Sam Scaife - Digital Media Design BA

One of the main features of my app is the visuals. I want to give me app a visual usp and I think that the Jekyll/Hyde character has inspired me to use either 2 styles to represent each. this would work by having the whole look change depending on which character the section of the story involved. Another way this could be done is by using inverting the colours e.g. black on white for jekyll and white on black for hyde.

I have already posted links to 2 videos which has inspired these where Una pieza más - Marian Ruzzi y Sr. Amable and The Thomas Beale Cipher. Below are other things which have been inspiring my thoughts on the visual style.



the lines in this piece are fantastic they have a really fragile feel. I also really like the 3D room scenes mixed with animation of just characters this is similar to what I am going to try and do with my major and minor scenes (I've not yet explained this on my blog but I will). Black and white with a spot colour works really nicely as well the spot colour really brings things out of the frame



The really simplified constructionist characters which are in this piece have a really powerful look. the weather look of the style is something that I am keep to transfer over to my final piece.



this animation makes great use of black and white. There are some really good scenes where things are drawn to explain a journy and not just show a single scene. I also really like how the animation transitions between locations playing with scale and angle I think this is something which would work really nicely on the I pad and enhance the simple act of turning a page.



I really like the potential there is to use collage in this project and think that some of the techniques used here could be transferd to my story to give scenes another level of depth by carefully selecting what images/videos to display with the collage. this technique is also used in the Thomas beale cipher.



I really like the finish and character design in Eran Hilleli's work. the simple look is something which I might be able to used to allow me to create strong characters which would be esaily animated and would compress well to save disk space on the ipad. It would lose some of its strength but it could be changed to 2D characters and positioned in a pseudo 3D environment.

As I stated in this post an application definition statement will allow me to stay focused on the core of what it is I am going to produce and not be distracted by other ideas. Here is the statement I've written.

Jekyll & Hyde is a visually stunning and immersive retelling of The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Aimed at adults who appreciate creative films and animation.

you'll notice that I have called the app 'Jekyll & Hyde' this is a working title based on the 14 character limit of titles to not be shrunk under the applications icons.

Here is an interesting video where designers talk about why they believe games are special.


I have been reading around this subject and I'll write up at a later date on my blog some of the academic thinking around video game narrative.

I just watched this video and it has inspired me of another potential visual style I could use. It has also allowed me to think of more ways which I could adapt literature into interactive narrative. This would be by showing key scenes with a large amount of motioning in them but still have it as a stationary image (as if you where seeing something in freeze frame). The image can then transition turn into a basic illustration with minor animation while more of the story is narrated.

I'm currently testing out story ideas for Jekyll & Hyde but am getting a bit stuck on ways to implement them. One of the thoughts I had was that I can adapt the novel into a combination of comic and animation. Earlier in the project Kerry Turner from Little Loud came in to talk to us about designing and developing for IPad, she talked us through some of the recent project which she has worked on and one of them is an enhanced comic for channel 4 called The Thrill Electric.

I'm going to play through this comic and see if there is anything I can pick up to help me convert Jekyll & Hyde into a usable story.

This has an interesting story line which as I played through the game I became more and more interested in the characters. I think the media of comic really requires a prolonged exposure to the characters in order for you to develop an emotional relationship to them this could be an issue with my app if I choose not to have an over arching narrative which connects all the different parts.

key features are that they pull the comic out into a 3D environment to make it a little more visually interesting. Extra information and interactions are shown to be present by the sound of a tram bell being pulled, you can then click on a box to find out more information.

After deciding not to go with horror as a genera I wrote down several potential directions and events that could happen which I released could be applied to one of my earlier idea of designing a story based around the character Dr Jekyll and his alter ego Mr Hyde.

I think this would be a really interesting character to develop and has the potential to work with a non linear narrative. There are many different stylistic ideas I can think of to represent this characters but I need to get the story in place first.

Resist the temptation to add features that are not directly related to the main task. Instead, explore ways to allow people to see more and interact more.

This is another warning against function creep. The second line in this presents an interesting way of looking at adding more immersive features to an interactive story.

Closely associate visual transitions with the content that’s changing. Instead of swapping in a whole new screen when some embedded information changes, try to update only the areas of the UI that need it. As a general rule, transition individual views and objects, not the screen. In most cases, flipping the entire screen is not recommended.

This is something I should consider while wire framing, there will be a load of different ways I can present each of the elements which need to be on screen and considering the consistency between them will bring more of a linear unity to the story.

you also want to prevent people from feeling that they must visit many different screens to find what they want.

This line is from a section which is talking about not over doing the amount of information on each screen. It highlights an issue which could be encounter when designing a story with none linear narratives or functionality.

Like how I need to be aware of the user always being able to stop at any times I need to consider that they may not want to use the app with there sound on or they might want to turn certain elements of it down. This potential loses a very important part of the tools I have available to tell my story. There are solutions to this but I need to think very carefully about them before I make any decisions.

As I stated before there are other lessons which I can learn from this document once I am further along with my design, so I will revisit it later in the project.