Last week, I submitted “Mirror Mirror,” a 3rd person narrative about an interaction between a pair of split personalities within a single body. In keeping with some recently read e-Lit, I have several methods in mind to enhance the story with digital media:
Firstly, the story would be improved by the presence of images. Keeping with the slightly vague approach to describing the characters, the images would serve as first person views of the scene, focusing on the mirror and the shattered/split reflections in it, providing some level of story immersion for the reader, while still maintaining the mystery, though perhaps providing a subtle hint as to the purpose of the theming.
Animating these panes subtly to add a hint of depth and life would further add to the feel, particularly if this animation were to rely on the position of the mouse on the screen. In this way, the user’s point of interaction (the cursor), becomes their point of view, shifting the perspective, for instance, as if the viewer were moving with the cursor. This would further immerse the viewer in the individual roles, but cause them to feel feel isolated from the counterpart figures always across the mirror. In Cruising, by Ingrid Ankerson, the author uses a similar interactive mouse-based animation to engage the reader into finding their own view. The act of putting effort into controlling the view invests the viewer further in the act of reading, even if no persona is intended to be represented.
Additional uses for animation in general might be to have the main banner of the page be reversed or ‘mirrored’ when hovered over. This could potentially make the user wonder at the meaning of the title in the context of self-reflection
‘The story, being primarily composed of dialog, is essentially a series of quotes from alternating sources. To capture this feel, each image/quote pair will be clickable to link to the next, capturing the back and forth feel to the exchange. As the user clicks from one view of the mirror to the next, it may feel, to the user, as if they are repeatedly crossing the mirror.
The dialog is primarily between the two main highly contrasting characters. A good method for showing this would be to have opposing themes to the pages that, depending on the current speaker would exhibit different ambient/background properties. The ‘left’ character, is for instance, slightly angrier and less verbose, and less orderly than the ‘right character. These themes could be represented in the background colors, image, and the style or font of the text. Red vs. Blue, sharp lines vs. rounded corners, serif vs. sans-serif etc.
Choice of background sound/music would also contribute significantly to the distinct themes, making them even more starkly different, and adding to the perception of the two characters as distinct people.
HTML Tips/Resources:
- http://www.html.net/
- learn CSS (and maybe php and javascript if you feel like it)
- focus on content in your HTML, do your formatting with CSS…
- use the view source/inspect element functions in your browser to view other web-pages, and error check your own.