The use of 3D computer graphics may be any approach worth considering for transmedia projects that can’t use hand drawn illustrations or live actors for artistic, budgetary, or other reasons. I’ve been doing a series of tests over the past couple of months to see how I might be able to use CG images for the characters in a short transmedia story I’m experimenting with.
Being able to build a cast of characters complete with pictures is an interesting new dimension in the writing process. The ability to quickly place these characters in a variety of settings by simply laying their pictures on an image of a specific location is a lot of fun and seems to help kick the creative process into gear when I’m stuck on something.
Being able to quickly populate a storyworld in which images of the “cast” are readily available may be of great benefit to teams of creators. The beauty of 3D CG characters is that they can be easily modified as needed. With the male character shown in this post, for example, I found that there was something that just didn’t look right in the first couple of versions. When I finally put my finger on what was bothering me, it only took and hour or so to tweak the hair and facial features to produce something I was more comfortable with.
There are still a lot of questions to be answered about the most effective ways to use CG images (see my comments from earlier this week), but from my perspective they are yet another technique that can be used to enhance our storytelling.