Google’s Earth Studio Makes Cityscapes Easy
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
Worldbuilding & Transmedia Stories – Genre
When creating storyworlds, one of the early steps in the process should be selecting the storyworld’s genre. Genre will play an important role in designing settings, characters, significant objects, themes, plot points, and all of the other aspects of the storyworld and the stories that emerge from it. Genre alsoContinue Reading
A Writer’s Guide to Creating Sci Fi Technology – Part 2
Science and technology are a defining element of science fiction. Getting them right is critical to the credibility of the story and having readers or viewers willingly suspend their disbelief. As I noted in the first part of this series of posts, the Creator of a storyworld is free to makeContinue Reading
Model of Storyworlds, Stories, and Participant Interactions
Understanding the relationships between various elements of a transmedia narrative can sometimes be obscured by the sheer number of elements — characters, significant objects, settings, events, the storyworld, one or more stories, and multiple forms of media. This model is based on some sketches I put together a while backContinue Reading
MOOCs, Transmedia & Learning
Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a frenzy of hype focused on massively open online courses (MOOCs). Companies like Coursera, Udacity, and edX promised to revolutionize education; the New York Times declared 2012 to be “The Year of the MOOCs”. Venture capitalists rushed to pour millions into aContinue Reading
Transmedia, 3D Modelling & Still Photography Techniques – Part 1
The application of visual storytelling techniques to transmedia narratives intrigues me. I see a lot of similarities — although there are a enough differences that some adaptation is required. It’s been a lot of years since my last film camera bit the dust. It was a faithful old Canon thatContinue Reading
Transmedia Storytelling & 3D Graphics: Testing a Rendering Engine
3D computer graphics can add a lot to transmedia storytelling. While the professional grade applications like Autodesk’s Maya are expensive and have a steep learning curve, some of today’s 3D modelling software is inexpensive or free and can produce high quality images that could find a place in a transmediaContinue Reading
Don’t Mistake Interaction for Engagement
A common mistake when designing transmedia projects is to use the concepts of “engagement” and “interaction” interchangeably. While they are interrelated, audience engagement and user interaction are distinctly different. This distinction is based on the different mental processes used when reading and navigating a transmedia story. These processes are: Reading modeContinue Reading
Story + Engagement + Interaction = User Experience
At the heart of a successful transmedia story is a powerful user experience created by integrating a compelling story with techniques that engage the user emotionally and intellectually and allow easy user interaction with all of media elements of the story. The trick is to start with the audience andContinue Reading