Week-3

The narratives

There are three different narratives which are to be mended into one single story. 1-Foundational myth, 2-a development myth and 3-is a legend that currently feels quite disconnected from the other two narratives. A primary portion of the whole project is pop-ups and interaction design and keeping that in mind, I went ahead with narrative 1 and 2 and mended them together with the help of chatGPT. I will be prototyping/experimenting with these narratives and if there is still some space, I will try to mend the third narrative. With the aid of ChatGPT, I was able to convert two different narratives into one single narrative.

Storyboaring with visual style adaptation

This time while storyboarding, I tried to adapt the visual style. In the first frame (fig), I actually began with giving a lot of detail as the visual style is detail oriented however in order to first just have a storyboard I went ahead with little detail first and then iterated the visuals. What I learned while sketching the storyboard is that it has a lot of common elements and it would be good to first create digital assets and then iterate them.

The plan was to have interactivity on the book trigger activity on the connected screen however I still have one block in mind: how would the content change as the user interacting with the book turns over to the next page? I remembered a project from previous year’s batch (AY23-24) by Jocelyn Andrea Firmansyah. Her project included page-flip detection that changed activity on the screen. I didn’t know what tools were used to do this so I asked chatGPT (fig)

Analysing how to establish interactivity in a book

The plan was to have interactivity on the book trigger activity on the connected screen however I still have one block in mind: how would the content change as the user interacting with the book turns over to the next page? I remembered a project from previous year’s batch (AY23-24) by Jocelyn Andrea Firmansyah. Her project included page-flip detection that changed activity on the screen. I didn’t know what tools were used to do this so I asked chatGPT (fig)

Current thoughts - I am sort of beginning to feel a little stuck. I don’t know what to do next or where to iterate my work to. It makes me feel a little anxious and worried because I want to have a prototype by week - 4 along with a final dissertation draft. However, feeling a bit lost has slowed down the progress.

The Literature Review

Proceeding further with the studio work, it has started to feel that the concept of ‘symbolism is seeming a bit irrelevant. And realising that the primary focus of the project is the interactive book, I wanted to research further and develop my concepts. While browsing for related concepts, I came across ‘Two’ by Brenda Laurel where she shares her view on interactive digital narratives. Although, in my project it is not the narratives that are interactive but the ‘narrating’ part that is interactive. But similar to the book ‘Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative’ by Hartmut Koenitz, I wondered if the reading I found recently could deepen my understanding of interactivity.

Two by Brenda Laurel - This book discusses interactive storytelling in context of theatre.

Consultations and feedback

Today’s consultation was a bit tough but an eye-opener. It seems that I am complicating the approach towards building an interactive storybook and also, currently going very slow. I lack the knowledge and practice required to use such advanced tools and I could learn them, however I also have to consider the deadlines and the time it takes to learn these things. Most importantly I have to learn to manage my expectations which is something I seem to repeatedly struggle with.

Currently I am feeling stuck. I am unable to envision where my work is heading, I am unable to think about even the next step to take. During the consultations, Andreas guided me by assigning tasks. By next week, I had to - have the narratives and the storyboard ready, and a concept plan for interaction design on chosen parts of the storyboard. Additionally, at Monday's lab workshop, we planned to experiment with copper tape in order to craft a button.