ICARUS: Interactive Novel

Introduction

For this project I will make a fully working online interactive narrative, and I will use the methods listed below:

· Research in to Norse mythology

· Adaptation storyline

· Story boarding

· Digital painting with Photoshop CS5 and Painter 11

· Then put together in Dreamweaver CS5

· Uploaded to japallen.co.uk

Research in to Norse mythology

For my story I looked at different types of mythology from around the world, the one that stood out to me was Norse mythology partly because it's not as widely used as the Egyptian and Greek mythologies are over all the mediums, especially in films and games.

I started researching from the beginning of the Norse mythology; I looked at their creationism story (the world of fire and ice). Next I moved onto the Ynglinga sagas which is a collection of books ooriginally written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson in the year 1225 which contained a lot of old mythology about Odin and his reign through to the founding kings of Sweden.

During my research I came across another saga called Flateyjarbok Saga, this saga was all about the reign of King Olaf, the first King of Norway, and his introduction of Christianity over the Pagan - Nordic religion. I decided to use this story for my adaptation as I thought it would be a good scene to set my story during a time of power transition and I really liked the description of the Kingdom of fire and ice.

Adaptation storyline

This is my adapted version of the Flateyjarbok Saga, in my adaptation the universe follows the Norse creationism theory, in the original there was a war that lasted 143 years and was ended by the first King of Norway; Olaf the First, the King who brought Christianity to the Scandinavians. In my story, however, it is set in the future, as if the 143 year war was never ended by Olaf the first. So the story will take place around a war that has been raging for thousands of years.

(Flateyjarbók Saga

This story begins with the goddess Freyja the favourite concubine of Odin. Freyja wanted to buy a gold necklace forged by the dwarve Berling, Dvalinn, Alfrik, and Grer. She offered the dwarve gold and silver for the beautiful golden necklace but the dwarve refused the offer, they would only give her the necklace in exchange for her to lie a night by each of them, she agreed to their demands and afterward came home keeping secret the origins of the necklace.

Somehow the trickster god Loki knew of how Freyja acquired the necklace and told Odin, Odin ordered Loki to steal the necklace and bring it to Odin. Loki then turned into a fly so to enter Freyja's room then stole the necklace and returned it to Odin.

When Freyja woke and found the necklace missing she went to Odin to confront him about the necklace, Odin would only give her back the necklace in exchange for her to make two Kings each served by 20 Kings fight forever, unless some christened men so brave would dare to enter the battle and slave them, she agreed to the conditions and was reunited with her beautiful necklace. Under the spell cast by Freyja, king Högni and king Heðinn entered a battle that would last an eternity, each time they cut each other down they stood back up and continue to fight. The battle took place on the island of Hoy, thousands of years past whilst the Kings continue to battle leaving Midgard without a ruler.

1430 years have passed since the battle began, Midgard and its people have watched over the island of Hoy where the eternal battle takes place, people have learned of the prophecy through the gods and many have attempted to end the bloodshed that has stained the shores for millennia, but nobody has succeeded in ending the war. Freyja has been searching for many years for a warrior worthy to end the war that she created and in doing so ending the rain of the gods over Midgard. In the great city of Asgaard, Freyja was watching over the sacrifices to the gods by the Diar, the Diar have taken it upon them to lead mankind into righteousness, they took control of Midgard and made their seat of power in the great city of Asgaard. The Diar have become too powerful and started to use people to sacrifice to the gods in a vain attempt to keep order, the only way to stop the tyranny would be to end the war and for the victor to take the crown.)

At this point of the story is where the reader will enter and will then read on to discover how the war is entered.

Storyboarding

Here are some examples of storyboarding that I used during my process,

Here I have plotted out all the little changes to my workflow, in some cases it became apparent that some pages weren't even necessary and some are worked better in a different order.

I also plotted out my script so that I could see how the choices link back to each other throughout the story on some mind mapping software, it was a good way to make sense of the structure.

It was good to make preparation but as you can see on the piece of paper, ideas changed around, but it still served as a good reference point to come back to.

Digital painting with Photoshop CS5 and Painter 11

After the preparation I had decided that the book who was going to be 20 pages long plus an additional five alternative pages and I now needed to paint them. Knowing that time was against me I wanted to make sure that I had a workflow that worked so that I could keep each page looking consistent with the last, at times this was quite challenging especially when it came to colours. This became apparent as I was painting the background scenery in Painter then creating character and detail in Photoshop, also the way I was doing it was time-consuming so I change my methods to paint everything in black and white first mentor use overlay layer with the colours, using the overlay for the colours also fitted in with the way I wanted to signify certain characters, for example Loki would have very intense blue, that way you would be able to associate that colour with him when he saw it on the page.

Here are some examples of my process when creating a page

In my paint swatches I had set up my colours for this comic, for example the each page I would select the background colour and fill layer, then making that layer overlay then I would make sure the layer was at the same opacity as the other layers, then I would use the other colours to painting detail over the characters to add their signifier.

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Then I would add the speech bubbles that I premade then added opacity to those speech bubbles so to not completely cover the picture behind.

Putting together in Dreamweaver CS5

For this project I really wanted to take full advantage of the interactivity so Dreamweaver I feel would be the best tool at my disposal to do this. I did not want to create animations for this book as I feel you can get a good sense of movement just from the way you enter a page and the fade in the speech bubble, most of all because I wanted to concentrate more on the interactivity without animation.

The first step in making my web novel is to prepare all the images to the correct dimensions and file format, as there are over 174 files contained within my website, it is important to have a stable naming convention, for example each pages numbered 001, 002, 003 etc. so the naming convention had to follow with the speech bubbles, e.g. page 001 has two speech bubbles so those bubbles would be 001 a and 001 b.

This screenshot shows the code it takes just for a speech bubble to fade onto the page and then load the next one, there is in fact more code for this but is situated in the header.

Picking up coding for this product was very difficult to learn, but I'm glad to have learnt it as I feel other than making this an application for say an iPad or android it was the best way to making it a working product

Uploaded to japallen.co.uk

I have now uploaded my finished interactive graphic novel to my domain, first thing I needed to do now that my graphic novel is alive is to go to my peers to play test and hunt out any mistakes. This was very useful as any mistakes that were found have been easily fixed.

Here is a link to the interactive graphic novel: japallen.co.uk

This is the first page you will find, it is a home screen that I have made to make it easy for the reader to navigate round the novel. All you need to do now is click start or select a page from the menu and enjoy.

Oh and don't forget to look for the Easter egg page. (Hint: teapot)

Here are the pages in the order that they appear.

This is the home page where you can navigate the comic from, by clicking start or from a specific page