Project 2 Interactive novel
This term we have been given the task to come up with an interactive narrative story.
This story can either be an adapted existing story tale or an original work. I will do my interactive story in 2D just like a comic. I feel that I will work on a black and white novel similar to either Sin City or Batman Black & White, but I will have to go into further research to discover what would work best with my story.
My first thing to do is to think of an idea. I did a quick brainstorm and came up with a few ideas and where they are based on.
· A pursuit of some sort, where some young girl is being chased by men.
(The matrix, Mirrors Edge)
· Car chase, where a gang is running from the police.
(GTA IV, Point Break, Italian Job)
· Sneak mission, agent is trying to infiltrate a warehouse filled with criminals.
(James Bond, MGS, Max Payne)
· A race, possibly a professional car race, horse race (grand national or long distance racing) or a teenage race.
(Fast & Furious, NFS, Hidalgo, NASCA)
· Dog fights, pilots in enemy airspace get attacked.
(Top Gun, Stealth, Pearl Harbour)
· Monster encounter, young girl lost and is being hunted down by a creature.
(The village)
· War story, soldier in a battle gets captured and must escape.
(The Great Escape)
Afterwards I thought that I should look at original ideas and stories that already are well known that many people to this day are familiar with.
· Jack and the beanstalk
· Little Red Riding Hood
· Three Billy goats gruff
· The Three Little Pigs
· Hansel and Gretel
· Cinderella
· Little Mermaid
· The Boy who Cried wolf
When looking at these classic stories I remembered also being told the Myths and Legends stories, as I was more interested in Greek Mythology and history as a young child.
· Iris and Osiris (Greek)
· The Achilles Heel (Greek)
· Pandora’s Box (Greek)
· The Gorgon’s Head (Greek)
· Hercules (Greek)
· Orpheus in the Underworld (Greek)
· The Eye of the Cyclops (Greek)
· The Minotaur (Greek)
· The Dragon and Saint George (English)
· The Grendel (Anglo-Saxon)
· The Stolen Hammer of Thor (Norse)
I finally looked at horror tales that used to keep myself and my brother entertained.
· Dracula
· The Curse of the Mummy
· The Body Snatchers
· The Barbarous Barber
· The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
· The Hound of the Baskervilles
Now that I have gone through these stories and fairytales I have decided that I will do my interactive narrative story on an existing fairytale. This is because I feel that many people enjoy reading them and even to this day children are being told them. Another reason for doing it based on an existing story is because many stories now are based from the original fairytales.
However the only problem with original fairytales is that everyone knows the ending, so what is to stop the audience from just advancing through the story as the way it is known? Therefore I am going to have to twist the plot or create an alternative ending.
Out of these fairytales I will choose a few favourites and ask to see which people would rather read as an interactive comic. These are my favourites.
· Jack and the Beanstalk
· Hansel and Gretel
· The Boy who cried Wolf
· Pandora’s Box
· Theseus and the Minotaur
Once I had these ideas down I went back and did a recap on what the actual narrative of the story was. Another thing that most of these fairytales have in common is that they all contain morals behind the plot. For example the boy who cried wolf is ‘to not tell lies’ and Pandora’s Box is ‘curiosity killed the cat.’
Theseus and the Minotaur – Pasiphae, wife of King Minos of Crete, had several children before the Minotaur. The eldest of these, Androgeus, set sail for Athens to take part in the Pan-Athenian games which were held there every five years. Being strong and skillful, he did very well, winning some events outright. He soon became a crowd favorite, much to the resentment of the Pallantides and they assassinated him, incurring the wrath of Minos.
When King Minos had heard of what befell his son, he ordered the Cretan fleet to set sail for Athens. Minos asked Aegeus for his son's assassins, and if they were to be handed to him, the town would be spared. However, not knowing who they were, King Aegeus surrendered the whole town to Minos' mercy. His retribution was that, at the end of every Great Year (seven solar years), the seven most courageous youths and the seven most beautiful maidens were to board a boat and be sent as tribute to Crete, never to be seen again.
In another version, King Minos of Crete had waged war with the Athenians and was successful. He then demanded that, at nine-year intervals, seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls were to be sent to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster that lived in the Labyrinth created by Daedalus.
After decapitating the beast, Theseus used the string to escape the Labyrinth and managed to escape with all of the young Athenians and Ariadne as well as her younger sister Phaedra. Then he and the rest of the crew fell asleep on the beach. They left early the next morning, but Theseus forgot Ariadne and Phaedra on the beach. Stricken with distress, Theseus forgot to put up the white sails instead of the black ones, so the king committed suicide. Dionysus later saw Ariadne crying out for Theseus and took pity on her and married her.
The Boy who cried Wolf – The Tale is about a shepherd boy who constantly tricks the villagers into thinking that a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep. But when an actual wolf does appear the villagers do not believe him and his flock is destroyed. The moral at the end of this story shows that liars are not rewarded even when they do tell the truth.
Jack and the Beanstalk - Jack is a young lad living with his widowed mother. Their only means of income is a cow. When this cow stops giving milk one morning, Jack is sent to the market to sell it. On the way to the market he meets an old man who offers to give him "magic" beans in exchange for the cow.
Jack takes the beans but when he arrives home with no money, his mother gets angry and throws the beans out the window and sends Jack to bed without supper.
As Jack sleeps, the beans grow into a gigantic beanstalk. Jack climbs the bean stalk and arrives in a land high up in the sky where he follows a road to a house, which is the home of an ogre. He enters the house and asks the ogre's wife for food. She gives him food, but the ogre returns and senses that a human is nearby:
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman?
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
However, Jack is hidden by the ogre's wife and overhears the ogre counting his money. Jack steals a bag of gold coins as he makes his escape down the beanstalk. Jack repeats his journey up the beanstalk two more times, each time he is helped by the increasingly suspicious wife of the ogre and narrowly escapes with one of the ogre's treasures. The second time he steals a hen which laid golden eggs and the third time a magical harp that played by itself. This time he is almost caught by the ogre who follows him down the beanstalk. Jack calls his mother for an axe and chops the beanstalk down, killing the ogre. The end of the story has Jack and his mother living happily ever after with their new riches.
The next day, the family walk deep into the woods and Hansel lays a trail of white pebbles. After their parents abandon them, the children wait for the moon to rise and illuminate the pebbles. They return home safely, much to their stepmother's horror. Once again provisions become scarce and the stepmother angrily orders her husband to take the children further into the woods and leave them there to die. Hansel and Gretel attempt to gather more pebbles, but find the doors locked and find it impossible to escape.
The following morning, the family treks into the woods. Hansel takes a slice of bread and leaves a trail of bread crumbs for them to follow home. However, after they are once again abandoned, they find that the birds have eaten the crumbs and they are lost in the woods. After days of wandering, they follow a beautiful white bird to a clearing in the woods, and discover a cottage built of gingerbread and cakes with window panes of clear sugar. Hungry and tired, the children begin to eat the rooftop of the candy house, when the door opens and a "very old woman" emerges and lures the children inside, with the promise of soft beds and delicious food. Their hostess is a "wicked witch" who waylays children to cook and eat them.
The next morning, the witch locks Hansel in an iron cage in the garden and forces Gretel into becoming a slave. The witch feeds Hansel regularly to fatten him up, but Hansel cleverly offers a bone he found in the cage (presumably a bone from the witch's previous captive) and the witch feels it, thinking it to be his finger. Due to her blindness, she is fooled into thinking Hansel is still too thin to eat. After weeks of this, the witch grows impatient and decides to eat Hansel, "be he fat or lean."
She prepares the oven for Hansel, but decides she is hungry enough to eat Gretel, too. She coaxes Gretel to the open oven and prods her to lean over in front of it to see if the fire is hot enough. Gretel, sensing the witch's intent, pretends she does not understand what she means. Infuriated, the witch demonstrates, and Gretel instantly shoves the witch into the oven, slams and bolts the door shut, leaving "The ungodly witch to be burned to ashes", the witch screaming in pain until she dies. Gretel frees Hansel from the cage and the pair discovers a vast treasure and precious stones. Putting the jewels into their clothing, the children set off for home. A swan ferries them across an expanse of water and at home they find only their father; his wife has died from unknown cause. The father has spent all his days lamenting the loss of his children, and is delighted to see them safe and sound. With the witch's wealth, they all live happily ever after.
Pandora’s Box - In classic Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create her, so he did—using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many talents: Aphrodite gave her beauty; Apollo gave music and Hermes, persuasion. The gods also gave her the gift of curiosity. When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. With her, Pandora was given a beautiful jar which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her curiosity given to her by the gods, Pandora opened the jar, and all evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing that lay at the bottom, which was Hope. Pandora was deeply saddened by what she had done, and was afraid that she would have to face Zeus' wrath, since she had failed her duty; however, Zeus did not punish her, because he knew this would happen.
Joseph Campbell – Once I looked at the basic stories that have inspired me I spoke to Maire-Claire our course leader and she advised me to have a look at Campbell as he wrote the book ‘The Hero with a thousand faces’ he was a strong believer in the unity of human consciousness and its poetic expression through mythology, through the monomyth concept Campbell expressed the idea that the whole of the human race could be seen as reciting a single story of great spiritual importance.
With his book ‘The hero with a thousand faces’ Campbell wanted to show the resemblance between Eastern and Western cultures. He talks about when time evolves, the story gets broken down into local forms, taking on different guises (masks), depending on the necessities and social structure of the culture that interprets it. Its ultimate meaning relates to humanity's search for the same basic, unknown force from which everything came, within which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return and is considered to be "unknowable" because it existed before words and knowledge. He also speaks about how the story has a known form/structure which can be classified into the various stages of a hero's adventures like the Call to Adventure, Receiving Supernatural Aid, Meeting with the Goddess/Atonement with the Father and Return.
George Lucas was one of the very first film makers to be influenced by Campbell’s theory when creating the story of Star Wars in 1977, George explained that the story was shaped by ideas from Campbell’s book ‘The Hero with a thousand faces.’ The linkage between Star Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.
Daedalus requires some building materials, and you must travel to different islands to recover them. Once you have gotten all the materials Daedalus needs, you must trap the Minotaur in the labyrinth.
Once you have completed your quest, you are awarded the hero power of strength. Unfortunately, Hades makes you answer some questions about the gods first. But if you answer his questions correctly, you are awarded your power.
Your second quest is to bring a message to Helen of Troy from her rightful husband, King Priam. You must find the entrance to the labyrinth and make your way through it to the city of Troy. Then, you must find a way to get the message to her. Once she receives the message, you must find a way to get out, as the Greek bombardment of the city collapses the catacombs.
For the second mission, you are rewarded the Hero power of stealth, and once more you must answer Hades questions before you can continue.
Your third mission is to help Perseus gain the sword, shield, magic bag, sandals and helmet he needs to slay the medusa. Athena will give you the first two items at her temple in Seriphos. You must travel to Medusa Isle and trick the fates into telling you where the other items lie.
Once you have all the items, you must guide Perseus as he faces down the Medusa. He must keep in back of her so that she does not turn him to stone, and keep away from the snakes on the floor. You must get close enough for him to kill her and chop her head off.
After this mission you get the power of Wisdom. Once more, you must answer Hades questions. But this time, when you return to Phil's Island, Phil is gone, and Hades has him. It's up to you to get him back.
You'll have to face off against the Cyclops, Argus, the Hundred-headed monster, and Fear and Panic to rescue Phil. You must also use your hero powers to defeat these monsters and win your way through to the end.
This game has three difficulty levels, which can be set at any time in the story.
Another game that I used to play when younger was Disney’s Villains Revenge. The game's story is set in the bedroom of the player, presumably a child. Jiminy Cricket is the guardian of a book in the player's room which features several stories with happy endings. However, the book's happy ending pages are ripped out by a very bored Jiminey Cricket, who has read them so often that they put him to sleep. As a game, he asks the player to put them back where they belong, when suddenly the book is possessed by the spirits of several Disney Villains, namely Captain Hook from Peter Pan; The Witch (Evil Queen Grimhilde) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and the Ringmaster from Dumbo, who alter the stories to their advantage, without the presence of happy endings. The Blue Fairy appears and explains that because stories live on in the hearts of readers, removing the happy endigs left the stories at their climax, with the heroes in peril and the villains in control. Jiminy and the player venture into the worlds of the stories to correct the happy endings.
I went around and asked about the idea of a interactive fairytale and out of those few favourites many suggested that their favourite would be Hansel and Gretel. So now I will write a basic first draft script so that I can at least visualize and later come up with a simple storyboard.
My first script for Hansel and Gretel
Opening scene of a small, German style, village. Camera pans around looking at the village finally to focus on Hansel and Gretel’s house. Here we see a tiny house barely able to fit a family. The father is outside with his axe and the children running around in the garden.
Stepmother – “Hansel!! Gretel!! Dinner!!”
Hansel and Gretel – (Together) “Coming!!”
Children run inside the house and burst into the kitchen gorging themselves with what very little food they have. The Stepother and the Father have a quiet word in the other room, unaware the children have finished eating and can hear every word they are saying.
Stepmother – (Barked Order) “We must get rid of those kids!”
Father – (Reluctant reply) “Fine. I will leave them in the woods tomorrow.”
Later that evening Hansel sneaks out while the parents are sleeping and goes around collecting as many white pebbles as he can possibly carry. Then he returns home.
Morning arrives and the family go out for a walk into the forest. Along the way Hansel is placing down his white pebbles that he has collected. The family stop and the parents leave Hansel and Gretel to fend for themselves.
Hansel and Gretel wait until night so that the moon illuminates the pebbles, lighting the way home. The children make their way home, to the shock of their Stepmother.
The Stepmother then orders the father to take the children deeper into the forest so that they die.
Stepmother – (Anger) “Take those rats back into the forest to die!”
Hansel tries to find a way out to look for more pebbles but this time the Stepmother has locked all the doors and windows.
The following morning the family go out for a walk, this time Hansel takes a small loaf of bread to break up into bread crumbs, creating a trail home. Once they have been deserted in the forest yet again, they discover that the bread crumbs have been eaten by the birds and they are now lost in the woods.
After days of wandering the woods they pair follow a pure white bird into a clearing part of the woods. Where they discover a beautiful cottage made out of gingerbread and cakes, with sugar cane windows. Hungry and tired Hansel and Gretel begin eating the roof of the gingerbread house, when suddenly a withered old lady opens the front door and promises the children of food and a bed to sleep in.
Old lady – (Kind) “Come inside children. There is more where that came from”
Unfortunately this lady is a witch who eats children. The next morning the Witch has locked up Hansel in an iron cage outside, while Gretel has become her slave.
The Witch regularly feeds Hansel to fatten him up, except Hansel cunningly offers the Witch a bone, from a previous unfortunate child, and the Witch believes that to be his finger, as she is blind.
Eventually the Witch gets impatient and no longer cares as to whether Hansel is fat enough to eat.
Witch – (Impatience) “I will eat you whether you be fat or not!”
She orders Gretel to make the fire hot enough so she can eat them both. But Gretel fools the Witch into thinking she doesn’t understand the Witch gets close to the fire and shows her what to do. Gretel then immediately pushes the Witch into the fire and closing the oven door on her. The Witch then burns to death allowing Gretel to free Hansel and the pair discover a vast treasure of jewels. The two of them escape the gingerbread house. They finally return home to their father, who is ecstatic to see them. The Stepmother has died from some random cause and they lived happily ever after.
The End.
Now that I have come up with my first basic script for my story I now feel that I have to add or change some plots in the story to make it more interactive. I need to add certain elements into this story that will make it far more interesting for the person who is interacting with this story.
Here are a few ideas that could make it more interactive;
· When the family go into the woods for the first time the player must click on certain places of the screen to place down the pebbles and the bread crumbs. This way the player has a choice to put them down.
· When the children are lost in the woods for the second time the player could make decisions into what route to try and find a way out of the woods or they have to click on the route that has the white bird over the top.
· Once captured by the Witch the player could choose to be either Hansel or Gretel and depending on their choice leads to a different plot point. Example if the player chose to be Hansel you would have to grab the bone and make the Witch believe you were too skinny to eat and try to find a way out of the cage.
· With regards to the iron cage that holds Hansel maybe there is a combination lock on it and the player has to figure out what the code is by looking around the gingerbread house for clues.
· As Gretel you might have to find the correct key to unlock the iron cage holding her brother, then when it comes to the Witch the player must try and get her close enough to the fire for Gretel to push her in.
· Once the player has escaped the cage they then have to escape the house without waking the blind witch. She could possibly have a dungeon underneath the gingerbread house and you have to solve questions to advance through the tunnels. Example, What colour were the candy canes outside? Or how many candles were inside the house?
· Risk and reward effect. If the player succeeds then obviously they complete the story but if they fail the player will have to watch the Witch capture or eat Hansel and Gretel. This way the player has to be careful but they do get a reward.
· Possible checkpoints similar to modern games. This way the player will not become frustrated in failure and it will not slow the pace down of the story.
After discussing with a few colleges and Nigel, our project leader, they gave me some ideas about how to punish the audience for choosing the original path of the story since I worried about the audience going straight for the main plot of a well-known fairy tale. Therefore I looked at the idea of being possessed by spirits and demons, something that I got inspired by from watching films such as Paranormal activity and Insidious.
This idea was inspired by the film Insidious. The ending of Insidious is about a family of a young boy named Dalton who gets taken into the spirit world by a demon. Dalton’s father Josh pursues him into the spirit world to save his soul, once he rescues his son they both escape the spirit world however only his son is his normal self. A mystic woman named Elise, who can see spirit beings, takes a photo of Josh. Josh attacks and kills Elise for taking this picture. The audience then see a flash back of the build-up for this incident, where Elise notices Josh’s hand is old and pale. She then takes the picture and instead of seeing Josh standing there it is an old demonic lady.
Now that I have got my narrative sorted out I am now going to need to look at existing comics and graphic novels to get an insight on what works well, such as; the art style, colour, text and imaging.
To begin with I looked at iconic comic book characters such as; Spiderman, Batman and Superman. These 3 main characters are possibly the most well known and most successful in the comic world, they became so popular that all 3 became successful in television and film.
Spiderman - Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962). Lee and Ditko conceived of the character as an orphan being raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and as a teenager, having to deal with the normal struggles of adolescence in addition to those of a costumed crime fighter. Spider-Man's creators gave him super strength and agility, the ability to cling to most surfaces, shoot spider-webs using devices of his own invention which he
When Spider-Man first appeared in the early 1960s, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring Peter Parker, a teenage high school student and person behind Spider-Man's secret identity to whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate. Unlike previous teen heroes such as Bucky and Robin, Spider-Man did not benefit from being the protégé of any adult mentors like Captain America and Batman, and thus had to learn for himself that "with great power there must also come great responsibility"—a line included in a text box in the final panel of the first Spider-Man story, but later retroactively attributed to his guardian, the late Uncle Ben.
Spider-Man is one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes. As Marvel's flagship character and company mascot, he has appeared in many forms of media, including several animated and live-action television shows, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and a series of films starring Tobey Maguire as the "friendly neighborhood" hero in the first three movies. Andrew Garfield will take over the role of Spider-Man in a planned reboot of the films. Reeve Carney stars as Spider-Man in the 2010 Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Spider-Man placed 3rd on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time in 2011
In the original version of the story and the vast majority of retellings, Batman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne, an American millionaire (later billionaire) playboy, industrialist, and philanthropist. Having witnessed the murder of his parents as a child, he swore revenge on criminals, an oath tempered with the greater ideal of justice. Wayne trains himself both physically and intellectually and dons a bat-themed costume in order to fight crime. Batman operates in the fictional American Gotham City, assisted by various supporting characters including his crime-fighting partner, Robin, his butler Alfred Pennyworth, the police commissioner Jim Gordon, and occasionally the heroine Batgirl. He fights an assortment of villains such as the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess any superpowers; he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, martial arts skills, an indomitable will, fear, and intimidation in his continuous war on crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman#Creation
When we got back to university after Christmas, Nigel gave us a quick background lecture on Comics and films to help us get an insight on how to view a sequence of scenes. He began by introducing to us the Kuleshov effect.
The Kuleshov effect was thought up by a Russian film maker around the 1920’s who got hold of, at the time, a very famous Russian actor who had very good facial expressions. Due to the fact that back then there was no sound all the audience had to go by was the actors expressions, so what he did was get the actor to do different facial expressions then edit the expressions by inserting different images after each expression. This was then showed in a cinema to a random audience. The film started playing and it began with a young girl dead in a coffin then it showed the actors reaction of remorse and grief, then showed some hot soup and the actors face showed hunger, then a sexual women, again showing the actors face this time of lust etc. At the end of the showing the audience commented on how well he showed all the emotions, when in truth he never did change his expression; it was just the same slide of him doing one expression.
This theory shows how you can influence people’s minds by using visual images.
Another example of showing images was this rabbit character called Miffy. This was a children’s book with no words, so the story was described via the images shown. Nigel picked two images of Miffy the first one was her looking at painting then the second was Miffy drawing. Then he put both the images together and it created a basic narrative of Miffy going to a gallery then going home and being inspired to do some art work of her own. However Nigel then switched the images round and the narrative changed so it now looks like Miffy was drawing and the image she is looking at in the gallery could be hers. Again this is showing how selective imagery shows the audience what you want them to see, or in some cases what you don’t want them to see.
Nigel then spoke very briefly about lenses and how they are used to show the character and environments.
Finally Nigel showed us some different comic book/graphic novel artists;
· Dave McKean – Arkham Asylum
· Marcos Mateu-Mestre – Framed Ink
· Clayton Crane – Ghost Rider; Trail of Tears
· Wing Shing Ma – Hero
· Jon J Muth – The Mystery Play
· Simon Bisley – Judgement of Gotham
· Bo Hampton – Batman; Caste of the Bat
· David Mack – Kabuki Dreams
· Ashley Wood – Hellspawn
· Jae Lee & Richard Isanove – Dark Tower; The Gunslinger Born
With some of these images Nigel spoke about how important it is with the view and how you represent it. He used an example of Batman Arkham Asylum, where the joker is towering above two face and barking orders at him. Nigel began explaining how this shows the reader how the joker is in control of two face, not only the fact is he towering over him but his eye line is looking down on him and its far more natural to look down when you are showing dominance in a character. Also two face was enclosed in a very tight space which also showed how much in control the joker is.
Nigel also used examples of “Hellspawn” and “Ghost Rider” to show dominance because it’s a full shot of the character looking down at us, the reader.
Finally Nigel spoke about how big images meant something relatively slow and at normal pace is shown or represented, but when it comes to action sequences the images are much shorter/thinner and much closer together.
When coming up with a final design style for my novel I wanted to do something completely different to the typical detailed or simple comic blocked colour so I looked at a the Disney style since my Novel is a fairy tale. But I have taken a black and white style to it, inspired by Frank Miller who is famous for Sin City and 300. I really like his style as it manages to show what he is telling while not needing too much detail in the images.
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