The Interactive Cartoon Strip is intended for adolescent╤twelve years and older╤and adult audiences.
The title is to be a work of interactive fiction. The encounter between the traditional cartoon and the possibilities offered by multimedia allow for the creation of exciting new forms of expression.
Stephen is a young and talented photographer who has yet to make his reputation. He is hopelessly in love with Annabella, the world╒s most beautiful model, seen on posters, in magazines, on television . . . everywhere!
The player, exploring the world of Stephen, has to guide his every step. He has to show great calmness and ingenuity, avoiding numerous traps and temptations, in order to lead him to fame and glory. The task is not made any easier by Stephen himself, who is often absentminded, does not always have good luck, and frequently neglects taking the player╒s good advice by not doing what he is told. Then Stephen has this bad habit of poking his telephoto lens through openings better left shut . . . .
The scenario is very rich, containing a great number of bifurcations. Stephen traverses, and photographs, a variety of environments, all contained within a chaotic metropolis╤a frenzied mixture of Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and New York.
Stephen╒s story follows one course or another according to the player╒s choices. The player might wish to try to bring Stephen and Annabella together, win him professional acclaim as a photographer (he might even win the Pulitzer Prize!), or allow him to make a fortune in real estate (by finally selling the little house lodged between the downtown skyscrapers he inherited from his grandmother). Alternately, the player might simply visit the town with him, inviting whatever happy or unhappy encounters circumstance might bring.
The success of the title will depend on the association of irreproachable technical quality with a sufficiently elaborate story that offers a great number of possibilities. Technically, original and unexpected manipulation of the cartoon form will combine graphics and animation with a soundtrack full of surprises.
As far as Stephen is concerned, the player will be allowed to identify with a sympathetic, resourceful personality facing a complicated modern world where success does not come easily.
About the Authors
The demonstration prototype is the work of Sylvie Rabie, Joseph Rabie, Ivan Roux, and Alexis Gauthier.
MAGELIS is a multimedia creation studio in which the talent and means necessary for high quality electronic publishing are brought together.
City of dreams, realm of mind, magic, imagination╤such fabulous possibilities hide behind the acronyms like CD-ROM or MPEG. A work of multimedia is an uncharted metropolis that might be explored via myriad paths╤take the avenue of present times right to your destination, or ramble enthralled through the halls and galleries of futures past . . .
MAGELIS offers different products and services:
Title production covers all subjects, both fiction and documentary-interactive fiction, edutainment, cultural topics, and so forth. Such works might be for the general public or for a more restrained audience.
Studio services cover the entire chain of multimedia creation: authoring, scenario-writing, graphics, video, production, et cetera. We offer our services to traditional publishers seeking to publish on electronic platforms and provide a framework within which outside authors will find all the resources necessary for product creation.
The Demonstration Prototype
The prototype can be run on a Macintosh Quadra (or similarly powerful Macintosh) with a 21-inch screen displaying 256 colors.
This is a short version, starting when Stephen is woken abruptly from a good dream (about Annabella, of course), and has seven different endings.
In this demonstration version we did not want to elaborate the entire story, but rather showed the graphic and narrative possibilities found in the final CD-ROM version.
The whole story takes place on a single ╥page,╙ on which the contents of certain panels vary according to the story. Each panel of the cartoon strip is animated, the action between certain of them linked by an ongoing animation.
The player must choose on frequent occasions what Stephen will do next: get up or stay in bed, what subject of conversation to have with Annabella, which coffee house to visit. The choices made determine whether the story╒s ending will be more or less happy. The scenario takes between five and ten minutes to reach one of the possible endings. It takes a good half hour to explore the cartoon-strip thoroughly.
