Animation Interactive Inspiration

For my animation interactive assignment I want to tell a short interactive children’s story about a hungry boy who makes himself a sandwich. There will be multiple buttons throughout the story that allow the viewer to interact and help the main character choose ingredients as he searches through his fridge, and then builds his sandwich one layer at a time.

My inspiration for this idea came from a variety of sources. Last week in the digital media lecture, choose your own adventure novels were briefly mentioned as we discussed different forms of interactive media. I contemplated making my animation interactive a short story that had many buttons throughout it, rather than just one at the beginning. I originally imagined giving my audience multiple buttons that they could choose between that would result in differing outcomes in the story. I quickly realized that the execution of this would be complicated and above my skill level so I decided to simplify my idea.

I’m uncertain at the moment as to whether I will draw my images using the tools in Flash, or hand draw then scan my images onto the computer, but either way I expect my animation to have a cartoony, childish look. I decided to aim my animation towards children because I feel that I would be able to initiate this style the best. With this target audience in mind I decided to make my story simple, straightforward, and lighthearted. I also feel that the large amount of interaction within my story will keep younger kids interested and engaged while watching it.

After comparing my ideas to already existing media, I’ve decided that my story is reminiscent of many simple children computer games from my childhood. My idea also reminds me of a Dora the Explorer episode I saw once. Dora needed something from her backpack, and the entire contents of her backpack floated out onto the screen. She asked the audience what she should choose, and then a mouse icon come and clicked the correct item (as if the viewer at home were making this decision). Like this episode, my story will create the illusion that the viewer is making choices for the main character as he makes his sandwich, when in reality there will only ever be one button available at a time.

I feel that the Flash tutorials have provided me with enough knowledge to let me to go though with my idea; however I don’t yet have experience importing and working with images from outside of Flash (ex. hand drawn images) although I have a feeling that this task will be fairly straight forward if I choose to go this route. I am still very new and inexperienced with Flash, and I will therefore most likely encounter many obstacles and setbacks during the production of my short story. Through trial and error I hope that I will be able to get past these obstacles, gain confidence using Adobe Flash, and do my short story justice.