My BFA project will be an Interactive Multimedia piece.
Through my final year here, at Bowling Green State University I will be using my time to create an interactive online storybook/animation. The novel will be based on a very popular Chinese story titled Journey to the West. I will create a webpage where the audience can scroll around the website and depending on what they click a short animation will play introducing the four main characters in the story and their origin and how they begin their journey to the west to achieve enlightenment. The website’s main page where depict a basic map/ landscape of where each character’s origin takes place. Each location will hold a special item the audience must identify by moving the mouse around to find the moving item, once they click on it the character will pop up and their origin will start to play. After the audience have identify each item and how they are significant to the character the page will change into another page but instead of a map like illustration it will be the main characters with their legs moving in place (this is to represent the start of their adventure to the west). So, the entire project will solely focus on the first few chapters of the book, like the beginning of a hero’s journey.
More details and research information regarding the project
I really love this story as a child and I still enjoy to this day and Journey to the West is heavily rooted into Chinese popular culture, there’s usually always a newly adapted movie based on the characters in the book, one being Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) being the most popular. I often see it being referenced even today, such as in League of Legends there’s a character literally named Sun Wukong that share many of the same features and traits of the Wukong in the story. But instead of focusing on the mainstream aspect of the story and it’s characters I want to take it back to the 80/90’s of old Chinese animation and cartoons. I really love the colors and artistic style of the animation during that time and I hope to achieve somewhat of a likeness to it. I will also focus on the significance of the color used for each character because, in Chinese opera, colors are used to show the audience what type of personality each character has and whether their role is a friend, a foe, or someone who is a bystander.
Once the project is finished I wish to display it on a large monitor, but I will decorate the monitor like an old Chinese shadow puppet theatre box with a wireless mouse attached to it and the viewers can sit or stand in front of the screen and interact with the website.
List of equipment:
Large monitor/ t.v
Wireless mouse (I already have one)
Cardboard boxes (I have some)
Paint
Glitter
Table
Two chairs