Unit 46 Digital Story Telling

Narrative Structures:

 Act 1 is the beginning also known as the setup which introduces:

• The setting.
• Some or all of the characters.
• The conflict the story focuses on.
• The tone of the narrative. 

Act 2 is the middle of the story which is driven forward by conflict or complications, the conflict arises from the plot point and forces the main character out of the 'normal' in order to solve the problem and as each problem is solved another should be introduced to keep the action rising to the climax of the story.

Act 3 known as the resolution or denouement:

•  The meaning of the story is revealed.
• Tie up loose ends as quickly as possible.
• The main character returns to 'normal'.
• A story twist or a cliffhanger can be introduced.  

Analysis of 3 Act Summary in 3 different games:

Star Ocean The Last Hope.
Act 1: At the very beginning (A.D. 2064 in the game) as you start the game there is a cut scene showing world war 3 along with a narrative explain how and why it happened it, the war is between two factions on earth, the World republic Federation and its enemies, many humans believed it was the end of the world but the critical situation forced both sides to declare a ceasefire. In the aftermath of the war the survivors were forced to live underground and the rest of the countries banded together to form an organization known as the Greater United Nations. Because of the war earth was deteriorating at an alarming rate, so the Greater United Nations established USTA (The Universal Science and Technology Administration) to locate a new home planet for mankind in the far reaches of outer space.
There are 7 characters that you can play as that are introduced through out the game but the main character that you follow and play as is called Edge, he is a ship hand on the mission to find a suitable planet to live on.

Act 2
The ship leaves for space to find a new planet but while they are traveling through a worm hole an unknown object enters and hits the ship causing them to leave the worm hole and crash on an unknown planet, on this planet there are giant insects and most of the crew is killed but you manage to fight your way through the monsters and get saved by an Eldarian (an alien race. pretty much elves....) named Faize you then proceed to hop from planet to planet searching for somewhere to colonize and following the trail of your older brother who was on a different ship (there are recurring signs of his presence throughout the game). About half way through the game the main boss is introduced and you have to follow it through space to different planets saving the people who live there whilst trying to defeat the boss ( The final boss is faize he is devastated by the death of a girl he loved, she died in a ritual to a dark shard the source of the main boss, he gets more and more depressed as the game drags on and the shard takes advantage of this and starts controlling him making him betray his friends).

Act 3
The Main Boss (Faize) is defeated and the universe is saved, earth makes treaty's with the other alien races who were involved and they help earth find a new planet to colonize on, thus all the problems are solved and the game ends.

Resident Evil 1:

Act 1:
At the start of the game there is a cutscene introducing three characters, Jill Valentine,Chris Redfeild and Albert Wesker, (before the cutscene you can choose to play as Chris or Jill) they are part of a police task force know as the S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics and Rescue Service). They are investigating the dissapearance of bravo team, whose helicopter crashed in the forrests surrounding racoon city (thats where the game is set) what they find however are dogs that have been infected by the T-Virus (the T-Virus was developed by a pharmaceutical company called Umbrella, it was originally going to be a cure for cancer but before it could be fully developed there was a leakage and it turned the scientists and the animals into zombies, the stars team dont know this yet) they run back to their helicopter by the pilot gets scared and leaves them they have no choice but to run to the "Abandoned" mansion that has been in the forrests of racoon city for years.

Act 2:
When the game starts up your in the mansion and you have to explore it and find a way out, thats when you start encountering zombies and other monsters that have been created by the T-Virus, you have to kill zombies whilst solving puzzles to advance farther into the mansion to find salvation.

Act 3:
You find out Wesker is actually an agent for Umbrella who has been sent to destroy all the evidence of Umbrellas involvement, basically to blow up the laboratory thats hidden under the mansion, but you stop him and make your escape via helicopter ( the pilot flys back and keeps radio contact with your character as you advance through the game) you have one last encounter with a huge zombie monster, you defeat him then escape.

 Star Fox

Act 1:
At the start of the game you see a cutscene showing a mad scientist named Doctor Andross, now known as Emperor Andross, fleeing to Planet Venom (the evil planet) after being banished from Planet Corneria (the good planet), he then declares war on Corneria and unleashes an enormous army to wreak havoc on the Lylat system ( the univeres which the game is set in) General Pepper, the commanding officer of Corneria's defense force, decides to dispatch a prototype high-performance combat ship called "Arwing." However, lacking in time to train pilots for the new crafts, he summons the elite mercenary unit Star Fox to defeat Andross. Fox McCloud is the leader of the team, and he is accompanied by his teammates Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad.( you play as Fox McCloud).

Act 2:
You play as Fox McCloud as you hop around planet venom defeating the emperors minions and finding clues as to the whereabouts of his base.

Act 3:
You find the emperor but he hops in a huge ship that he created to destroy planet Corneria, you have to battle him in your own ship the ariwing and defeat him before he reaches corneria. you defeat him and the threat to the universe and corneria is extingiushed. Fox and his team leave for other galaxy's to help others in need.


Flash Robot Demo:

We took a picture of a robot from google and pasted it into flash, i then took the line tool and traced the top half of the robot.  
I then added a triangle to the top left of the robot and filled it green to represent light, i filled in frame 1 to 5 with the light and emptied frame 2 and 4 to make it look like it was flashing.

Motion and Shape Tween Flash:

I used flash to make motion and shape tween's, first i drew a circle and then used the motion tween to make it move for 25 frames.

For the shape tween i drew a square, i then made the 25th frame empty and drew a circle there, i then right clicked have way through the frames and clicked on shape tween.







I also used the shape tween with text, the process is the same except you have to break apart the text for it to work, after you've broken apart the text your free to change the shape of the text.







Storyboards Research:

I researched storyboards and found some helpful information:
A storyboard can be an elaborate, professional series of framed color artwork depicting action and motion in a scene, complete with written descriptions of dialogue, sound effects, and transitions into the next scene or a single page of numbered thumbnail sketches, or even something as plain and simple as a quick series of motion-study sketches to capture the movement of a body that you want to animate.

Interactive Comic Research:
Dead on Arrival:

Dead on Arrival is an interactive photographic comic. The story is about a man who reports his own murder, much of the story is told by a series of flash backs filling in the details of how he was poisoned and how he found out who did it. The creators of Dead on Arrival have used buttons that the viewer has to click in order to flip the pages, this makes it interactive. They have also used multiple choice questions to progress the story in a different direction depending on the viewers answer.


NAWLZ:

NAWLZ is a 14 episode cyberpunk adventure series that combines animation, interactivity, music and text to create a never before seen digital panoramic comic format.  The story follows Harley Chambers as he kicks through the futuristic City of Nawlz, engaging in overlaying virtual realities, mind-bending drugs and other strange techno-cultures. Nawlz is full of hidden dimensions that require a tap, tilt and swipe to explore.


Story board:

I got inspiration for this idea from the vending machine in college, whenever i put in the code for the dorritos it would tell me to make another selection even thought there was plenty of dorritos stocked up in the machine, i went there everyday for two weeks for those dorritos and i finally got them, i gues this story is kinda what it felt like, just in a more exaggerated way.

                           Digital Story Telling – Evaluation 

For my final piece I used flash (as was required) to make an interactive digital story.

I think my final piece came out pretty well, though I couldn’t add the sounds I desired (which I wrote on my storyboard) because I didn’t have enough time, which admittedly was my own fault. I demonstrated a bit of knowledge about flash by creating two buttons at the end of my animation though that was the only part in the animation that I used code snippets, the rest was drawn by hand with onion skin on. I would like to use more coding and tweens but I feel like I don’t know enough about flash to successfully pull it off, one of my colleges who sits next to me used tweens and a lot of his work kept getting messed up, (though his computer had some issues too) though I would like to use it more in the future when I’m confident in my skills.

I had few issues with my animation, for instance I kept forgetting that certain things had to be on separate layers if I wanted to modify them individually, (I know now though) another was when I was making the buttons, I had made a mistake when typing the instance name and spent half an hour screaming at flash demanding it to work only for my lecturer to come over and point out my mistake

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Overall I feel like this unit has gone well and I have learned quite a bit about flash (though I have much more to learn) and I hope to improve more in the future.