Google’s Earth Studio gives concept artists and authors of transmedia stories, graphic novels, and illustrated books another tool for developing cityscapes. While the graphics are not photorealistic, the 3D graphics rendered in Earth Studio can be the starting point for image compositing. There are issues with the visual quality ofContinue Reading
When creating sci fi technologies, understanding the concept of competitive advantage is important. One of the big irritants for me are sci fi and fantasy visuals that include technology that looks “cool” but is totally useless or worse, a hinderance to the user. Competition is essentially a contest between two orContinue Reading
There are a few glitches in the rendering of these images, but overall the quality of the images is quite good. The flicker-free quality of the animations is particularly significant.Continue Reading
I continue to be amazed at the technology that is being developed for visual storytelling. The latest surprise is EbSynth. It makes the job of converting video into painting-like animations. The best part…it’s free! I’ll post some video examples that I did in an afternoon while learning the software. ThisContinue Reading
Open domain, Creative Commons, and stock photographs are a great resource for transmedia creators. Millions of photos can be downloaded and used in videos, motion graphics, and comics. Using the photographs as they are will work for some photo comics, but other visual styles can be created using filters toContinue Reading
Over the past few months I’ve been taking an in-depth look at visual storytelling using both still and moving images. I recently ran across an absolutely wonderful example of storytelling that uses many of the basic principles of visual storytelling. Davy and Kristin McGuire use intricate paper sets, sophisticated lighting techniques,Continue Reading
While not technically a transmedia story — defined as one or more related stories told across two or more forms of media — a poem by Langston Hughes and graphics by Afua Richardson are a powerful example of the impact of integrating text, images, and music. Hughes’ poem The NegroContinue Reading
A major challenge facing the transmedia narrative designer is integrating multiple media into an effective story. Particularly important is ensuring the visual design fits with and enhances the story structure, ensuring a coherent and cohesive narrative. Films, comics/graphic novels, photo essays, and other visual forms of communication can all provideContinue Reading
3D computer graphics give you a lot of flexibility when working with transmedia story scenes. In the first pair of images (Figure 1) taken from the same 3D scene, small changes in facial expressions and camera position can result in an image that tells a very different story. A minorContinue Reading
The interplay between text, images, audio, and video are at the heart of transmedia storytelling. It is this interplay that gives transmedia narratives the potential to create narrative experiences that engage audiences across multiple dimensions. Working with multiple media to ensure that they don’t “step” on each other and theContinue Reading