Yodelburg

Crit

In class group critique of week 9 projects.

The Three Act Structure

The Three Act Structure is a dramatic structure often used in plays, movies, and television shows.

Dramatic Structure
Three Act Structure, TV Tropes

Act 1: Exposition/Setup

• Setting & Characters Introduced
• Conflict Introduced

Act 2: Rising Action

• Characters Develop
• Conflict Builds

Act 3: Climax/Resolution

• Conflict Outcome Revealed
• Story Wraps Up

In Class Workshop – Three Sentence Stories

In class activity.

Assignment – 3 Scene Narrative

Create an processing sketch that tells a narrative story in three acts. Each act will combine interaction, image, and text to deliver its part of the narrative. Each act should lead into the next, creating a full story that user participates in.

This assignment is about exploring an intersection of traditional narrative storytelling with interactivity. In creating your story be especially mindful of the role of the user. Are they an outside observer who’s actions have little influence over the story (a less interactive approach)? Are they in the role of the protagonist, and must find a way to address the conflict (more interactive)? Do they take the role of a god, influencing the world of the characters, but not participating? How do their interactions change their experience?

There are many structures that can be used in interactive story telling. For this assignment you must follow several constraints:

• Your story should be told in three distinct acts, following the three act structure discussed in class.
• Your story should be original, with original characters.
• Your images must be original and created by you. You may use digital or physical media to create your images.
• Each act must include one sentence displayed as text.
• Each act must feature an interaction. Create interactions that support and advance the story.

“Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem — the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible — his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.” – Charles Eames

Milestones

Story (10/30 Midnight)

Post your final story as its own blog post.

Proposal (11/5)

Start with a plan. The more clearly you think out what you are going to do, the easier it will be to do it. Plan a project you feel will challenge you, but that you are confident you can complete. Then create a project proposal that communicates your plan.

Your proposal document will provide an overview to the reader of the project you are about to make. You want it to communicate your goal clearly to someone who is not familiar with the assignment. Your proposal should contain the following:

• Intro Writeup
  Start with a short (about 200 words) written introduction to the project. Explain that you are creating interactive story in three acts and discuss the theme and tone of your story.

• Story Text
  Include the full text of you story, indicate the acts for each part.

• Mock-ups and Story Boards
  For each act include one screen mock-up and a storyboard explaining the interaction. The mock-up will be a fully illustrated scene showing the principle elements of the act. The storyboards should be presented in a format similar to template from last week, showing a few visual frames with text explaining the interaction. Storyboards do not need to be fully rendered illustrations, they may be clearer as less detailed sketches.

You will need to do create most of your illustrations for this project to create the mock-ups. I strongly suggest that you create all of your image assets this week, so that you can focus on developing and polishing your interactions for the following two weeks.

Submit your proposal as a .pdf document. You can use any software you are comfortable with to create the proposal (Adobe inDesign, Pages, Word, etc.). Your project proposal is due next week. It will count for 1/3 of your project grade.

Completed Work In Progress Due (11/12)

On the second week you will display your project for work in progress feedback. At this point all three scenes should be included and working. You should have a complete, working project ready for critique. You may also have additional ideas for improvements, and will hear suggestions in from the class during a full critique. Do not think that having another week to revise and improve your project means an incomplete/broken project is acceptable for this review.

Final/Revisions (11/19

Your final version, reflecting feedback received in class. We will have a short crit/review of this work.