Storytelling with flash: turning "effects" into meaning

I found in the Creative Behavior site, this article written by Paul Ortchanian. Paul Ortchanian is Senior Interface Designer/ Developer and creator of reflektions.com – research in new media storytelling.

Recipe for good storytelling with flash

Here is a simple recipe for good storytelling with flash:

1. Establish emotional atmosphere: storytelling with flash is describing and then narrating. It’s about creating a mood to psychologically “immerse” the user.

2. Narrate through interactivity : interactivity is not a choice, it's a willingness to construct. The story is built on how the user relates to the environment on the page.

3. Minimize useless Navigation: In order to truly communicate your message, you need to eliminate useless vocabulary from your page. Navigation is the biggest annoyance. From site to site, users need to understand the intricacies of abstract navigation systems. Ask yourself; what is the true content? What is the user’s interest?

In Conclusion, one must not forget that above all, ATTITUDE is the basis of storytelling. Think about it as telling a story to a 5 year old child before he goes to bed. The story might be written on the pages of the book you are reading, yet without Imagination, Amazement, Magic, Energy, Feeling, Interactivity, Emotion and Creativity….you’ll never get to astound your 5 year old. The same goes with storytelling with flash, above the complex Action Scripting, animation tweenings, design and flash intricacies, storytelling with flash is a question of having the right ATTITUDE.

Example: Colors Magazine Issue 44 : Choi Hung

Project 6: How to fly a kite

Seeing a kite dancing in the air brings good thoughts. Kites give people hope, can even help your imagination flight and help to create fun thoughts. Just what I need for my process.

Searching in the internet I found the image of a wooden lay figure standing on a chair, flying a laptop like a kite by photographer Christopher Gould, GREAT WORK!!

Project 4: Classification

What color is your Café?
Café means more than coffee in Latin America. Coffee has always played an important role in history, literature and everyday life in this region. The coffee industry has had a significant effect on the cultures where it is produced and consumed, but it is in the color and the way coffee effects everyday life that makes it a central theme to Latin American life, prominently referenced in poetry, fiction, and regional history.

Be prepared because when you enter a café and order coffee in Latin America, they will ask what type of coffee you want? What they are really asking is: What color do you want? Coffee is used to describe the skin color of Latin American people, the result of the mixing of races and colors between mulatos and Spanish. On a cultural level, color terminology for race has evolved, and is now used as reference for many things, including types of café.

Based on color variations of human skin tone and traditions, the categories depend on the strength and the proportion of milk. To those who are accustomed to a 12 oz. “tall” cup of coffee being the smallest available size, you may be surprised by the immensely popular Latin America “cafecito”, which is smaller than your average shot of tequila. These intensely flavorful mini-coffees, which cost just a few cents, are a daily treat for many Latin Americans. You can find a cafecito, coffee fix, or a café in many small grocery stores, cafeterias or from street vendors, who carry thermoses full of coffee up and down the overcrowded streets in the most Latin American cities.

GUAYOYO
The Spaniards brought African slaves to Latin America during times of conquest. The native people called the black skin color ouayo, which in time translated to guayoyo. Is a black concentrated coffee beverage brewed by forcing very hot water under high pressure through coffee that has been ground to a consistency between extremely fine and powder. The defining characteristics of this coffee include a thicker consistency than drip coffee, a higher amount of dissolved solids than drip coffee per relative volume, and a serving size that is usually measured in shots.

The guayoyo can be prepared clear or dark and the quality depends in these three major parts: the heart, body, and reddish-brown foam that floats on the surface of the coffee. The dark guayoyo is a short black coffee that is darker and thick, and it is very foamy.

MARRÓN
Means brown in Spanish and is the same word that has been used in the 20th and 21st centuries to describe mixed race Latin Americans. When “black” and “white” humans mix the result is usually some type of “brown”. It’s this brown to refer to a coffee drink with drops of milk served in a glass or a medium cup.

There are two different kinds of Marrón coffees, light brown and dark brown, which is determined by the amount of milk added. Marroncito is the same coffee but served in a small glass or shot.

CAFÉ CON LECHE
Is a coffee-based beverage, which translated from Spanish, literally means "coffee with milk." Similar to the French café au lait and the Italian caffè e latte, café con leche is a Spanish coffee beverage consisting of strong or bold coffee (sometimes espresso) mixed with scalded milk. It is also served with sugar mixed according to taste. The beverage is extremely common in many Latin American countries and communities around the world and is normally served with breakfast.

TETERO
The translated to English word tetero means baby bottle and it refers to the whiter color that this type of coffee has. In Latin American the white populations are descendants of 16th century to 19th century colonial era and post-independence immigrants. White people are distinguished by pale skin which is the color of tetero. In tetero milk is hardly painted with coffee, which gives you a flavor to coffee beverage.

Bottom line, there is a coffee-color tradition. In every block you can find a place to drink coffee, in bakeries, tiny restaurants, ice-cream shops and, of course coffee shops large and small. The best thing is than even in the most modest places you can get a delicious gourmet cup of coffee at a reasonable price. So there you have it a whole variety of coffee for drinking.

You can also ask for the precise temperature you want. A con leche caliente (hot) or a con leche tibio (tepid). They don’ do the cold coffees. But the very best thing is that you can ask for your coffee exactly the way you want. Just ask por favor, (please) and enjoy.

Project 5: Bambola & Occhio

These are my characters in the story, Bambola and Occhio.
It's incredible that although I was really concerned trying to create characters more free form or fun, my realistic and conscious side keeps pushing me to think the reason for every detail. This was easier when I was a child.

Show+Tell: UAMOU

In my everyday search for new up illustration books and coming toys, 'Uamou' the unique character came across, created by Japanese Illustrator and Animator Ayako Takagi. Ayako has also produced a popular selling comic series as well as an excellent range of toys, which are proving to be a real success.

Impressed with the style and beautiful simplicity of these great little characters, I did a little research to find out more about what inspired her to create the Uamou comic, books and toys. 'Uamou' come from a combination of a boy and a devil. In Chinese devil have a similar sounding to Uamou and that's where the name is from.

Other inspirations for this project are certainly Jim Woodring (comic and Toy), Michael Sowa (Germany), Yury Norstein (Russia) director of Tale of Tales a 1979 Sovietic animated film: youtube video, Shigeru Mizuki (Japan) and Doraemon which was the first anime series that we watch at home as child's. Is about a robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time to aid a schoolboy, Nobita Nobi. Good!

Texas is back to being Mexican! Ops! Not anymore

The billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency Teran\TBWA created for Swedish Absolut Vodka which ran in Mexico, shows a map of the border of Mexico and the United States where it stood before the Mexican-American War of 1848.

Seeing over the obstacles

I'm finished with my Assignment 2, and I have to admit that I NOW THINK TO MUCH before writing anything. OK Assignment 3 here I come. This is what I wrote for my profile. I'd love feedback please.

Seeing over the obstacles.

Marisol Cano-Ordóñez is a Post Doctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital. When I started this interview, I thought I would write on "macular degeneration" which is Dr. Cano-Ordóñez’s research interest. However, as I sat and listened to Dr. Cano’s interview, I came to believe that there was something else to talk about.

In the summer of 2004, Marisol Cano-Ordóñez (“Dr. Cano”), just married, arrived in Baltimore from Venezuela by herself to complete a post doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Like many immigrants, she confronted the common obstacles of being alien or an “other.” She experienced loneliness and homesickness, missing her husband, family and friends. The language barriers and learning all the new technical language in English for medicine. It was and still is very difficult sometimes but she said she was ready to fight against them.

“It doesn’t really matter what country you are from, life is full of obstacles that defeat us at every turn” she said. "But every day, everything I do I give it my best. I always had hopes, I had dreams. I just knew that if you keep working hard, things are going to turn around your way. I had no doubt in myself".

At work she is always under pressure to complete materials, making experiments that are trying to find a cure for macular degeneration and finishing projects that can show great medical results. She feels that these environments have made her create and adopt a new attitude in her life and work that have helped her to confront the every day obstacles. “The challenge is to find the way for the solution. I will go around, under and over the problem. Been persistence and with determination will get you from where you are to where you want to be, or very close to it”.

Dr. Cano encouraged her husband and two-year old baby girl to take this idea as their motor, “You just take a leap of faith, knowing there's no safer bet than one on yourself. Care about trying".