Self-Assessment

Self-Assessment: Project 2

I took the idea of the supernatural woods from the first project, and made it into an interactive story. The research and the conversation for this project inspired me to create this type of interactivity. I had a strong desire to create an interactive story with a clear narrative that also encourages the user to explore the story.

During the duration of this project, I made a lot of changes to my plan, and found out that my goal was too ambitious. The first step I took was to map out the paths, and figure out the endings. I want the user to choose the paths, and see where it will lead them. Originally I had more paths and endings, but as I created the images I realized that the I would have make the number of paths and endings smaller. After I planned it out, I created the components such as the background, gifs, and still images. I had to make small animations for some of the objects and characters in the story, which took a little more time than I originally thought. Then I worked on animating the endings; the interactive story has three endings that are good, bad, or in-between. Then I put all the items I made together in a six page website with three YouTube videos. As I worked on all the components that went into this website, I encountered many different problems and found myself making changes in the plan in order to finish the project in time. I learned that gifs that are transparent with a fuzzy edge would have white spots around or in the image. I had to edit the gifs and put black behind them to make it look transparent. Next time, I will have to avoid making the gif transparent. I learned that making a button that changes its own appearance requires some coding, and Dreamweaver does not have tools to make it easier. I ended up not doing it since I had little time to figure out the code. I also did not make the narrative clear because I was focused on making the visual elements of the interactive story. Also in the planning stages, I had a very rough story idea that ended up changing throughout the process of making the components.

The project told the user a little about the story such as the location and the idea that the woods have some supernatural beings; however, it is not clear why the user is lost in the woods. The interactive elements did not blend in with the background due to the problem of transparent gif. Even though the art style is not realistic it still looked a little odd. The interactive story had the consistent spooky horror theme however; I think it could have been scarier and more engaging for the user. I think the whole interactive story should have been focusing on the narrative, but I really wanted to emphasis the interaction between the user and the artwork. I should have made time to put some audio in the website because it would have made the environment scarier and have more life. I think I still did a good job on this project with the time limit, the limitation of the programs, and the mistakes and problems I encountered. I think the interactive objects were nicely drawn and they worked well as a rollover object. I think I deserve at least a B since this was the first time I made something that involved lots of different components in Dreamweaver.