Hypercompendia

In New Media classes, we were given the assignment of producing a storyboard for a project.  In my own way and sense of writing as a flow that cannot be regulated or charted, I didn’t take it as a serious part of the whole.  Now I realize that the instructors, familiar with games, IF, programming, narrative structure, et al, placed it at a high value because in something like this, animation and graphics versus plain text, there is a series of events that make up a story, and where everybody is standing at the time plays a major part of that story.

Alice brings up the importance of storyboard:

Do the following steps in order: alien moves up; alien says "Slithy toves?"; robot’s head turns around; robot turns to look at alien

Do the following steps together:  robot moves toward the alien; robot legs walk (Learning to Program with Alice, p. 25)

Looking at the "map" of this textual storyboard (there’s an example of a visual as well) one can see immediately what program codes need to be put in place and in what sequence, bringing in the elements of space in distance and time.  With this simplest of narrative form, any inconsistencies or flaws will show up immediately and can be modified.  Much easier at this point than to set up the scene with complicated code just to find out it doesn’t work.  I’m thinking too that Storyspace might prove a valuable tool to use as this storyboard for work in Alice.  If I’m going to do a lot with Alice–and so far I’m really into it–than Storyspace may become a justifiable expense.

So I’ll be spending some time in the learning by instruction method and give the actual project a very brief break while I read, watch, experiment with the techniques outlined.  I’m sure it will make the whole project smoother and easier to progress more quickly.  With the Alice text and tutorials there are enough fun hands-on things to do for both my way of learning and adding the element of excitement and satisfaction.  Enough to keep even me from rebelling against authority to stumble through in my own stubborn way.  There’ll be time to let loose as soon as I learn a few basics, and perhaps a few tricks.