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If you'd like to read about the implementation of the video game Gone Home in a high school English class, start here. Want to know how to turn your class into an alternate reality game, start here for an overview, or keep reading for the resource toolkit.

Welcome to the Toolkit

In the last post we introduced you to ARGs and reviewed some examples of how teachers are using them. Now you're ready to turn your class into an immersive game, and everything you need is right here. With the help of these resources, you can develop your own gameful class, cook up a transmedia project, design a pervasive game or create your very own ARG. Games aside, these links are useful for all types of creative learning projects. In most cases, what is on offer is free and/or web based, so only your imagination will be taxed.

Please write or comment with suggestions for additional resources or to report dead links, as this will be a living document which will hopefully grow and support any educator who wants to transform a class, a unit or the entire school year into an engaging, immersive and memorable experience.

Basic Terms

Before you journey too deeply into the ARG universe, you may want to learn some of the lingo. There aren't too many ARG specific terms, but a quick look at glossaries offered by Unfiction and Wikipedia will bring you up to par. Ready to test your newfound knowledge? Try a round of ARG Buzzword Bingo to reinforce your new vocabulary.

Initial Design and Structure

Wikipedia's ARG page is probably your best first stop to get a bird's eye view of the genre, and have a look at the Pervasive Game page to compare and contrast.

Anastasia Salter sketches a concise 5-step overview that will ground you in the basics, while Jane McGonigal outlines a basic 10-step process to designing an ARG in a slideshow format. Christy Dena, an experienced pervasive game designer, highlights some examples of flowcharts and mind maps used in the preliminary design process. You might also want to read Rui Corado's blog post, where he details the back end of an ARG where you play a forensic investigator.

You can organize your ideas Google Drive's office suite, and try CMap for mind maps and flow charts.

A Few Words on Story & Narrative

Story is the broth that hold an ARG or pervasive game together. It creates conflict, context, opportunities for emotional connections and can lead to a satisfying resolution. Players often persist as they are curious to know how the narrative unfolds. Don't worry - stories don't have to be complex. A history class can send students back in time to find a lost document, or a chemistry class scrambles to devise a formula to save the world from a pandemic. Some teachers use medieval settings, but it's also interesting to create a plausible story that fuses the reality of your setting with the game story. For example, a teacher is an alien impostor and players have to identify it before it kidnaps a victim for nefarious purposes. Stories can be lifted from existing sources, such as books, TV shows, games or films, or you can make up your own. Once you establish the basic premise, the story can grow and change while the game progresses.

The Rabbit Hole

The rabbit hole is the hook that draws your student-players into the magic circle of the game, the gateway that ushers them from the mundane reality of daily classroom life to the unpredictable possibilities of the game. John Fallon offers excellent guidelines and examples for creating a rabbit hole. A good example is from the Nine Inch Nail's Year Zero ARG, where the highlighted letters on a concert T-shirt spelled out the phrase "I am trying to believe", which led players to a website that launched the game. The Beast started with an unusual "sentient machine therapist" credit on the poster for Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence which also led to a phony website. In most cases, the rabbit hole is usually hidden in plain site, but in an educational context it should be easier to discover, as a teachers are works with more constraints than their commercial counterparts.

Gamified Classroom Management Platforms

These three platforms aren't free, but they can help manage many aspect of your game, including score tracking, levels, badges, character classes, quests, etc. They are essentially learning management systems that operate with game-like elements. Each is worth considering if you want to run your class as a game.

3DGameLab - From their site: "GameLab is a gamified content creation and student tracking platform where teachers can design and share quests and badges to create personalized learning for their students. Students "level up" through the curriculum, choose quests they want to play, and earn experience points, badges, and awards."

Classcraft: From their site: "Classcraft's mission is to transform the learning experience by using game mechanics to engage students and provide teachers with well-designed tools to do so."

Gradecraft: From their site: "GradeCraft is a learning management system dedicated to supporting the gameful classroom. We are actively researching and developing tools to encourage student engagement, and aid instructor workflow."

Keeping Score

The following tools can help you keep track of points, leaderboards or a monetary system. First, I have used our existing learning management system to track points and in-game currency - see what yours can do. You can also use and modify spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Here are a few other options:

XP Calculator and Leaderboard: Ignite Education offers a number of free classroom gamification tools and resources, including tutorials on how to create free XP and player tracking sheets. Check out the site and this video to get started.

ScorekeeperXL: A basic and straightforward score keeping app.

MyCred: From their site: "An adaptive points management system for WordPress powered websites, giving you full control on how points are gained, used, traded, managed, logged or presented."

General ARG Community Sites

ARGology, Unfiction and ARGnet are the largest online ARG community sites. They're filled with resources, news, events, forums, conference announcements and other helpful links. They're not deliberately geared for education, but educators can glean a great deal from these sites and get a sense as to what ARGs are all about.

ARGology - From their site: "a group effort by a bunch of great people from the IGDA ARG SIG. It is a site which hopes to aggregate much needed information about alternate reality games for developers, journalists, researchers and players."

Unfiction - From their site: "Unfiction.com is a comprehensive resource for those interested in Alternate Reality Gaming, both from the players' perspective and from that of the puppet masters. It is also intended as a gateway to be used in introducing neophytes to this unique genre of gaming."

ARGnet - From their site: "The Alternate Reality Gaming Network is the largest and most complete news resource available for players of online collaborative Alternate Reality Games. For many years, this site was the central hub for an affiliate network of sites that were independently owned and operated by volunteers for the enjoyment of themselves and the ARG community."

Puzzles, Codes, Encryptions and Ciphers

Puzzles and encryptions are useful for gating information, setting up breadcrumb trails, and encouraging critical thinking. As you design your game, you'll find endless uses for them. If you only read one thing about designing puzzles for ARGs, it should be Adam Foster's post "Alternate Reality Game puzzle design". It does an excellent job of succinctly explaining some crucial best practices. The links that follow these resources will help your puzzle crafting,

ARG Tools and Puzzle Sidekick: A free and useful iOS apps to both solve and create puzzles.

Online Tools: Provides resource ranging from morse code to worldwide payphone locations.

Useful Tools (Endgame ARG Wiki): A vast and well organized list of tools that help both solve and create puzzles.

Cryptstagram: A unique tool that allows you to hide messages in images.

Geocaching Toolbox: A well organized and updated warehouse of tools originally designed for geocaching, but entirely transferable to ARGs and pervasive games.

Image Manipulation, False Documents and Phony Artifacts

Creating credible items, documents, images and artifacts help blur the lines between reality and fiction and contribute to a game's sense of immersion. These resources are all easy to use tools that allow you and your students to create realistic looking items. If you don't find what you're looking for, a good tip is to try a Google search using the name of the item followed by "generator" or "creator" i.e. "fortune cookie generator".

Creative Commons: The best site to find all types of royalty free images and media.

Photo editing software like Photoshop or Gimp are ideal to modify and create images.

Phony web pages can be built on Wix, Weebly, Google Sites or Word Press.

Say-It.Com: A plethora of generators to create everything from dog tags to highway signs.

Page Plug-Ins: Generate a variety of notes, including fortune cookie messages.

Simitator: Creates social media post facsimiles for Facebook, Twitter and more.

FakeConvos: Phony Facebook wall conversation generators.

RPG Sheets: Can create dozens of different types of RPG character sheets.

Top Alternate: Links to create false documents ranging from gift certificates to university diplomas.

Meme Generator: As the name implies, this site allows you to create your own memes.

Legal Fakes: Create false legal documents.

Funny Fake IDs: Choose from a variety of phony IDs.

Badge Maker: Another site to create phony IDs

Photofunia: Lets you combine your pictures and images with all types of templates and backgrounds from movie posters to tattoos.

PhotoFaceFun: Similar to Photofunia, but with additional options.

Logo Maker: A free and fairly sophisticated logo design tool.

Flaming Text: A free logo generator.

Mozilla WebMaker - The X-Ray Goggles tool lets you quickly edit a website with your own content - great for taking screenshots of phony articles or websites.

Apple Pages - an intuitive document maker that can be used to make anything from articles to flyers to invitations.

If you're really ambitious, and have a budget, use Lulu.com to print real books and calendars, while CafePress allows you to create your own custom merchandise. You can also hire somebody at Fiverr to do just about any small design work for you for - you guessed it - 5$.

Videos

Shoot and Edit

Videos are an ideal way to transmit information and add depth to the game world, whether they're used to transmit messages from in-game characters, author video clues or simply deliver mysterious surveillance footage. Depending on comfort and technology available, video can be made using phones, video cameras, GoPros or embedded laptop cameras. Films can be edited on Apple's iMovie or Final Cut Pro, Microsoft Movie Maker, or any of these 10 online editing tools. Also, if you want stock footage, check out this site that lists 19 free stock footage sites or the Creative Common licensed videos on Vimeo.

There are a wide variety of clips, effects and animations that creative artists upload onto Youtube for general use. If you find a video, try MacX Youtube Downloader to download it onto your Mac and Keepvid will work with either platform. You can then drop it into iMovie (or another editing program) as you need. If you're on a PC check out these options.

Posting Videos

You can post your videos on Vimeo, Youtube, or if you want to keep them anonymous, try Vidme or Sendvid. Vimeo also allows you to lock a video with a password.

Audio

Voice

Creative use of audio can enhance videos, relay messages or help create realistic voice mail messages, podcasts or radio broadcasts, to name a few. Audacity is the go-to free application for recording and editing audio. There are a plethora of Youtube tutorials that walk you through the process of applying various effects and modifications. Here are a few you may find useful that make your voice sound:

You get the idea - if there's a voice effect from TV/movie/video game, chances are someone has broken down how to mimic the effect in Audacity. The simple act of hiding, masking or mutating your voice is a significant but simple element for maintaining an immersive narrative.

You can also have a look at the previously mentioned Fiverr. It's not limited to sound effects, but teachers have produced videos with professional level voice acting hired through this site.

Sound Effects

There are also quite a few free sound effects available in the Freesound library and Sound Bible. You can find many more at 10 Best Websites to Find Free Sound Effects. For royalty free music, try Jamendo, CCmixter, Incompetech and Soundcloud. Also, Apple's iMovie recently added a fairly deep library of generic sound effects.

Location-Based Tools and Platforms

ARGs and pervasive games can break down the classroom walls and make learning an anywhere and anytime experience. The following resources will let you extend gameplay outside your classroom and turn the real world into your game world.

QR Codes will probably go the way of the fax machine, but for the time being they are an inexpensive (free!) way to facilitate planting digital information in physical spaces. You can use them to create treasure hunts or as portals to websites, videos, images, etc. Try this QR code generator to make them, and this is a good scanner for iOS, and this one works for Android.

Augmented Reality (AR) tools and apps can help you layer digital information on the real world. Expect a dramatic increase in AR use in the next few years, but in the meantime there are some consumer level products that can help include AR in your game. Aurasma, Blippar, and Mybrana are all free and easy to use.

ARIS From their site: "ARIS is a user-friendly, open-source platform for creating and playing mobile games,tours and interactive stories. Using GPS and QR Codes, ARIS players experience a hybrid world of virtual interactive characters, items, and media placed in physical space."

Taleblazer - From their site: "TaleBlazer is our latest augmented reality (AR) software platform. Developed by the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) lab, TaleBlazer allows users to play and make their own location-based mobile games."

Bluetooth Beacons are a more expensive and elaborate than QR codes. They transmit signals that can be detected by mobile devices. A variety of information can then be transmitted to the smart device. They could signal the presence of hidden material, or transmit data and media. You can also read this article that provides a good overview on beacons. Estimote and iBeacon seem to be the two most popular products on the market.

Geofencing uses GPS systems to create virtual perimeters. I've never used this technology, but it's integrated in a number of apps, and you can research to see which one might suit your needs.

BreakoutEDU: Escape rooms are popping up everywhere. BreakoutEDU has created a package where you can purchase an escape room kit to use in your classroom or integrate in your game.

LyteShot: Allows players to essentially play a video game in real life. The combine hardware and peripherals ranging from guns to wands with tracking software and augmented reality interfaces.

Social Media

Incorporating social media is an effective way to expand a game's reach, but proceed with caution. Familiarize yourself with your institution's social media policies, make sure it's age appropriate and get to know the platform well enough that you can suitably manage it's privacy settings.

Facebook has an option to create fictional characters pages, and you can start fictional characters and institutional accounts on Twitter. You can also create faux accounts on other social media sites - check their policies. Depending on the social media platform, you can post missions, videos, images, updates and clues publicly and privately that players can access anywhere and anytime.

Passwords Protect Documents

Password protecting documents, folders and images are an ideal way to gate information and add additional challenges to treasure hunts, document troves or clues. The following links all instruct you on how to password protect basic documents and folders. If you have any other type of file you'd like to hide behind a password, try searching it on Google. Here's how to password protect a:

Anonymous Information Storage

Storing and uploading anonymous media and documents can come in useful if you don't want students to know that you are behind a master scheme. Try these sites to quickly and easily upload anonymous content.

Infotomb: From their site: InfoTomb is a secure, anonymous, data repository. You can put your text files, documents, pictures, audio, etc. ‒ whatever kind of files you want ‒ on the InfoTomb servers, and we'll keep them there for you.

Postimage: a quick, easy and anonymous way to upload images for sharing.

Mega: offers a secure, encrypted and anonymous file storage option. They also have a suite of secure communication services.

Try Vidme or Sendvid to upload videos anonymously.

Countdown Clocks

It's amazing how motivated players and students become when there's a timer ticking. Use these for treasure hunts, doomsday timers, task completions or anything else that would benefit from a good old fashion race against the clock.

Time and Date: A suite of free and flexible options for all matters related to time and date, including calendars, countdown timers, lunar calendars, etc.

It's Almost: An elegant and simple countdown timer with a transferable link.

Online Stopwatch: A wealth of free clocks and timers.

Badge Creation

Looking to reward and recognize your players with rewards and achievements. Have a look at these sites to make your own custom badges and achievements. Some learning management systems, like Haiku, have built-in badging systems.

BadgeOS: From their site: "BadgeOS is a powerful free plugin to WordPress that lets you easily create achievements and issue sharable badges as your users succeed."

Official Badge Generator: One of my favorite badge creation site. Good starting templates with a great deal of built in flexibility.

3D Badge Maker: More granular than Official Badge Generator, but also more work.

ImageFu: Easily create basic badges with a variety of detail adjustment tools.

Achievement Generator: A tool that easily creates XBox and Steam style achievements to reward your players.

XBox Achievement Generator: A more flexible XBox achievement generator.

Books/Films/Podcasts

Non-Fiction

Combined, the three books listed below will provide a solid foundation on most aspects of ARGs and gamifying your classrooms.

Fiction

Nothing is what it seems in the tales that follows. In every case, unwitting participants have been drawn into a reality fabricated by overseeing puppet masters.

Films

David Fincher's The Game is a feature film about a wealthy banker (Michael Douglas) who is inducted into a game that is indistinguishable from reality. Moving from fictional feature to a real world documentary, Spencer McCall's The Institute chronicles an elaborate ARG called "The Jejune Institute" played in San Francisco.

Podcasts

ARGNetcast - From their website: "The ARG Netcast is a monthly show covering all things Alternate Reality Gaming, cross-media storytelling and whatever else strikes our fancy. Each episode, we discuss recent events, current projects and interview special guests."

Hunt the Truth - From their site: "An investigation into the origins of modern-day superhero Master Chief, this digital log serves as part docu-diary, part audio archive. Join me each week for a new episode as we question everything and assume nothing."

Active Alternate Reality Games

If you want to find an active game, check out ARGNet's " Now Playing " list of games currently being played. The ones listed below are some of the bigger ongoing ARGs you can join.

Ingress: From wikipedia: "The gameplay consists of capturing "portals" at places of cultural significance, such as public art, landmarks, monuments, etc., and linking them to create virtual triangular "control fields" over geographical areas."

The Secret World; From their site: Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend was true. Imagine a world where you can become anything you want to be, without restrictions such as classes or levels. This is the premise for The Secret World, Funcom's massively multiplayer online game set in the modern-day real world.

The Black Watchmen: From Steam: "In the first ever Permanent Alternate Reality Game, you join the ranks of The Black Watchmen, a paramilitary group dedicated to protecting the public from dangerous phenomena beyond human understanding: ritualistic murder, occult secret societies, and the paranormal, to name but a few."

Cloud Chamber: From their site: "Players collaborate with each other to explore, investigate and discuss the fragments of information they collect on their journey through the dataworld, writing the story themselves of a young scientist, Kathleen, who risks her sanity and betrays her father and everything she has believed to be true. Her decision will not only determine the Petersen Institute's future, it will impact all of humanity itself."

Special Thanks

Special props to John Fallon for his valuable contributions to this post. Be sure to check out his awesome blog!

"The Ultimate Alternate Reality Gamified Transmedia Classroom Toolkit" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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The Ultimate Alternate Reality Gamified Transmedia Classroom Toolkit

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If you'd like to read about the implementation of the video game Gone Home in a high school English class, start here. Want to know how to turn your class into an alternate reality game, start here for an overview, or keep reading for the resource toolkit.

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Narración digital I | Piktochart Visual Editor

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The Aesthetics of Game Art and Game Design

By Chris Solarski

What can we learn from the techniques of the Old Masters to help us create more varied and emotionally meaningful gaming experiences? And how must we go about adapting these classical art techniques when we add video gaming's unique element of interactivity?

To explore these questions, this article examines the psychology of shapes and dynamic composition, which are the focus of a series of talks I recently completed around North America (kindly supported by , , and the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia). I firmly believe that dynamic composition should be the topmost consideration for developers wishing to shape the emotional experience of their video games. Dynamic composition brings together several topics from my book -- Drawing Basics and Video Game Art: Classic to Cutting Edge Art Techniques for Winning Video Game Design-- and is chiefly composed of four elements:

Video games rely on the very same design principles -- perspective, form, value, etc. -- which classical artists employed to create the illusion that the television (or canvas) is a window into an imagined world. These design techniques also serve a second purpose equally applicable to game design, which is their aesthetic value, and application in visual narratives.

A better understanding of traditional art techniques, and video game aesthetics, will lead to richer gaming experiences, and may require a rethinking of established studio structures and the collaborative roles of game designers and artists. Because, as we'll see, making bridges between classical art and video games has implications for game designers too.

We'll explore how these elements work together aesthetically, and finish by applying the techniques learned to game design. But before diving into dynamic composition we'll take a quick look at the basic elements of composition (lines, shapes, and volumes); their psychological affects; and their application in classical painting and composition.

The art world has changed drastically over the past hundred years with the coming of Modern Art. Prior to the 20th Century, artists would follow a tradition of craft and design practice, which had been steadily evolving for over 2000 years for the purpose of communicating pictorial stories. What Modern Art did was to clean the creative slate by deliberately breaking with tradition and classical art techniques. This had the invigorating effect of freeing artists to explore individual styles and new forms of self-expression.

We now find ourselves in a culture that appreciates that you and I will respond to art in different ways based on our unique life experiences -- experiences that inform the way in which we individually interpret and give meaning to the world around us. The inherent ambiguity concerning interpretation is largely responsible for what makes the creative process and art appreciation so mysterious and personal. However the aesthetics of art weren't always studied from this perspective alone. Classical paintings had a definite purpose -- particularly in the context of religious paintings -- and were therefore crafted using design techniques that have a timeless psychological basis, and are therefore easier to define.

As video game designers it's important that we appreciate both modern and classical standpoints on aesthetics, although classical techniques are of more practical benefit to us as artists and designers. We can begin by examining the root of visual design, in the form lines, shapes, and volumes.

Because reality is so visually complex, professional artists conceptually reduce objects to simple lines, shapes, and volumes, to simplify the task of rendering reality. This abstraction is something that is familiar to 3D digital artists working in such programs as Maya or 3ds Max, where each object -- whether it's a figure, an environment, or a prop -- will start its life as a primitive shape. Aside from the practical benefit of simplification, these shapes have been consistently associated with the following aesthetic concepts throughout art history:

Circle: innocence, youth, energy, femininity

Square: maturity, stability, balance, stubbornness

Triangle: aggression, masculinity, force

Why we associate these shapes with their corresponding aesthetic concepts has to do with our real-life experiences, and the sense of touch. As kids, much of how we understand the world around us is first learned through touch. By feeling our way around and comparing textures, we quickly develop a mental shorthand for visually assessing the general characteristics of objects based on experience.

Picture the above three wooden objects -- the sphere, cube, and star -- placed on a table. Now imagine shaking that table. The round sphere would begin rolling around -- demonstrating its dynamic properties -- while the cube would stay in place. Now imagine somebody throwing the sphere and star towards you for you to catch. You'd instinctively hesitate to catch the star, even if you knew it wouldn't harm you, based on your learned response to sharp objects, in contrast to soft and round shapes.

Note that a curved line can be represented as a circular shape, or spherical volume; a straight upright or horizontal line, as a square, or cube; and an angular line as a triangle, or pyramid. [For convenience, I will refer to each group by its shape].

Click for larger version.
As artists, we take advantage of our audience's real-life experiences and the sense of touch, and incorporate these concepts (often intuitively) into our artwork. See for yourself in the above illustration how, irrespective of the design discipline, the circle, square, and triangle, have been respectively integrated (from left to right) into logos, architecture design, decorative pavements, and vehicle designs.

The dynamic curves of Disney's logo, which references the circle, are echoed in the curved pattern of a beachside promenade -- encouraging us to visually and physically experience the objects in a dynamic way.

The upright lines of the square give us a sense of stability in the form of pillars fronting the National Gallery in London; and echoed in the straight lines of the Range Rover, designed to elicit feelings of safety, and sophistication.

While the edgy triangle is embedded in the logo of thrash metal band, Anthrax; as well as Frederic C. Hamilton building in Denver, USA; and the aggressively sporty lines of the Lamborghini.

Try to imagine how each object would look if you were to switch shape concepts so that, for instance, the Disney logo was based on the angularity of the Anthrax logo -- a shape concept completely inappropriate for the brand.

These psychological associations with primary shapes allow us to orientate them along a shape spectrum of emotions, against which characters and objects can be measured.

The shape spectrum of emotions should NOT be used as a design formula -- but as a conceptual tool to assess artwork and identify problem areas.

Diana and Her Companions (c. 1655), Johannes Vermeer
The psychological basis of these shapes means that they are a timeless feature of art, allowing us to find relationships between seemingly disparate artworks, and better understand the aesthetics of video games. Let's take a look at how these basic shapes have been used in classical art to influence the viewer's emotions.

Classical composition is an important application for primary shapes, employed by the Old Masters to influence the aesthetic qualities of an artwork. What is classical composition, and why is it such an important artistic tool?

Classical artists would compose their paintings upon a system of lines that were designed to guide the viewer's eye around the image. These line-based compositions helped to organize elements in a painting -- making the image easier to read. But, as we know, primary lines and shapes also have an aesthetic value, which relates to a composition's second purpose.

In the painting above, Vermeer has used a composition based on a curving line -- giving viewers a visual impression of delicate and continuous movement. Each element -- from the central figure's right arm, to the cloth on the ground -- has been deliberately placed and shaped to reinforce this round composition. Take a longer look at this painting and you'll discover many more composition lines echoing this concept.

Massacre of the Innocents (c. 1611-1612), Peter Paul Rubens
Such line-based constructions were designed to be implicit -- the artist's hidden secret -- affecting viewers on a subconscious level. Viewers could then explore the painting seemingly at their own will, unaware of the composition's influence. The impressions these implicit pathways projected were capable of telling a visual narrative in themselves.

Now contrast Vermeer's painting with that of Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents(c. 1611-1612) below. Rather than use a system of delicately curving composition lines, Rubens has based his painting on angular lines to communicate the violent topic of the painting. Rubens has skillfully placed the majority of the male figures in the upper triangle, trampling the females in the lower portion of the painting. However the lines alone describe a collision of forces.

Take a moment to appreciate the complexity and details of both the Vermeer and Rubens paintings. The beauty of classical composition is that it enables artists to reduce complex images to more concise visual statements. Now imagine setting this complex arrangement of visual elements in motion, as in a typical video game, and a simple composition becomes even more necessary to deal with the increased visual noise.

The simpler a visual statement, the easier it is for audiences to engage with your artistic message.

The type of composition an artist designs -- whether it's delicate or angular, for example -- should reinforce the emotional message of the artwork. Imagine substituting the compositional lines of one painting for the other, applying Vermeer's curved lines to Massacre of the Innocents, and vice versa. What we'd find is that each artists emotional intent would be significantly weakened, with Massacre of the Innocents becoming more elegant, despite its brutal theme.

The composition of The Baptism of Christby Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-1492) aligns itself with the straight upright and horizontal lines of the square -- which is located in the middle of the shape spectrum of emotions. Although there are some curved lines within the image, it is dominated by the verticality of Christ, and echoed in the tree, secondary figures, and the horizontal lines of the white dove. This vertical motif is largely responsible for the impression of stillness that we feel when looking at the painting.

A useful analogy to understand the effects of composition is to liken the technique to intonation in speech. Irrespective of the words in a speech, the rhythm and tone of delivery can completely alter the emotional message of what somebody is saying.

With the invention of the photographic camera in more recent times, the emphasis on line-based compositions shifted, as artists became influenced by the way in which the camera registered reality -- in terms of light and shadow shapes. Wassily Kandinsky (1866), who was very much a Modern Artist, did away with representational art altogether and yet his classical training meant he also appreciated the importance of composition:

"The content of a work of art finds its expression in the composition [...] in the sum of the tensions inwardly organized for the work."

- Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane(1926)

Throughout art history, basic shapes and composition have been a primary artistic tool used to organize a work of art, and shape the aesthetic qualities of images. We should therefore find a way to apply this technique to video games. We have a conceptual problem, however, in translating classical composition to video games: the player.

The above paintings represent a static medium. Although society and cultural tastes change over time, the artwork and the experience of looking at a painting remains relatively unchanged. Not so with video games. There is no one single point of view in video games, because the medium's interactivity allows players to move within virtual environments at will. So how do we go about translating classical techniques from a static medium to the dynamic worlds of video games? The answer, as hoped, is very simple.

Finding a solution for translating classical composition to video games is made simple if we consider the basic components of the technique. Composition is nothing more than the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole. As you will recall from the previous section, the basic elements of classical composition are little more than lines and shapes. If we can identify where these elements are to be found pervasively in video games -- so that the player is always aware of them irrespective of where they are within the virtual world -- we can begin to define dynamic composition, as is applicable to video games.

The answer is revealed if we conceptually take the lines and shapes found in a classical painting, lay the composition down flat on the ground, and treat the image like a top-down map. The lines that we would implicitly trace with our eyes when looking at a classical painting, now become pathways along which we can travel through a three-dimensional environment.

Nintendo characters from left to right: Mario, Luigi, Wario, Bowser, and a Goomba
The meticulous design that has gone into the Gears of War franchise is an excellent example of translating classical design concepts to interactive experiences. In the top-left we have the Gears of War logo that, just like every good logo should, embodies the experience of the game in one poignant visual statement. The artists at Epic have then projected the skull motif onto their level designs (notice the abstract eye sockets, nose, and mouth of the multiplayer map).

Conceptually this multiplayer map is very close to a painting, in that our eyes can trace implicit lines around the level's corridors without the ability to physically interact with the artwork. However video games go one step further, in that the projection of the skull motif also represents a three-dimensional environment -- visual lines on the multiplayer map, become pathways in a 3D virtual environment.

Pathways within an environment are only one part of dynamic composition. To fully understand dynamic composition, we must take into account the five elements in the illustration above, and their relationships to each other:

Player gestures are not so much a part of dynamic composition, which relates to on-screen images. However, video gaming's interactivity means that a player's actions are closely bound to the visual experience, and must also be considered in this context.

Over the course of the next five sections we will examine each aspect of dynamic composition, with the help of our primary shapes: the circle, square, and triangle. We will additionally examine the player's role in a video game artwork, before applying the combined knowledge to game design. We will begin with character shape, and simultaneously explore the narrative possibilities of dynamic character shapes.

The earlier section of this article explored the aesthetic sensations that we associate with primary shapes. In this section we will look at how these shapes can help us make sense of various character designs in the context of dynamic composition. The characters in Nintendo's Mario games make for great examples for this application.

How would you describe Mario's personality? Perhaps: dynamic, youthful, positive. It's therefore no surprise to find that everything about Mario's design is based on the circular concept -- from his spherical torso, to his round moustache.

Lord of the Rings Trilogy(2001-2003), directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema
Luigi's supportive, brotherly personality can also be evidenced in the verticality of his figure, which references the rectangle in contrast to Mario's round shape. While Wario -- and almost every enemy within the Mario universe -- is aligned to the aggressive triangle.

In actual fact, what we're looking at is the same character! The artists at Nintendo have simply taken Mario's body and dialled the forms to be softer or sharper for different aesthetic effects based on the circle (Mario), square (Luigi), and triangle (Wario).

But what if Mario, Luigi, and Wario indeed represented one character that dynamically changed over the course of a narrative? The question relates to the way that we treat character development in video games.

Take a look at the screenshots from one of my all-time favorite games, Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998). The screen on the left depicts Link early in his quest, while the right-side image shows Link after you've helped him battle his way through many dungeons and large boss fights. How do we know that Link has grown in strength and ability during the course of this game? The evidence is not where most would expect to find it -- in the physical appearance of the character -- but in the user-interface. Link on the left has fewer hearts and a single sword equipped; and Link on the right has more hearts and many more weapons and gadgets.

While user-interfaces make sense to experienced video game players, those unfamiliar with the medium rightfully expect to see a visible change in the central character -- as occurs with actors in theatre and movies. Video gaming's treatment of character development is the equivalent of an actor verbally stating, "I am now stronger and more confident!" while his posture and behavior remains the same.

To create realistic and emotionally richer narratives we must begin treating video game characters as real people with a breadth of emotions. As the French Romantic painter, Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), wrote on the topic of personalities:

"There may be ten different people in one [person], and sometimes all ten appear within a single hour."

- from The Journal of Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix's remark extends to narratives and the fact that characters never start and finish in the same state. A narrative implies that a character has gone through an emotional change, which should be made visible for viewers to comprehend. Frodo's character in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, performed by Elijah Wood, illustrates how dynamic body language communicates his character's mental and physical state: from mock indignation; to a fevered shuffle; panicked run; and an exhausted stupor.

Disney animators from animation's Golden Age not only made a point of understanding the emotions of the character, but also understanding what the character is thinking. A character expressing its thoughts and motivations instantly appeared more lifelike.

The above sequence is featured in the must-have book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation (Disney Editions 1995) by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, in which Grumpy has just received a good-bye kiss from Snow White. Notice how, from right to left, the aggressive angularity in his gestures soften to gentle curves as his temper dissolves.

Such dynamic character animations do appear in games like Resident Evil -- where the protagonist becomes physically impaired when poisoned or injured -- however this has more to do with communicating the character's health stats -- much like a user-interface icon -- than an emotional purpose.

To date, the most successful game to express the playable character's emotions through physical gestures is thatgamecompany's, Journey (2012). In the opening sections of the game, the character has an upright posture and jumps freely and gracefully. But we witness a delicate shift in the character's physical state as we eventually guide it up into the storm where it begins to hunch forward against the pounding winds.

Perhaps thatgamecompany could have included character animations that communicate a sense of fear for the darker underground levels where the player is first confronted by a threat from flying Guardians. This may have made the final flight under blue sky even more cathartic.

The fact that players have a strong emotional empathy for their on-screen avatars will allow game designers to bring more emotional subtlety to video game experiences through increased use of dynamic character shapes. A character's shape can also be adjusted with a costume change; however, its physical posture is the strongest and broadest visual clue to their inner feelings.

This brings us to another aspect of dynamic composition associated with the character, and that is character animations in terms of jump arcs and lines of movement, which we'll explore in the next section.

The subtle gesture of a hand or movement of a character's head are animations which are relatively indecipherable at low resolutions, or when the character is in motion. Animations that are visually more comprehensible include character jump arcs and general lines of movement. Because character movement on this broader scale can be conveniently visualized as lines, we can consider how shaping such animations may affect the video game aesthetically.

When a player presses the jump button in the opening levels of Journey, the character jumps gracefully across the screen (as illustrated above).

Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003), directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema
The implied line that this jump arc creates -- made explicit by the character's trailing scarf -- is aesthetically aligned to the circular composition in Vermeer's Diana and Her Companions.

Watch the video below -- featuring, Journey, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery (2011), and Vanquish (2010) -- and picture a light trail behind the characters as each travels through its respective video game environment. Can you align the animations to the circle, square, or triangle?

You should find that the lines of movement communicate a variety of emotions ranging from delicate and dynamic (curved lines); slow and peaceful (straight uprights and horizontals); and aggressive (angular). In designing a character's movements it's vital to choose lines that complement the emotions you would like players to experience.

As with character shapes in the previous section, we also tend to design character animations with one style of movement used consistently throughout the game. Video games being such a dynamic medium, there's no reason why we can't design experiences that take advantage of the whole range of possible animations to communicate more complex narratives.

A game's camera movement relates closely to character animation -- especially in first person games where it becomes the primary tool for communicating the in-game characters state of mind. In a first person game, we must imagine that the camera represents the perspective of a living-breathing person, capable of feeling and expressing a whole range of emotions.

The video above illustrates two contrasting camera animations: the gentler camera of Halo: Combat Evolved by Bungie, and the aggressive camera of Epic's Gears of War 3. Halo gives the player a feeling of smooth elegance (more so in the earlier games), elevating Master Chief above the edgier, and aggressive movements of the enemy. While Gears of War has an edgy and aggressive aesthetic throughout -- implying that Delta Squad and the Locust Horde are on the same moral level as each other.

These examples highlight the importance of camera animations in the context of dynamic composition. Now that we have character shapes and animations covered, it's time to consider the character in relation to its environment.

A character's surroundings are a key part of dynamic composition because the environment normally takes up much of the visual frame. (Please note that environment here also includes secondary characters and enemies.) We can respond emotionally to characters based on their shape and animation alone, however it's only once we see characters in an environment that a narrative emerges.

The illustrations above represent a character (purple) in an environment (green). A circular character in a circular environment (top-left) exhibits a sense of harmony because the character's shape is echoed in its surroundings. The echo gives us a sense of home -- suggesting that here is where the character belongs. We also get a sense of harmony if both the character and environment are square, or triangular (lower-right), although the change of primary shape gives us a different aesthetic sensation.

We get a sense of dissonance when character and environment shapes contrast each other. A circular character appears threatened when placed in an edgy environment (top-right); while a triangular character appears the threat in a soft and rounded environment (lower-left).

These concepts of harmony and dissonance can be seen in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, where we have the good-natured Hobbits on one side of the shape spectrum of emotions. Everything about them references the innocent, youthful circle: from the curl of their hair; their rounded shoulders and shirt buttons; to the round Hobbit holes; and even the curves of the landscape. At the other end of the shape spectrum we find Sauron, who is aligned to the aggressive triangle: from his sharp fingertips; to the triangular volcano on the landscape.

This contrast of primary shapes allows us to reduce the story of Lord of the Rings to an abstract visual narrative using basic shapes, which sees the round Frodo and Samwise leave their round home to journey to a threatening, angular landscape, before returning to the safety of home.

As with the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the Super Mario Galaxy series of games can also be reduced to an abstract visual narrative. We have the spherical Mario in his spherical world filled with triangular enemies. It's the player's role to help Mario clear the galaxy of triangles to restore a harmony between Mario and his home environment.

Journey is a great example of character-environment harmony using triangular forms, which are echoed in the playable character's shape and throughout the landscape. Interestingly, the non-aggressive nature of the game's experience could have been rendered using sugary, rounded forms, but the game's design is all the better for going against conventions by creating a contrast between the character's edgy form, and its delicate movements and jump arcs.

Morf is a simple browser-based game that I developed to explore the emotional links between character and environment shapes. You, the player, must guide a round character through two environments -- one round, and the latter, sharp. The surprise awaiting players is that, technically, both environments are identical -- it's only the superficial surface graphics that change. You can play the game by visiting .

I had the opportunity of testing Morf on both experienced gamers and non-gamers. Experienced players were naturally well-versed in the language of video games, and were therefore primarily concerned with testing the game's rule system: Can I jump higher if I run and jump? Can the character die if I touch a spiked object?

Non-gamers, on the other hand, were acutely aware of the game's visual design. They would bump their way through the round level without concern, but upon reaching the edgy leve (pictured above)l, they would spend an inordinate amount of time carefully avoiding sharp objects. When their character would accidentally land on a spike, they'd exclaim words like "ouch!" -- words that we use when we hurt ourselves in reality. We should be very proud that video games can evoke such responses, since they're unique among artistic disciplines, and illustrate the player's strong empathy for their on-screen character.

This heightened emotional response from non-gamers suggests that there exists an even greater potential for artistic video games. Non-gamers -- representing a huge, and disregarded audience -- have a significantly lower concern for the rules of a game (and an even smaller technical understanding), and are therefore more ready to suspend their disbelief and simply experience. This should be a strong call to action for developers to explore games that are not targeted at hardcore gamers.

We've looked at how character shapes, character animations, and environment shapes can be shaped to influence the aesthetic experience of a video game. Our analysis uses the emotionally charged primary shapes -- the circle, square, and triangle -- as a conceptual tool to make sense of a wide variety of artistic styles and interactions. In the next section we will explore how pathways within a video game environment can also influence the emotional experience within the context of dynamic composition.

The pathways within an environment -- just like the pathways in a park, or pavements in a city -- can readily be reduced to systems of lines. The shape of a path has a strong physical and emotional influence, which is the reason why pathways in parks tend to have leisurely curving shapes, for instance.

Journey's opening level has no explicit pathways whatsoever. We can fittingly apply the concept of an open canvas to this level, if you imagine the character as the tip of a pencil or paintbrush. What the designers have done is to give players the freedom to draw their way through the environment in any way they wish.

However, the lines that players are able to draw have been restricted to one style that fits the aesthetic experience -- with delicate gestures of the character, which we explored in the previous section on character animation.

The pathways in Journey become more explicit and constrained as the narrative drops to the darker, moodier mid-point of the game -- thus creating an abstract narrative of freedom versus confinement.

We already looked at how Master Chief's movements and in-game camera distinguish themselves from the aggressive movements of Gears of War. Games in the Halo franchise further differ themselves from many other first person shooters because they often feature rounded and organic pathways. We know from previous examples that rounded lines have a gentler aesthetic quality -- aligning themselves with the composition lines in Vermeer's Diana and Her Companions.

Moving along the shape spectrum of emotions we come to the straight upright and horizontal lines found in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP . Although conflict does feature in S:S&S EP, the game has a very tranquil aesthetic generated through a sensitive choice of environment shapes.

Imagine how dynamic the game would visually appear if all the trees in S:S&S EP were titled to one side, creating a chevron effect on account of the reflection in the water. As it stands, the game's sense of tranquility is, in part, created by the verticality of the background, and the horizontal and vertical pathways along which the character travels. For comparison, think back to vertical lines of Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ,in the earlier section on classical composition.

If we make an environment's pathways angular, the visual and interactive experience instantly becomes more aggressive -- an aesthetic quality perfectly suited to the Gears of War franchise. Take a moment to consider how the pathways in the three-dimensional environment above reflect the angular composition lines in Massacre of the Innocentsby Rubens.

We've now examined the four aspects of dynamic composition that relate to the on-screen visuals of a video game. Collectively, these conceptual tools give us more control over a game's aesthetic experience, and allow us to create complex narratives. Before applying these techniques to game design, we'll examine an aspect of video game aesthetics that is fairly unique to the medium as it relates to interactivity, which creates a form of artistic collaboration between a game's designers and the players.

The elements of dynamic composition that we've explored up till now have been restricted to visual images on screen -- images that respond to the player's inputs. Therefore, to fully appreciate the aesthetics of video games we must also consider the performance role of the player, which is closely aligned to that of the artist.

Motion controllers are particularly useful at illustrating the player's artistic involvement in video games. Motion controllers include Microsoft's Kinect, Sony's PlayStation Move, and Nintendo's Wii, and any input that allows players to control on-screen elements using physical gestures.

Motion control mechanics that go beyond fitness and washing games are grossly underdeveloped, because their applied potential is massive. Never before has the role of the audience/player been so closely aligned to that of the artist/game designer. Consider the following analogy:

Every traditional painting was constructed by an artist using various combinations of lines and shapes. Each line placed on the canvas required a physical gesture from the artist, which changed depending on whether the line was soft and delicate, or aggressive. Viewers of the artwork would then passively respond to the artist's aesthetic choices and brushwork by exploring the artwork visually.

The same is true of video games -- only the lines and shapes in video games are represented as dynamic elements, such as the jump arc of a character. The player responds to these on-screen shapes in much the same manor as if they were looking at a painting. However, video games go one step further: upon creating a video game, the game's designers give creative control to the player through interaction, allowing players to experience the very same sensations that a traditional artist would feel when painting.

To experience these artistic gestures, compare the differing control sensations for two games that use Nintendo's Wii Remote: Mario Kart Wii and Tron: Evolution. Mario Kart Wii's vehicle handling is more forgivingthan Tron's Light Cycles, which reference the abrupt turns seen in the original Disney movie. The video above features both games, although I recommend actually playing them to fully appreciate the effect.

The softer animations and tracks of Mario Kart Wii have the player tilting the controller using gentler physical gestures. The abrupt handling of Tron's Light Cycles means that players must use corresponding physical gestures to control the vehicles.

This linking of on-screen animations directly to the player's physical gestures is an interaction unique to video games. My favorite metaphor for this artistic collaboration -- and one that I'm applying to one of my current video game projects -- is that of the player as music conductor.

In this metaphor, the orchestra playing a scripted piece of music represents a video game experience created by a team of designers (the composers). The player (music conductor) activates the music, feeds it impulses, while responding to the music physically and emotionally.

Imagine yourself a music conductor waving a conductor's baton while listening to the three songs in the above video. What type of gestures would you make to conduct each piece of music? The gestures you create are closely related to the type of gestures that players can be prompted to perform when playing video games using motion controllers.

Music, just like visual images, can be conceptually reduced to circles, squares, and triangles. Each song and corresponding music conductor's gesture creates different aesthetic sensations in the player. This combining of aesthetic elements allows us to re-imagine video games, such as Super Mario Bros., and conceptualize the jump arcs of Mario as a melody that could be controlled with a motion controller.

Now that we have a good overview of video game aesthetics -- including character shape, character animations, environment shape, and pathways -- and the player's role in the dynamic artwork, we can go about applying our knowledge to aesthetic game design, and explore the possibilities of stronger collaborations between artists and game designers.

This section explores game design from a gameplay perspective, in the sense of games as systems of rules. Gameplay also has aesthetic qualities if we conceptualize games as shapes. Key to this conceptual view is the understanding that games are vehicles for activating stories. Even traditional games like chess give players a purpose to act upon, and construct their personal narrative within the play area. Today's video games are capable of activating stories with infinitely more complex narrative structures, on account of the medium's dynamic and interactive properties.

We've seen through the above example of dynamic composition that classical art, and video game art is linked by a common visual grammar. We must only consider how interactivity affects traditional design principles to reveal these links. Video games are clearly not a revolution in art history, but an evolution.

The above illustration features three games -- piñata, hide and seek, and baseball. The primary player in each game has been highlighted in purple. The rules of each game dictate the shape of the play area, and the arrangement of participants. As we know full well, shapes -- the circle, square, and triangle -- have strong psychological effects on us, the viewers, so it's important to examine how a game's shape may influence players emotionally.

Piñata plants a single person in the middle of a circle defined by friends, family, and acquaintances. The circle serves as a safe space of encouragement while the player blindly tries to hit the hanging piñata. The shape of hide and seek is very different because there is an absence of other players from the point of view of the seeker. Baseball has a very confrontational shape, from the point of view of the person batting, confronted by eight fielders facing her or his direction.

If we were to aesthetically enhance each game -- manipulating camera angles, framing, animations, color, etc. -- we could, for instance, make hide and seek visually exude loneliness, much like the solitary figures inhabiting Giorgio de Chirico paintings. We could then imagine combining all three of these games into one narrative, so that each game represents a narrative act. A player of our hypothetical three-act game could be made to experience joy in Act 1 (piñata), loneliness in Act 2 (hide and seek), and aggression in Act 3 (baseball).

From the perspective of gameplay, we could also design a new range of player animations -- within the confines of each game's existing rule-set. Take, for instance, the range of moves available to Mario in the original Super Mario Bros. game from Nintendo. Mario could achieve greater jump heights if he did a running jump.

Such design choices were once exclusively a question of gameplay, and not aesthetic choices, on account of gaming's technical limitations. But as we saw in an earlier video -- featuring Journey, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and Vanquish -- game design and game art is now significantly more sophisticated, so that a character's available movements and actions can adhere to a game's rules, while also being aesthetically pleasing and varied.

For our three act video game -- inspired by piñata, hide and seek, and baseball -- we could therefore have the playable characters dynamically change their shapes and animations between narrative acts. The dynamic and playful movements of Mario in Super Mario Galaxy could inspire the animations in Act 1 (piñata).Feelings of loneliness in Act 2 (hide and seek) could be enhanced with animations referencing Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. The final confrontation in Act 3 (baseball) could take its lead from Gears of War.

The results of this particular example would not necessarily make for an elegant artistic experience -- however this hypothetical game serves only as an example for the aesthetic possibilities of gameplay that fully take advantage of dynamic design. No longer must we stick to the formula of designing games that follow a constant set of rules, which is a concept rooted in traditional board game design. Armed with knowledge of dynamic composition and traditional art principles, we can begin designing games based on aesthetic qualities, while additionally incorporating dynamic gameplay, to create experiences with more emotional depth.

Because every aspect of a video game -- the visuals, interactions, and game design -- have aesthetic qualities, we can begin making stronger bridges between the disciplines of game design and art if we're to rival the traditional arts in creating meaningful and varied artistic experiences.

To create great, emotion-driven games we must start each project by asking the question: what is the emotional experience? Our misguided tendency is often to lead a game's design by its genre or style.

If we do it right, we can begin creating in-game narratives using the strengths of the medium -- without over-reliance on cut-scenes, dialogue, special effects, and user-interfaces. Interestingly, such a shift will align video games closer to performance arts such as ballet, than film, where movement and music (and interaction) alone tell a story. For this to happen the whole development team must be versed in the concepts of dynamic composition. To summarize, dynamic composition is primarily concerned with:

These unassumingly simple techniques give us a common language with which to communicate across the various disciplines of art, game design, and programming found collectively in video game development.

The triangle in opposition to the circle has been a common theme throughout this article because these two shapes represent a polarity on the shape spectrum of emotions -- much like black and white on the value scale. Each shape is visually and psychologically distinct from the other. Such contrast is an essential component of storytelling, sparking conflict and action within the narrative, and an emotional conflict within the audience. Which is why, throughout art history, the circle and triangle have been used abstractly to define two opposing forces.

Whichever shapes you choose for your game's characters, it's important to be aware of contrast as a narrative tool, and to be prepared to reverse the polarity of characters for dramatic effect. Contrast also makes it easier for your audience to orientate itself on the emotional stage of the narrative.

Keep in mind that dynamic composition and primary shape concepts should not be used formulaically. Using your intuition and going against convention is more desirable. For instance, a character that appears villainous in appearance, but turns out to be a hero, will surprise players, and make their experience emotionally richer and more engaging.

I'll leave you with a quote from Christopher Vogler, advising how readers of his fantastic book -- The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers -- should approach the hero's journey metaphor, which provides a similar conceptual function for narrative to that of dynamic composition for game art and game design:

"If you get lost, refer to the metaphor as you would check a map on a journey. But don't mistake the map for the journey. You don't drive with a map pasted to your windshield. You consult it before setting out or when you get disorientated. The joy of a journey is not reading or following a map, but exploring unknown places and wandering off the map now and then. It's only by getting creatively lost, beyond the boundaries of tradition, that new discoveries can be made."

---

Drawing Basics and Video Game Art: Classic to Cutting Edge Art Techniques for Winning Video Game Design is available on and Barnes & Noble.

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By Chris Solarski What can we learn from the techniques of the Old Masters to help us create more varied and emotionally meaningful gaming experiences? And how must we go about adapting these classical art techniques when we add video gaming's unique element of interactivity?

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El mundo del entretenimiento está dejando atrás la narrativa lineal. Las historias en la actualidad tienden a desbordarse, a superar el medio y el canal para el que fueron concebidas, y ramificarse a través de relatos paralelos que germinan en distintos soportes. Es la denominada narrativa transmedia.

El experto en comunicación de la Universidad del Sur de California, Henry Jenkins, nos aporta una definición precisa del fenómeno de la narrativa transmedia: se trata de "un proceso en el que los elementos que integran una ficción son sistemáticamente dispersados a través de múltiples canales de distribución con el objeto de crear una experiencia de entretenimiento unificada y coordinada. Lo ideal es que cada medio o soporte realice su contribución personal en el desarrollo de la historia".

Pero transmedia no es contar una misma historia en distintos canales, por ejemplo, un libro, una película o una serie de TV. Tampoco es reutilizar un mismo contenido en distintos medios. En el planteamiento transmedia la narración evoluciona de forma diferente en cada medio o canal.

El fenómeno transmedia no es nuevo. Ya en 1991, Marsha Kinder definía lo que ella denominaba supersistemas y que ya anticipaba los nuevos modos narrativos actuales (Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games. From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles):

"Un supersistema es una red de intertextualidad construida en torno a una figura o grupo de figuras de la cultura popular [...] De cara a constituir un supersistema, la red debe trascender varias formas de producción de imagen; debe dirigirse a generaciones diversas, clases y subculturas étnicas, quienes a su vez son blanco de estrategias diversas; debe fomentar el "coleccionismo" a través de la proliferación de productos relacionados; y debe someterse a un incremento repentino de mercantilización, cuyo éxito consecuentemente se convierte en un "evento mediático" que acelera dramáticamente la curva de crecimiento del éxito comercial del sistema."

La definición anterior conlleva varios conceptos de la cultura transmedia, como nos recordó Christy Dena, de la empresa Universe Creation 101, durante su ponencia en el evento Transmedia y nuevos contenidos digitales que tuvo lugar en el Espacio Fundación Telefónica de Madrid el pasado octubre. Diversas formas de producción de imagen, la idea de la red en torno a figuras concretas, los productos derivados...

Christy Dena propone que abandonemos las historias lineales para brindar más posibilidades a nuestros públicos mediante la interactividad. El producto transmedia no se consume, está pensado para interactuar con él, para aprender y vivir una experiencia.

De esta forma, para ella transmedia no es marketing sino comunicación inmersiva. Hace falta gente que rompa las normas de la comunicación. Lo que sucede en los márgenes de la definición de transmedia es aquello que nos aporta más ideas.

Dena defiende que lo que hace funcionar a los relatos transmedia es el sistema de relaciones que creamos; debemos "manipular" el interés del público a través de nuestros contenidos, escogiendo bien el orden de lanzamiento de cada subproducto.

De hecho, los mismos materiales originales pueden dar lugar a productos diferentes. Por su parte, los canales no deben competir los unos con los otros para llamar la atención, pues al final se bloquean. Lo importante es conseguir que se complementen.

Universe Creation 101 es la compañía responsable de Authentic in all caps, un juego para iPad que genera una historia en clave de comedia que tiene lugar mientras el usuario visita lugares ficticios en la web. Está basada en los seriales radiofónicos y en los juegos de realidad virtual.

Otro rasgo asociado al fenómeno transmedia es la fluidez de los contenidos frente a la rigidez de las formas de comunicación tradicionales. Es un tema que abordó Simon Staffans, una de las figuras más destacadas en el sector transmedia europeo, durante el encuentro celebrado en el Espacio Fundación Telefónica.

La fluidez concebida como una nueva forma de ser, de pensar y de hacer, que junto a la colaboración debe alejarnos de la "esclerosis" tradicional de los formatos televisivos, radiofónicos, e incluso de las formas de transmitir más convencionales a través de Internet.

Los principios de comunicación transmedia que defiende Staffans pasan por:

- La fluidez.

- Planificación adaptable a través de objetivos flexibles.

- Uso de la métrica para medir el impacto de la acción.

- Perder el miedo al fracaso.

- Por último, pero no menos importante, las historias que contar. Hay que ofrecer a la gente las herramientas y una historia, y ellos te mismos te la contarán.

Debemos conocer a nuestro público, identificar los nichos de nuestra audiencia, y no intentar llegar a todo el mundo intentando abarcar una globalidad que se nos escapa, según Simon Staffans.

Otra de las ponentes, Marta Marín, analista de tendencias en la Universidad Ramón Llull, coincidió con Staffans en el concepto de realidad fluida. A su juicio hemos pasado del mundo sólido a un mundo líquido, en el que les pedimos a las marcas algo nuevo cada día.

Desde la perspectiva del marketing, las marcas que lanzan propuestas de innovación van a mercados de nicho ( trendsetters). Algunas marcas, como puede ser Apple, han transitado desde el trendsetter hacia el mainstream. Pero en la actualidad el mainstream, los fenómenos de la cultura de masas, no es lo que era: se encuentra fragmentado en miles de subculturas distintas. De ahí la necesidad de conocer bien a nuestro público y saber qué historia contarle.

En 'Transmedia y nuevos contenidos digitales' surgieron numerosos ejemplos de esta forma innovadora de comunicación, incluyendo algunos españoles asociados a productos de consumo masivo.

Un ejemplo es "Isabel, el webdoc", en torno a la serie de RTVE sobre los Reyes Católicos, de Laboratorio rtve.es, que mezcla realidad y ficción en una sola narrativa. Bajo el hashtag #tantomonta los actores dan su propia visión de la serie y los fans toman la palabra en encuentros presenciales.

Otro caso en el que se busca una nueva forma de relatar lo encontramos en el reality de Telecinco Gran Hermano 2015, en donde los concursantes usan wearable devices, pulseras biométricas y drones, y se cuentan las historias desde los datos biométricos, además de otras perspectivas.

Imagen portada: Transmedia Coalition

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Transmedia: nueva narrativa fluida para una realidad líquida

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El mundo del entretenimiento está dejando atrás la narrativa lineal. Las historias en la actualidad tienden a desbordarse, a superar el medio y el canal para el que fueron concebidas, y ramificarse a través de relatos paralelos que germinan en distintos soportes. Es la denominada narrativa transmedia.

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DN Epic Store - The Key For A New Legend To Arise! | www.dnes.co

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THE OFFICIAL ANDREASCY | News to the core

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Following the proliferation of technology and multimedia an evolution in making and telling stories has resulted in digital storytelling (DST).

* Research/Explore and Learn

* Gather/Create images, Gather/Create Audio, Gather Create Video

Little empirical research has been conducted to date that investigates the benefits of digital storytelling in the classroom although it has been acknowledged as a technology-integrated approach for meaningful and engaged student learning. In the rather limited research that is available, the overarching agreement is that digital storytelling enhances students' uptake of essential 21st-century literacy competencies or 4Cs of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity (Partnership for 21st century learning) and enables a deeper understanding in all areas of the curriculum.

How Digital Storytelling Transforms Education: Research Findings

1. Embraces Learning of 21st Literacies

It is the responsibility of policy makers and educators to design and deliver curriculum that engages students in learning experiences that address the increasing demands of a multicultural, constantly evolving multimedia-based world. Literacy pedagogy and research are incremental towards such a direction: literacy refers to a repertoire of practices learners use to engage in meaning making that derives from spoken, print, and multimedia. Various literacies have been identified such as media, visual, global and digital literacy. Research suggests that students who engage in creating digital stories develop deep understanding of these literacies through the different steps needed to create their digital stories and thus gain knowledge on how to employ literacies in a way that is meaningful and empowers them as learners in a postmodern world.

2. Advances Critical Thinking and Deeper Learning

Another main learning influence of digital storytelling as the research points out is in advancing students' critical thinking and deeper learning. The research skills needed as students explore their topic to create their digital stories, require higher level thinking skills such as evaluating evidence, editing and curation, and production timelines. Students have to critically reflect on sources by using databases and combine tools in meaningful ways to create their work. Through this process deeper learning is promoted as students master core academic content drawn from the curriculum and learn to solve complex problems that arise during the production of the digital story. In many occasions the research findings suggest, students were able to reach to metacognitive understandings through engagement in digital storytelling.

3. Enhances Academic Achievement and Student Outcomes

A crucial indication of the impact of digital storytelling is the effect on students' academic performance or as often stated student outcomes. The findings from evaluation of students' performance through means of both qualitative and quantitative methods exemplify how digital storytelling in particular is effective for language learning for example for second language learners, as it enhances their writing, communication and listening comprehension skills. Such evidence complies with reports published by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which suggest that the educational uses of technology produce improved student learning outcomes.

4. Boosts Students' Engagement and Motivation

A definite conclusion for digital storytelling that is found across research findings is how the use of digital media and other tools to engage in creating digital stories, highlight the increased levels of student engagement and motivation. Technology-rich classrooms are in general producing higher levels of engagement amongst students and digital storytelling is one compelling method to achieve such performance. The perceived usefulness students see in digital storytelling as they are challenged to actively participate and complete different tasks, lead to higher levels of learning motivation. The use of appropriate resources and editing tools is instrumental to reach student motivation and possible beneficial effects this can have.

5. Empowers Students as Creators and Individuals

As creativity is acknowledged to be a critical competence for young learners to survive and succeed in today's societies, the creative use of technology through means of digital storytelling is of the most significant ways that research posits transform the student learning experience. Students as creators are given the freedom and power to select their own topic and create their digital story from scratch, using an array of tools such as apps and other software. This process allows for their expressive potential to nourish in a number of ways through design, photography, writing their story and presenting it. Students are empowered and feel more confident as they use their own voice and foster a sense of individuality and "owning" their creations. They are encouraged to expose their identity and show features of their personality.

6. Fosters Collaborative Project Based Learning

Research evidence suggests that digital storytelling can effectively promote collaborative work in the classroom. Students develop team spirit and leadership through actively working in groups to carry out their digital stories. They practice social skills as they organize their ideas together and manage their time and activities while they engage with digital content. Thus digital storytelling is a means to have students meaningfully collaborate and interact as part of an engaged community of learners.

7. Provides an Alternative Form of Assessment

One other significant indication of the transformative effect of digital storytelling is found in its use as an alternative method of assessment. An issue that has puzzled the education sectors for years and is currently undergoing change, assessment as it is derived from findings in recent research, could benefit significantly from the use of digital storytelling. A natural fit for e-portfolios, digital storytelling could be a powerful tool for a formative form of assessment rather than the mere summative which is interested in measurable skills and scores through a test or essay. Digital storytelling allows students to assemble a meaningful piece of work that is indicative of their understanding or the content they were taught and the competencies they possess. Students demonstrate their learning and growth through presenting their digital story to a real audience in a compelling manner and receive feedback in a way that is interactive and interesting to both themselves and the teachers and their peers.

8. Offers a Personalized and Authentic Learning Experience

The importance of engaging students in meaningful and authentic learning tasks that are personally relevant according to individual needs and background is only recently gaining momentum in formal learning institutions through policy making and relevant instructional approaches. Digital storytelling is such an approach to learning as it provides authentic scenarios for students to work with and accommodates for their needs and personal learning styles and background experiences, making the lesson seem valuable and impactful through concrete products. In this sense digital storytelling caters for the diversity among the student population, whether this results from cultural, linguistic or other difference.

Digital storytelling is seen as a vehicle for implementing innovative teaching and learning practices. In this article we explored how research in particular suggests it works as a powerful pedagogical learning tool for students. However, further investigation is required to establish a more holistic picture of the impact of digital storytelling in education.

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Here we get into the basics of DST and how research findings in the past decade suggest it works as a transforming tool for learning in 21st century education.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Digital storytelling is a constructivist approach to learning that emerged in the late 1980's at the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in California. This technique is a "modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling" (The Digital Storytelling Association 2011). Storytelling throughout the centuries has been a popular and compelling way to communicate and share knowledge and experiences, and has been used as a pedagogical tool long now.

In today's digitized world with teachers entering classrooms with digital natives (Prensky 2001), digital storytelling emerged as a consequence of a more systematic use of educational technology for learning. Although there is not a single definition for the term, the basic understanding is that digital storytelling uses digital tools and means such as video, audio, social media, blogging to share and communicate ideas and information effectively (Robin 2008).

How Does it Work in the Classroom?

Digital storytelling could be integrated in the curriculum across a number of subjects despite it is seen as more useful in lessons such as Language Arts. Drawing on the principles of "learning by doing" and Dewey's conceptualisations of education, to implement digital storytelling in the classroom students are actively engaged as creators to make original products that can be shared with their peers and the broader community, allowing for audience interaction and feedback. In other words students are put in the driver's seat as they navigate their way through the following four phases of the digital storytelling process: 1) Pre-production; 2) Production; 3) Post-production; and 4) Distribution.

The Center for Digital Storytelling is known for developing and disseminating the Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling: Point, Dramatic Question, Emotional Content, Pacing, Gift of your Voice, Economy and Soundtrack. These are often cited as a useful starting point for effective instructional use of digital stories in the classroom. A more recent adaptation of the Seven Elements is found in Samantha Morra's (Google certified teacher) explanation and visual on the process of digital storytelling. This process comprises 8 steps ( Figure 1):

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8 Ways Digital Storytelling Transforms Learning in 21st Century Education: The Research Evidence

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Following the proliferation of technology and multimedia an evolution in making and telling stories has resulted in digital storytelling (DST). * Research/Explore and Learn * Gather/Create images, Gather/Create Audio, Gather Create Video Little empirical research has been conducted to date that investigates the benefits of digital storytelling in the classroom although it has been acknowledged as a technology-integrated approach for meaningful and engaged student learning.

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Why, throughout human history, have people been so drawn to fiction?

Alexandre Duret-Lutz/Flickr

When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum. Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy, Austen Henry Layard, Henry Rawlinson, and Hormuzd Rassam began excavations across what is now Syria and Iraq. In the subsequent years they discovered thousands of stone fragments, which they later discovered made up 12 ancient tablets. But even after the tablet fragments had been pieced together, little had been translated. The 3,000-year-old tablets remained nearly as mysterious as when they had been buried in the ruins of Mesopotamian palaces.

An alphabet, not a language, cuneiform is incredibly difficult to translate, especially when it is on tablets that have been hidden in Middle Eastern sands for three millennia. The script is shaped triangularly ( cuneus means "wedge" in Latin) and the alphabet consists of more than 100 letters. It is used to write in Sumerian, Akkadian, Urartian, or Hittite, depending on where, when, and by whom it was written. It is also an alphabet void of vowels, punctuation, and spaces between words.

Even so, Smith decided he would be the man to crack the code. Propelled by his interests in Assyriology and biblical archaeology, Smith, who was employed as a classifier by the British Museum, taught himself Sumerian and literary Akkadian.

In 1872, after the tablets had been sitting in the British Museum's storage for nearly two decades, Smith had a breakthrough: The complex symbols were describing a story. Upon translating the 11th tablet, now widely regarded as the most important part of the story, Smith told a coworker, "I am the first person to read that after 2000 years of oblivion." The U.K. Prime Minister at the time, William Gladstone, even showed up to a lecture Smith later gave on the tablets, whereupon an audience member commented, "This must be the only occasion on which the British Prime Minister in office has attended a lecture on Babylonian literature."
Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives, a form of existential problem-solving.
The story on the 11th tablet that Smith had cracked was in fact the oldest story in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh has all the trappings of a modern story: a protagonist who goes on an arduous journey, a romance with a seductive woman, a redemptive arc, and a full cast of supporting characters.

Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, sharing them orally even before the invention of writing. In one way or another, much of people's lives are spent telling stories-often about other people. In her paper "Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective," evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar found stories' direct relevance to humans: Social topics-especially gossip-account for 65 percent of all human conversations in public places.

Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives-a form of existential problem-solving. In a 1944 study conducted by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel at Smith College, 34 college students were shown a short film in which two triangles and a circle moved across the screen and a rectangle remained stationary on one side of the screen. When asked what they saw, 33 of the 34 students anthropomorphized the shapes and created a narrative: The circle was "worried," the "little triangle" was an "innocent young thing," the big triangle was "blinded by rage and frustration." Only one student recorded that all he saw were geometric shapes on a screen.

Stories can also inform people's emotional lives. Storytelling, especially in novels, allows people to peek into someone's conscience to see how other people think. This can affirm our own beliefs and perceptions, but more often, it challenges them. Psychology researcher Dan Johnson recently published a study in Basic and Applied Social Psychology that found reading fiction significantly increased empathy towards others, especially people the readers initially perceived as "outsiders" (e.g. foreigners, people of a different race, skin color, or religion).

Interestingly, the more absorbed in the story the readers were, the more empathetic they behaved in real life. Johnson tested this by "accidentally" dropping a handful of pens when participants did not think they were being assessed. Those who had previously reported being "highly absorbed" in the story were about twice as likely to help pick up the pens.

A recent study in Science magazine adds more support to the idea that stories can help people understand others, determining that literary fiction "uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters' subjective experiences." That's to say, if you read novels, you can probably read emotions.

But why start telling stories in the first place? Their usefulness in understanding others is one reason, but another theory is that storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.
Storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.
The theory is that if I tell you a story about how to survive, you'll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, "There's an animal near that tree, so don't go over there," it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, "My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don't go over there." A narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone. In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives "up to 22 times more than facts alone."

The value humans place on narrative is made clear in the high esteem given to storytellers. Authors, actors, directors-people who spin narratives for a living are some of the most famous people in the world. Stories are a form of escapism, one that can sometimes make us better people while entertaining, but there seems to be something more at play.

Perhaps the real reason that we tell stories again and again-and endlessly praise our greatest storytellers-is because humans want to be a part of a shared history. What Smith discovered on that 11th tablet is the story of a great flood. On the 11th tablet-or the "deluge tablet"-of Gilgamesh, a character named Uta-napishtim is told by the Sumerian god Enki to abandon his worldly possessions and build a boat. He is told to bring his wife, his family, the craftsmen in his village, baby animals, and foodstuffs. It is almost the same story as Noah's Ark, as told in both the Book of Genesis and in the Quran's Suran 71.

Humans have been telling the same stories for millennia. Author Christopher Booker claims there are only seven basic plots, which are repeated over and over in film, in television, and in novels with just slight tweaks. There is the "overcoming the monster" plot ( Beowulf, War of the Worlds); "rags to riches" ( Cinderella, Jane Eyre); "the quest" ( Illiad, The Lord of the Rings); "voyage and return" ( Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland); "rebirth" ( Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol); "comedy" (ends in marriage); and "tragedy" (ends in death).

Helpful as stories can be for understanding the real world, they aren't themselves real. Is there such a thing as too much fiction? In Don Quixote, Cervantes writes of main character Alonso Quixano, "He read all night from sundown to dawn, and all day from sunup to dusk, until with virtually no sleep and so much reading he dried out his brain and lost his sanity ..."

The next morning, however, Alonso Quixano decided to turn himself into a knight. He changed himself into Don Quixote, deciding he would pave his own journey. Then he went off, "seeking adventures and doing everything that, according to his books, earlier knights had done."

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The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling

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Why, throughout human history, have people been so drawn to fiction? When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum. Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy, Austen Henry Layard, Henry Rawlinson, and Hormuzd Rassam began excavations across what is now Syria and Iraq.

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Rostering

Compatible with popular learning management systems such as Google Classroom, Clever, Canvas, ClassLink, and Schoology, Storyboard That makes organizing your students, classes, and assignments a breeze. In addition, sharing assignments with students and keeping track of their progress is as easy as clicking a button.

Real Time Collaboration

Knowing how to work together is an important part of a child's education. Students will love working in pairs and in small groups on the same storyboard!

Want your students to add writing to their storyboards? We've got tons of options for speech and text.

The storyboard creator free trial for teachers allows you to try out all of the premium features for two weeks. Thousands of copyable activities, worksheets, and posters are yours to use and keep in your storyboard library. Educators love Storyboard That because it helps students process and understand the information in a deep, meaningful way. When students storyboard, they are actively engaged in the learning process and can make connections between the text and their own lives.

Storyboards also promote higher-level thinking by encouraging students to synthesize information and think critically about what they have read. Finally, storyboards are a great way to assess student understanding because they provide a visual representation of student learning.

Storyboard That is the perfect tool for novel lesson plans and activities because it's so easy to use and extremely versatile. With Storyboard That, you can create a wide variety of storyboards such as the story from the main character's perspective, or any other character's point of view.

By combining the storyboard maker with your lesson plans, you can adhere to the curriculum and required standards, while ensuring that your students will be engaged and excited to learn. Another added bonus is that our premade lesson plans are aligned with the Common Core!

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Free Storyboarding Software - Online Storyboard Creator | StoryboardThat

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Create storyboards with our free storyboard software! ⚡ Try 1 month for $1 ✩ Filmmakers, teachers, students, & businesses all love using ❰Storyboard That❱ for storyboarding & comics online!

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Sign up for our mailing list: Stay up to date on the latest Google Maps and Google Earth tools relevant to journalists: Sign up for our Google Group.

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Write as you play

The inklewriter lets you write as you play, branching the story with choices, and then linking those branches back together again. It keeps track of which paths you've finished, and which still need to be written.

There's no set-up, no programming, no drawing diagrams - so there's nothing between you and the empty page. Oh, and it's free to use. And once written, you can share your stories with whomever you like.

Your stories, to share

Every writer needs a readership, and with inklewriter you can share your story with the world, because every story is given its own unique web-page that you can share however you want.

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The inklewriter lets you write as you play, branching the story with choices, and then linking those branches back together again. It keeps track of which paths you've finished, and which still need to be written. There's no set-up, no programming, no drawing diagrams - so there's nothing between you and the empty page.

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StoryJumper helps you share the stories in your heart and mind - both with those around you and across the world.

Becoming a published author helps you make a real impact, leave a legacy, and share engaging stories people will love.

With StoryJumper, you transform your ideas into reality - in a lasting, impactful way!

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StoryJumper: #1 rated site for creating story books

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Easiest way to create, narrate, and publish your own hardcover and paperback books. Read and listen to books from our worldwide community.

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You don't need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine, but you can extend your stories with variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript when you're ready.

Twine publishes directly to HTML, so you can post your work nearly anywhere. Anything you create with it is completely free to use any way you like, including for commercial purposes.

The latest version of Twine is 2.8.1, released 3 January 2024.

Looking for the 1.x version of Twine? It's on the IF Archive.

The Twine Reference is a guide to the Twine user interface. If you're new to Twine, start here.

Once you're familiar with Twine, you should learn more about the story format you're using. Story formats are like game engines, and determine the features you'll have access to and the way you'll write code.

The Twine Cookbook has advice on how to choose a story format and easy-to-follow examples of how to accomplish common tasks with each of Twine's built-in formats.

Each of Twine's built-in story formats has an online guide:

Chris Klimas, who created Twine and leads its development, has a Patreon.

You can also make donations in support of Twine to The Interactive Technology Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides support for the infrastructure of the interactive fiction community.

Some story format developers also accept donations. Visit the web site of the story format you use to find out how you can support continued development.

Non-financial support is important, too. You can help someone out with a question, contribute to the Cookbook, create tutorials of your own, help fix bugs in Twine or its story formats, or translate Twine's user interface to another language.

There are repos for Twine's story formats, too:

Twine is a registered trademark of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. Hosting for this web site is also provided by the IFTF.

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Twine / An open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories

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Crear Página Web gratis | Creador de Páginas Web | Wix.com

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Crea una página web gratis con Wix. Más de 900 plantillas de diseño personalizables, hosting seguro, ecommerce, herramientas de marketing y SEO. ¡Prueba gratis!

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Powered by Aardgo

Mixing it up

Plot Generator

Our aim is to inspire you to write your own stories, using common genres and themes. We'll help you set the scene then build characters, describe them, name them, and work out how they fit together in an interesting story. We draft a compelling blurb to get you started.

Quotes About Plot Generator

"This is the best thing to exist ever."
"So I used a generator to create a random story and it turned out to be hilarious."
"This is fun. A little silly. It tried a few variations and got some very quirky results. It might be good for a little inspiration, as a writing exercise, or if you're bored."
"Plot Generator is really best if used completely randomly (press 'fill in) and see what happens. We got a completely zany storyline that included robots poking each other."
"Plot Generator can be a fun way to jumpstart your plot."

How to plot a good story

1. Choose a theme from our selection of plot generators.

2. Give us some keywords to play with or let us prompt some ideas at random.

3. We automatically create a plot, title and a cover for your novel or film.

Masterpiece Generator refers to a set of text generator tools created by Aardgo. The tools are designed to be cool and entertain, but also help aspiring writers create a range of different media, including plots, lyrics for songs, poems, letters and names. Some generated content parodies existing styles and artists, whilst others are based on original structures.

Our first generator, Song Lyrics Generator was launched in 2002 as a student magazine project. After it proved popular, we expanded to include plots, and the project grew from there.

We're proud to see work we've helped you create pop up on blogs and in fun projects. We enjoy watching you read your creations on YouTube. We're currently developing a cool app based on our site.

Story Idea Generator - Random Story Maker - Novel Prompts - Create Storyline Ideas - Movies / Film Plot Lines - Story Titles - Book Plots - Creative Short Story Ideas - Synopsis Maker - Writing Prompt Generator - Story Generators

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Hilarious random plot generator. Answer a few quick questions and this website will automatically write a story or blurb for you using your keywords. Select from a variety of genres including romance, mystery or teen vampire. Plots suitable form books or films