[DAY 1] [RESEARCH] Interactive Comics

All over the internet, there is a wide range of Interactivity which can be used and tampered with. Such things as Interactive Comics which bloomed into existence as Game Books in the late 1940's (however, it is said that it's hard to pin an exact date, as there could have been earlier periods of these books). Choose your own adventure and see where you end up in the world designated inside the book itself. However, Interactive Comics enable you to only see the screens you have selected and moved onto instead of a bunch of text streamed onto one page.
Game Books took its original layout from a Phycologist, B. F. Skinner who devised a educational book of questions, answers and comments. Students were aloud to pick and scan each page directly and conclude their own answers to questions. If they were to pick the wrong answer, they would arrive to a page which comments on why the answer they chose was wrong and shows how to learn the right answer. This sort of technique quickly turned into the TutorText series and was used between 1950 to the 1970's, the times where computers weren't as popular, or even as intelligent as they are today. 


In this day and age we have Interactive Comics, not all Game Books are gone these days but Interactivity has reined over books and pages. It seems there is a lot of Interactivity comics scattered around sites like Newgrounds,  DeviantART, and even Youtube where you can create separate videos that are obtainable when hot spotted on the main video itself, chaining video to video. 
I feel, because of this bloom of interactivity on the internet, Interactive Comics have a lot of attention concerning artists and animators because it is a nice way to story build and get the reader thinking; "Do I really want this to happen?" Attachment to things, understanding what is going on in the story, making the main protagonist(s) likeable or dislikeable; these are all key things to make a story interesting.
It's quite complicated, dealing with many more stories then just one at one single time, which is why there's many mind maps and a chart of what is dealt with at what time, and if what action is taken by the reader/player does what to the storyline.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at Interactive Comics

Dead on Arrival

Dead on Arrival is based on a 1940's film called Noir, and is about a man reporting his own murder to the police. The rest of the story goes back into flash backs of past events which finally leads to the death of the main protagonist. The interactivity determines who is actually the murderer and how the main character finds out that he has indeed been fataly poisoned. At the end of the comic protagonist dies from the poisoning.

I feel the style of this comic is really amazing, yet very confusing the first time playing it. However, there's names on the bottom of the comic showing detailed documents of each character you will meet during the story, and whether they can be trusted. 

The Nisoor Square Shootings

This is more of an information piece, different stories and snippets, rather then an interactive comic. However it has the qualities of storyline which change when you slide the time bar to a different time. You can also hover over the glowing hotspots to view parts of the story in specific areas. The Nisoor Square Shootings is based off of a true story titled "The Blackwater Shootings". The storyline was built specifically on different perspectives (news reports, witnesses, etc.) of the happenings that occured in Nissoor Square, and pieced together into one Comic. It is stated on the website that the creator intends, for each of his comics, to shine light on stories that'll possibly never be heard by the people who were witness to such tragedy.  
I like the idea of using a real story to tell a hidden tale of a persons story, or a whole lot of people in this case, and using each perspective to make something new.

Never Mind The Bullets

Never Mind The Bullets isn't interactive in the way I am looking for, however, its soul purpose was to show the beauty of HTML5 in honour of the release of Internet Explorer 9. When you navigate your mouse across the comic page, the page moves, animates itself with your mouse movement. The story is about a man called Bill 'One Shot' Collins who arrives at a town (LongHorn Gush) pestered by a troublesome gang 'The Red Bandanna'. Mr. Collins catches wind of this gang and considers taking them out, to return peace to the town. 
Like I have said before, this comic didn't have the style of story I was really looking for, but the promotion of HTML5 is quite an inspiration.