to create the backgrounds from, no photography was allowed, and thus it could not be used in my piece.

The third place that I went to was The Little Red Gallery. This small art gallery had a large number of rooms, each filled with artwork. The difference in the style of these rooms allows for the gallery to be used as a number of different locations, without looking like the same place. The connecting corridors also feature walls adorned with paintings, allowing them to be used as the connecting locations. Between the two galleries, the backgrounds for the story can be created.

The pictures taken will be edited in Prisma, the same way as the characters are. Although each of the characters and the backgrounds will have a different filter, their will be a universal style between all the images that links them together. The backgrounds will all have the same style in order to uniform them has one location. However, at this time, only a section of the final product is being made. For the final product, each floor of the building will have its own art style. This will allow the user to have an instant visual cue of the progression of the story. The style and location will act as another character to the story, as they will both be an element that will be vital to the telling and progression of the story.

In order to get the characters in multiple poses, photos of models posing in the different styles were taken. These were taken by a photography student in order to have the photos come out at the best quality. These photos were taken on a bright background in order to make it easier to remove the background from the subject.

After the all the pictures were taken, the background was removed from the character itself. The character was then put onto a square, plain white background. This new picture was then transferred to a different device and run through Prisma.

  

Prisma is an app that allows for different filters to be applied to photographs. My previous experience with this app made it a forefront in the idea of adding filters to the pictures. The real-life style would not lend itself to the style of story telling I wish to create, and thus filters to the pictures will create a more animate feel to the characters and the environments. The simplicity of the app to use and consistency of the filters allowed me to apply the same style to all of the different character poses with both speed and ease.

Each character is done in a unique filter in order to give each character there own unique feel. This also allows each character to stand out from one another, and gives them more personality in their personal styles.

Once the timeline was laid out, a full version of the script was written out scene by scene. Each scene was written out in the form of a script. The characters were labelled under their as apposed to their name, allowing me to keep track of where each of the roles are in the course of the story. With each line of the dialogue, the pose that the character will be in has been written in brackets. This shows the change in each character at different points of the story, and allows for the changes to be plotted during the editing phases easily.

At the end of each scene, links to the next scene are plotted below. These will be featured in the story, delivered to the user from the ‘Ghost’ character. These will link to the different parts of the script in the route of the timeline. If a user reaches a ‘bad’ ending, then they will be given the choice to make the other choice. These moments have been scripted to have the ‘Ghost’ character deliver the message about the choice being wrong. This shows awareness of the bad choice, but still gives the user the chance to continue on with the story.

Due to the presence of bad choices, the story has to connected through the different parts. If something is revealed in a bad ending, it needs to also be revealed in a good ending. If this does not happen, then the user will have more information than the characters during the rest of the story. This could not only influence further decisions, but result in later story revelations being revealed too early, and thus loosing there impact to the user. Story details revealed in bad endings need to then appear soon in good endings, in order to keep the story interesting to the user.

For my project, I devised a timeline to track the layout of events. This timeline follows the forms previously discussed in this blog, but combines them in order to create a diverse route through the storyline, whilst still arriving at a common goal.

By choosing certain options after each story, the user processes to a different bulb;e. The bubbles follow the path to either a red X, marking a bad ending; or the final bubble, which leads forward to another part of the story. If the user reaches an ending marked by a red X, they can go and select another option from the previous branch, where the incorrect option was selected.

In one brach, there is also a hidden option. The hidden option will reveal more of the story, but will not progress though the story arc. It will create an additional dialogue, but once completed, it will take the user back to where they left off.