Interactivity and scale

 After looking at Journey and finding this was the only wordless adventure game I looked at other platforms that use the landscape and surroundings to emphasis the story and viewer like Journey does and found that the Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame does the same thing. The building Notre Dame in this film constantly over looks the city and they use dynamic shots of it to exaggerate the scale to the city and people. Using view points to amplify the buildings size really impacts the viewers feeling of such a holy place.

Layout art by Tom Shannon

Background art by Fred Warter, Kathy Altieri and David Goetz

- The art of The Hunchback of Notre Dame,1996, text by Stephen Rebello, published by Hyperion New York

- The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney, original release 1996, DVD released 2013, directors Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise

Sketches on how I could use size
   Here are some ideas I tired on how I could uses size to help communicate my narrative, I tried using perspective and pattern to show the scale of the sea and how unpredictable it can be.

Pop Up

http://www.markhiner.co.uk/history-text.htm  accessed 05/03/2014

http://assprouen.free.fr/denoville/activites.php  image accessed 05/03/2014

  A pop-up book is a book in which the content goes into a third dimensional (3D), this term is used for books that contain interactive elements such as flaps and pull tabs as well as images that come off the page.

  This dates back to the 13^th century when the first recognised interactive item was the hand written documents called Volvelles. Volvelles were used by fortune tellers or ones that read the stars they were discs that spun around a pivotal point, they generally had symbols or words concealed within them. At this point in time pop-up books weren’t for children as they were used to teach the human anatomy, it wasn’t until the late 18^th century that books started being made for children as before this time a lot of children couldn’t read. The first company to produce a series of pop-up children’s book was a company called Dean & Son in London. Due to this other pop-up items came along such as pop-up greeting cards and paper dolls witch quickly became very popular. Now day’s pop-up books are getting more complex and are still very popular with children.

http://wp.robertsabuda.com/make-your-own-pop-ups/  make you own pop ups will be helpful accessed 05/03/2014

From Robert Sabudas Q&A page;

Question:  ‘Why do you think pop-up books appeal to adults?

RS: I think pop-ups appeal to adults because it allows them to revert back to their childhood experiences with things that amaze them. When an adult’s eyes light up when turning the page of a pop-up I know they’ve become big kids again!’ 

 I thought this was interesting as I had my pop-up idea pinned down that it had to appeal to children but I have found a large number of adults enjoy these books either for themselves or with their children. I will remember this when I am finalizing an idea for pop-up experiment and may try to make an adult pop-up version. 

Beauty and the beast pop up book by Robert Sabudas

Beauty and the beast pop up book by Robert Sabudas

- Beauty and the Beast, A pop up book of a classic fairy tale, by Robert Sabuda,2010, Published by Simon and Schuster Great Britain

  Pop up is another good way to show scale and adds another dimension to the narrative.It will allow me to show the size of the sea and at the same time lead the narrative along using 3D elements. Although my pop ups wont be as complicated as Sabudas so I have looked at some simpler and different ways I could use this element to experiment with to show the size of the sea compared to the boat. I also want to see if adding a 3D element helps me explain the narrative without words.

Pop up tester

After making this cheap sample I found I needed to move the boat over so it doesn't catch in the bend and that the second person in the boat throws off how large I wanted the sea to be compared to the person in the boat.

Other pop up books

- Cinderella, A three dimensional fairy tale, By Jane Ray, 2012, published by Walker Books Ltd London

  This book uses 3 layers to show a panoramic views of the scene. This is less pop up but still adds depth into the image and in these 2 scene shows how grand the ball room is, I could test this and see if it has the same effect on how large the sea is.

Experiments
  I chose to create a simpler pop up as I haven't really looked at making pop up before and didn't want to dive in deep but found that simple pop ups work just as nice. I created this as a size experiment, it works well showing the size of the sea even thought its the boat I made pop up, thought it doesn't seem to communicate the narrative very well on its own if  it was in a book with the rest of the story as pop up I think it would communicate better but as it stands on its own it doesn't have enough to back it up. I think to also communicate the narrative better it needed to have more like if I had added waves that popped up this would have meant the experiment would have even shown the scale better. Over all if I were to do pop up it would need to have other pages surrounding it rather than just being a single image, but is a good way to show scale.

Layered Pop up
 This was another scale experiment and this works a lot better as a single image that the experiment I did before, it still couldn't communicate the whole rhyme on its own but works much better then the before. As a scale experiment it works as the layers show more depth than the experiment before and is easier to manipulate meaning I could do more with this than the traditional pop up. If I was to do this it would need to be in a book rather than a single image as I could show more into the narrative meaning it would communicate it much better.

Another way I could show scale would be to create an small scene showing how large the sea is. I had the boat smaller and then had the camera zoom in slowly, I used a bird eye prospective like Disney did in the Hunch back of notre dame to give the building a menacing presence, I didn't want the sea to be scary but show how alone she was in this large body of water.

Overall I think having a zoomed out view of the sea works well to show how vast and alone she is weather this fully communicates the story on it's own though is another thing. To have just scale showing a story that is predominately in the sea doesn't work as well as if it was in a destroyed world like journey or in a city like the hunch back of notre dame. So I will combine this idea of using scale and viewpoint with other experiments and see if that helps communicate the story more as on its own as a sample it doesn't show the rhyme at all.