Extended Task

For my extended task, I decided to take the Twine task further. The first time I completed this task I focused on the narrative of Disney’s ‘Frozen’ but creating different pathways for the viewer to decide how Elsa’s life would plan out. When doing this, I included a few videos to help brighten up the story but also explain the narrative as well because, they play a big role in it. Take ‘Let it Go’ for example, I included the video for this section than rather wording it out because the video explains Elsa’s actions all on its own. However, when completing this task I was unable to figure out the coding when adding images to the story which is what I really wanted to so the ending of my story could be decorated with appeal. 

For my story the second time round, I decided to carry on with Elsa’s story by creating different pathways for the recent release of ‘Frozen II’. This time round it was a little more challenging due to the increase of characters and their role within the narrative. My plan for this twine task was to take two different pathways from two characters point of view. At the beginning, I stuck with the original narrative but suggested gave hints within that line of the character, Queen Iduna, was suspicious and hiding something. This led into my first pathway to whether or not King Agnarr or Iduna should read the story of the Enchanted Forest. Iduna is a curious character within the second movie of Frozen and I wanted the viewer to have the choice to dive deep into her history at the beginning or carry on with the linear narrative and wait till Elsa finds it. 

I carried this on throughout my story; as you can see above I have included ‘follow Elsa/Anna, the Next Right Thing, Show Yourself, Save Arendelle’ and ‘Destroy the Dam’ these are all actions which happen in the narrative relating to either Elsa or Anna. I wanted to give the audience the chance to follow the character they wanted to so they could then reach the same ending for the narrative. However, unlike last time with my first twine story, I didn’t give the chance for the viewer to change their mind whereas in this one I did. To explain further, say the viewer was looking into Anna’s POV and she was destroying the dam, the viewer could then go to ‘save Arendelle’ to check in with what Elsa is doing. This time round, I wanted there to be more freedom with the choices the viewer was picking rather than staying on a strong pathway.

Firstly, I created the timeline before adding in any text as I wanted to pick out the key moments and then go in more detail with the story when I got to writing. Though this was also my chance to pick out where videos would be added and where I would insert images. I was familiar with adding in the videos so I did this was my first priority but then I spent a lot of my time reading through the coding instructions in the Twine instructions wiki page to understand how to insert the images. When I tried this for my first twine story, I was having difficulty inserting the images as they wouldn’t show so I looked over everything again. I tried using these instructions but for some reason when I would type it in, it didn’t seem to work so I started to deeper to how I could get it to work. 

I found this link which took me to a website for beginners using twine. It was laid out neatly in sections and I went straight to adding images to find an example laid out for me to see. After seeing the example, I tried putting in the code again which seemed to work. I looked back at the Twine wiki website to see both website were telling me the same thing, sooner I realised I kept typing in the wrong code, instead of typing ‘src’ I was typing ‘scr’. I was soon able to add in multiple images and I made sure they were all the same width of 300 pixels.

I switched between the two videos and images to help decorate my story. As I did in the first twine story, I used the videos to help tell the story better than my words could which is why I added more in this time. But with the ability to add images it made the story more memorable and engaging to look at it; I feel it also brings the story to life as if you were actually watching the film itself. More in itself, the use of imagery makes the story bright and colourful giving it a vibrant feel enticing people to read the story as this is one factor drawing people in. Above I have included a snippet of my work to how the difference between video and imagery help to tell the story.

The images I used were from Animation Screencaps where they allow you to use the images for educational use as they are not endorsed sponsored or affiliated with any movie studios making them able to use.

For my story path I carried on using the branches so the audience felt more interactive with the piece looking back from the twine session. This time I included more options to choose from but to make sure that story didn’t escalate with no possible ending, I made sure to include possible solutions and fit it on a critical story path. The critical story path I learned from the session helped me design my story due to the path containing everything the user must discover in order to achieve the full story experience and reach a meaningful ending point. You can notice the critical story path in my story because; I have created pathways for Elsa and Anna to follow to reach the same ending as each other whilst the audience are able to follow the point of view of whichever sister they wish from the interactive branches but I still used the branches to guide the critical story pathway.

I enjoyed working on this task again, as I was eager to add images and also play around with the text a little by making some words appear in italic by using ‘*’ to do so. This is a creative way of telling a story but I don’t think I will proceed with this any further. I feel there is only so much I can do with a Twine story which I have completed here and with Transmedia I feel I will have more freedom to play around with images and videos by either creating an interactive poster with Visme or by creating a website. I’ve had fun with Twine but now I’ve made the decision to broaden my skills further by looking into the use of transmedia whether it be a interactive poster or website as these two are the ones I’ve found more intriguing for assignment 2 focusing on the extinction of snow leopards.

Link to interactive story: Google Drive.

Bibliography

Twine Wiki (2017), Add an Image, Movie, Sound Effect, or Music, available at http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:add_an_image_movie_sound_effect_or_music accessed on 05/04/2020

Animation Screencaps (2020), Frozen II (2019), available at https://animationscreencaps.com/frozen-ii-2019/ accessed on 05/04/2020

Adam Hammond (2017), A Total Beginner’s Guide to Twine 2.1, available at http://www.adamhammond.com/twineguide/#imagesmusic accessed on 05/04/2020