A NEW WAY TO NAVIGATE

Originally the childhoodstories were drawn as a Graphic-Novel. That are novels that do have a sort of a comicbook design. But comicbooks do need, especially if thy do have a complex content, some kind of language compensation. Normally speechballoons are used (sometimes things that are even less pleasant to look at). But I thought that might have devaluated the stories being told. At the same time telling differnt stories that develop simultaneously requires a more specific way of telling stories, that is normally achieved with compensation through speech.That's why I looked for new ways of storytelling, and at that point nonlinear navigation seemed a very good idea.

But how is it possible do straightenup the confusions that do come up with nolinear drama, and still give the user a chance to follow the characters that lead through the story.

The first idea was a nonlinear slideshow. Here and there some soundeffects would be used to undeline different moods. But it didn't work out in principal. The user, taught by internet culture does try to click through a story at top speed. But this way, the user lost track all too soon. So more soundeffects were used and some dialogues added. But now a strange difference turned up between abstracted artwork and naturalistic sounds. The story looked rather bumpy. It stuttered but didn't talk. It was Professor Klaus Armruster's idea to use music to drag the viewer into the pictures and to use voiceovers to tell in words what can't be explained in images. The system developed by these changes would allow the user to consume the whole story while being lead by the voices, this without clicking on too fast.

The nonliearity is gained by connecting different moduls. These are recognized by sharp/ blur rollovers inside certain frames. By pressing the BACKSPACE key on can always jump back to that position, to view the other way.

By pressing the RETURN-key the user is getting on to the mindmap. Here You those chapters are marked that the user already viewed. By pressing the BACKSPACE-key the User can get to the scene last viewed. You can also save and load bookmarks of the story from here. The Childhoodstories start with AIRRAID, the button is situated in the top left corner of the picture below.

While the picture above shows the start of the story, the one below shows the state of the mindmap with all chapters being viewed.