This mouse-over effect created in flash bridges the gap between still and moving image, creating the scrubbing effect along a timeline, but with this method of viewing the content as the intention. Initially I was explorring the possibilities of reproducing a flipbook on an ipod, scrolling through sets of photographs with the scroll wheel. The flash code was written for my by a parent so that I could reproduce the student's work on a website. The effect works beautifully with short reciprocating animation, mimicing the effect of a zoetrope or flipbook.
In relation to this project, the effect could be used both for the finished stories that the students produce, as in the 'Bob and Bobita' sequence, but also embedded into 'The Storyteller's Aprentice' to add animated illustrations. This particular set of photographs was taken by one of my students on a digital SLR. With rapid 'motor drive' effects, huge storage cards, and cameras that take both still image and moving image, the technology itself is blurring the edges between 'real time' and 'constructed time'.
This example was created by a sixth form student, answering an A'level examination question on 'the journey'. The first image in the sequence was taken in a laundrette in Bristol, the last in a laundrette in Weston. On the journey between the two he photographed passers by with a polaroid camera. I include this as it illustrates the possibilities of interactive narrative, combining riciprocating animation with movement that is both across the screen in a two dimensional space, as you scroll across the image, an a journey into or away from the screen in a virtual three dimensional space, throught the proscenium arch of the window/frame.
Most of the illustration that I have been thinking about for this project remains two dimensional, related to the plane of the screen, and thus related directly to the two dimensional construction of page and illustration, rather than venturing deeply into the three dimensional space created by the cinematic image. In his book 'The Languae of New Media', Lev Manovich writes about time line as a linear montage, and writes about the possibilities that digital media creates for a spacial montages composed of multiple screens. The possibility of combining text, still image and moving image in effect closing the gaps between aural, written, and cinematic story telling.
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