research into interactive media and fantasy (Plus Fantasy Ideas)

this post will be dedicated to my research and experimentation into the world of interactive media as well as a general fantasy research (plus I’ll get to show off some Ideas that I’ll be cooking up for this project)

the first thing I’m doing is experimenting with creating a Wix website (which means yet another account) to see weather or not I’d want to create a website in the actual project, after that will be the fantasy research

so now I’m making a Wix account (and by extension a website), in this screen shot

in this screenshot i’m selecting a template for my website

I selected the graphic design template because, you know, I’ve made a lot of graphics

right now I’m using editing using text tools

hey. look at that, I can do some effects on the text

colours too? This is starting to get fancy

One thing that may be an issue is that It takes a while to load the website once you click “edit website”

ok, so first things first. I need to get rid of the default Media

bumping into load times again

I’ve chosen these 4 from The Space-ventures

look at that, image description and linking tools

so Now Bitris and the boys are here

Interesting, I wonder If I can make this border scaling thing into a feature.

So these menus items can be edited (though this particular screen shot doesn’t show a super interesting feature)

hold up, I can change the background for this thing? I might be able to do something with this (maybe make a fantasy landscape in Dreams PS4 and then export it as an image to use here)

and on top of that I can do parallax scroll and decide which part of the picture is visible. maybe this website thing isn’t such a bad Idea after all

t-t-the menus can be ANIMATED?! I must have hit the jackpot

and on top of that these animations are customisable too?! which reality does this come from?

so the duration limit is 4 seconds.

huh, I can play around with the menu’s design for further customization

some light stretching

well look at all this I can add, though I do need to be careful that I don’t use the premium features of course

And I could go further on, but then I’d have no time to do actual fantasy Research. Speaking of…

The Fantasy Research

When most people think of fantasy they tend to think of that genre with such conventions as Elves, Dragons and a few fairies sprinkled in there, when in reality (while the genre thing is very much real) it’s more of an abstraction of the unreal and the imaginary, this means that any fantastical character (like say a Mechanic who can use his spanner shaped hair to solve problems or even a cartoon sheep with super powers) and/or world could be considered fantasy without being labelled as a part of the fantasy genre.

For Example, my boy Super Sheep would be considered a fantasy character because he’s not a real person, he’s an anthropomorphic cartoon sheep but he’s not a part of the fantasy genre because I made him a cartoon super hero

where as Legolas from the Lord Of The Rings Franchise would be considered a fantasy character in both regards (the imagination definition and the genre) because he’s an elf warrior who wields a bow and arrows

with that being said, let’s look at some products that fit into the theme of fantasy (in terms of both the abstraction and the genre) and how they fit into this theme.

our first example of a fantasy story might not seem super relevant at first but bare with me, this example comes in the form of the Toy Story (which first started in 1995) franchise

here’s the Toy Story Trailer

The reason I bring this up is because of the fact that Toys come to life in this movie (which I’m sure you’re all aware doesn’t actually happen), this is the main fantastical element of that particular film series and thus it’s the driving force behind the plots and locations of those movies (they also tend to mainly stick with what actually happens in life, say for the living toys thing which makes them low fantasy films), this is evident in where our heroes go throughout the movies, in the first, we’re taken between two kids bedrooms, a pizza restaurant and a moving van

here’s a scene from Andy’s room

Pizza Planet (where we also go into a claw machine)

Sid’s House

the second one takes our characters to a Toy Store, an airport and a collector’s apartment room

Al’s Toy Barn

Al’s Apartment

The Airport

the third takes us to a daycare and a Dump

Welcome to Sunny Side Folks

oh no, it’s the dump

and the forth movie takes us to a state carnival and an antique shop.

Second Chance Antiques where they gotta rescue Forky (who actually has an interesting dynamic with Gabby Gabby, who is an old antique)

The State Carnival where we meet a pair of carnival toys who want a kid to call their own.

This Toys come to life idea also informs the characters (as well as their abilities) we meet throughout these movies because in the first one we meet Sid’s mutilated toys, a deluded spaceman action figure, a jealous pull string cowboy doll and even a potato head who can come apart, in the second one we meet some collectors items (which as it turns out, woody is one of), in the third movie we meet an evil teddy bear who runs a daycare centre and the forth gives us forky, a spork created by Bonnie who has an existential crisis about his new Identity as a toy. In other words, these movies use their fantastical concept to inform their characters and their themes. (those being, feared obsolescence, abandonment and the concept of the kids growing up)

another example of a fantasy story (in the imagination sense) is The Lego Movie

here’s this film’s trailer

I believe The Lego Movie counts because of the fact that it’s about sentient LEGO people who can manipulate the world around them because it’s made of LEGO bricks trying to stop an evil business man from gluing the whole universe together, the main theme here is creative freedom vs following the instructions, this is clever because while lots of people play with LEGO, everyone plays with it differently with some preferring to follow the instructions to build what’s on the box while other people who like to take the bricks and build whatever zany thing their imaginations can conquer up. This theme is represented beautifully through the dynamic between Emmet (who is a normal everyday construction worker) and The Master Builders, (people such as Wyldstyle and Batman) where Emmet likes to follow the instructions he’s given and do whatever everyone else is doing, the Master Builders take what’s around them and just make something new out of it regardless as to whether or not it will stay in one piece for very long because they can always build something else later. you can find some examples that I feel demonstrate this dynamic throughout the movie.

as you can see in this scene where Wyldstyle builds a moterbike to escape from Bricksburg with Emmet, you can see how Emmet (who is new to all of this) is overwhelmed by the situation and gets confused when she turns the bike into a flying vehicle.

this first double Decker couch scene explains to us about how Emmet lacks creativity and his new master builder buddies think that it’s a bad idea, however…

…Later on in the movie, it is shown that after a submarine crash the only thing that stays in one piece is the double Decker couch, not only that, but our heroes are able to hide in it and remain undetected

But I should probably start covering something else before this post becomes a thesis on the Lego Movie, like for example…

you know, the one that isn’t out yet

here’s the trailer for that one

This film stars a pair of elf brothers named Ian and Barley who have to fully resurrect their father within 24 hours so that they can spend the day with him, the film takes place in a more conventional high fantasy world, what with all the elves, unicorns and other mythic beasts running around, but they have modern technology (which negates the need for actual magic, though it does get used in this adventure) such as smart phones and most of these creatures do human things. This in turn creates a contrast from what you’d expect from a normal fantasy story with the human like way most of the creatures live, some of them (as is the case with our heroes) have domesticated dragons that breath fire, which now that I think about it, begs the question of how the houses that have these dragons haven’t been burnt down immediately, The Characters pay literal Troll Tolls (like that one scene in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) and they drive around in cars. The Trailer actually shows this contrast near the beginning where at first we see a traditional Unicorn flying around and afterwards some mermaids swimming around, and then afterwards it shows us an areoplane flying over head and pans down to the city where we see then see a newspaper get delivered to a troll as a centaur jogs past.

These clever subversions to the fantasy genre makes the concept of this film quite the de-construction of the fantasy genre even if the actual film turns out not to (which seems like a very real possibility), but hey, I think it’s still going to be a good movie none the less.

as you can see, fantasy can encompass a lot of media, from talking toys to elves trying to revive their dads to even talking pocket monsters trying to solve mysteries, there’s a whole multiverse of Ideas to play with here. This actually gives me a few Ideas that mainly involve an elf, a cowboy and a pop star trying to save the multiverse, I could make a good game or site out of that.