In Spring 2020, MCOM 221: Creative Digital Media Storytelling undertook a project in generative character, narrative, and story world development. The generated texts are compiled on the blog “International Rejects.”
Character Generator
Starting with a JavaScript-based list generator, students collected media materials to convertor the script into a multiple character generator using a series of variable arrays.
Students selected 75 faces from AI Generated Face collections available online, to use as profile pictures. Names were generated from syllabic breakdowns of class-member first and last names.
Additional biographical details – job, hometown, hobbies; favorite food, movies, books – were collected through an online form, broken down, and incorporated into variable arrays for the character generator.
YOU CAN DEMO THE CHARACTER GENERATOR HERE.
Each class member selected a generated character they would portray on the International Rejects blog.
Assignments included posting memes related to the attributes of the selected character; posting recipes based on the character’s generated favorite food; cross-linked posts between group members relating a road trip or travel adventure.
Narrative Generator
Using the Periodic Table of Storytelling as a reference, the class produced Digital cards – variations on Magic cards customized and processed using the online Cardsmith MTG Card Generator – representing character attributes and narrative plot points.
YOU CAN DEMO THE FRAMEWORK GENERATOR HERE.
Students then used the generator to develop Flash Fiction; going on to produce longer narrative forms, sequenced over a number of interlinked blog posts.
The longer narratives include: