IRIS Summerschool 2011: Interactive Story Creation
August 19th - 24th, 2011 (Friday to Wednesday)Welcome in Wiesbaden: 18th August 18:00
Departure: 25th August
Location: RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden, Germany
Media Campus, Unter den Eichen 5, 65195 Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is 30 minutes west of Frankfurt International Airport
Organisers: Steve Hoffmann, Ulrike Spierling (Hochschule RheinMain, University o.A.S.)
Lecturers and coaches: (subject to changes) Steve Hoffmann, Gregor Mehlmann, Paolo Petta, David Pizzi, Stefan Rank, Ulrike Spierling, Georg Struck, Nicolas Szilas
Target groups: Students, fellow colleagues, professionals and reseachers with an intermediate and advanced level of creative experience in any storytelling discipline (such as film, video games, RPG etc.) or in interactive story creation.
We are aiming our presentation styles and contents at authors / creators / designers / writers of interactive story content. There are no prerequisites in computer science or programming. However, some of the concepts are formal or technical by their structure and some interest in that is helpful.
Take away: You experience ways to structure your story ideas so that interactions within the storyworld are enabled and lead to sensemaking responses. The goal is to reach higher flexibility and variability of possible resulting plots than in traditional branching approaches.
In project-based exercises, you find out how to turn your story into a dynamic model to be run with various story engines, and how these engines provide technical support to increase that desired variability. Finally, even if you are unlikely to use digital story engines in the near future, the course material can help you to better analyse your own interactive story ideas.
Schedule
Summerschool 2011 on "Interactive Story Creation"
The 1-week course is organised as follows:
- Mornings: Plenary sessions / Expert lectures from several perspectives (story design and technical concepts)
- Afternoons: Small
group sessions / Practical work with a selection of authoring tools and
story engines - starting out with non-digital conception and
prototyping.
Advance Programme (subject to changes):
Day 1: 19 August (Fri): Introduction / Project work introduction
Day 2: 20 August (Sat): Modelling characters / Project work
Day 3: 21 August (Sun): Modelling interactive dialogue and language / Project work
Day 4: 22 August (Mon): Modelling plots and plans / Interim project presentations
Day 5: 23 August (Tue): Modelling story structures / Project work
Day 6: 24 August (Wed): Sharing experiences / Project presentations / Social event
Available Interactive Storytelling systems (subject to changes):
- Emo-Emma Authoring Tool (University of Teesside)
- Modelling a storyworld based on planning
- IDtension (University of Geneva)
- Modelling a storyworld based on goals, tasks and obstacles
- Scenemaker/AAA (University of Augsburg)
- Modelling a storyworld based on finite states
- Scenejo (RheinMain University Wiesbaden)
- Modelling a conversational storyworld
Objectives of the practical project parts:
You are invited to think of a rough interactive story idea before the event, and pitch an outline on the first day. In small groups, we will then together analyse these outlines and transform them into a conception for interactive storytelling with certain modelling approaches, allowing further implementation with one of our story engines.
Introductory tutorials and hands-on help for each tool and modelling approach are available. However, significant parts of the conception will be done without digital authoring tools, for example with paper prototyping, role playing or text editors. In close collaboration with the story engineers, we are then able to finally implement test versions of the conception.
Groups can either stay together the whole week using one modelling approach or optionally switch after the interim presentations.
More detailed information will be provided upon application/registration.
Registration (closed)
Registration to the IRIS Summerschool 2011 on "Interactive Story Creation"
For application, please fill the Application Form and send it by email to us. We will get back to you with further instructions.
Attendance of the summer school is free of charge, but the participant number is
limited.