When we are dealing with matters of human behaviour, we increasingly need to show humans talking. Use of audio is preferable, but presents many logistical challenges. Our current approach could be improved:
- Are the text boxes too clumsy?
- How can learners control the speed?
- How can learners replay the conversation?
- Why aren't the characters moving?
One solution may be to adopt a comic strip style approach, using a sequence of drawings to tell a story. Speech bubbles (or balloons) are used to represent the speech or thoughts of a given character.
Possible benefits of this approach are that it would completely remove the need for a slider and the ability for a speed control, making it simpler and quicker for the user. In addition, it forces the writer to keep their text succinct.
However, we do need to consider that this approach is more design intensive. A key to its success is that it’s very visual and there’s a lot of movement from the characters.
Image taken from Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.
One of our main challenges is the design of characters - stock libraries don't always meet our requirements (see below), taking internal shots is not a scalable solution, and the use of poser characters is too design intensive.
Image taken from Cathy Moore's blog.
Resources
- Comic Life lets you create comics from pictures. Drag in your pictures, captions, lettering text (‘ka-blam!'), and speech balloons and your work is done!
- Making Comics, by Scott McCloud is a must-see guide to graphic storytelling.
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