To Top
Smarter than the average bear (or not): screen grab from my cartoon explaining the $ crisis
If last term was all about creating content, then next term will be about how to best display and navigate that content. In a way that builds on the visual storytelling framework of comics to create a long, interactive narrative, as opposed to a free-standing, autonomous infographic. Here’s the closest I’ve come to what I’m talking about – a hyperlinked version of the AIPAC comic that ran on Religion Dispatches last year.
Predominantly through Flash, despite it being the unwanted guest around Apple’s table(t). After teaching animation in flash for a few years, getting back into the rigmarole of key frames, movie clips and tweens wasn’t too hard (see pic to the left), but didn’t prepare me for the move to actionscript and incorporating interactive elements, like scrubbers (not those sorts of scrubbers, UK folks), buttons and inset animations. To give you an idea of the sort of things I’m looking for, here are just a few examples that have caught my eye:
USA today piece on mortgage comparisons between 2000 and 2007 (subtle nod to the importance of data viz in sexing up dry data)
Medecins sans frontieres piece on War in the DR Congo
In fact, I’ve just had a very productive chat with Katy about the future of interactive visual media, the challenges it faces on being accepted into the newsroom, as well as a guide for best practices in user interface design. Once again, the goal is to amalgamate the page composition of comics with a multi-layered, dynamic online experience. Katy mentioned the importance of learning HTML5 over Flash…but one thing at a time. Methinks I need to find a code-minded collaborator.
Submit a Comment