Isadora

This week we looked into a software package called Isadora. Looking back I don't think I will be using Isadora as although I appreciate that it is a really good product and it has many uses that are simple to use if you learn everything, I still think that it isn't for me and would prove to be difficult for me over all. But I still think it is great and I enjoyed exploring it!

Mark talked to us initially about Isadora and what it was, giving a brief background and then he showed us the Troikatronix website, which is where we had to download the Isadora software from.

We then looked at a number of examples where Isadora is used, which I found quite useful as it gave me a sense of perspective, as before I wasn't sure in what way the software was being used! - Kids and Isadora

We also looked at a video which used sound to trigger graphics using Isadora. This to me was a more useful way of using Isadora and I believe that some musicians use this software when doing performances to give another element to their show. If I was to do Isadora I would have liked to use it this way, but I know that this might have taken quite a long time and that is something I did not have!

Once we had our talk, as always we got into groups, random this time which I enjoyed as I like working with different people for different projects. In our groups we brainstormed ideas and then decided we wanted to do a kind of game/interactive narrative where a girl misses the train home and has to find her way back to her friends house, trying to avoid getting killed! The reason this was quite a dark scenario was because our brief included the element of Halloween, so there had to be some sort of scary aspect to the piece.

Technically our idea involved all POV shots, with options at each stage of the narrative, for example, the character could choose to go down a dark alley or up a lit street, by using the left and right arrows. As we planned our piece we realised that the more options we had at each point of the story the more complex the piece would get, which would then involve more time creating, which once again we did not have, so we had to simplify things a little and leave out a couple of stages of the narrative. We drew out our plan on an A1 piece of paper to give us a clearer idea of the story, which helped a lot because righting it down just as text proved to be very confusing and didn't visually show us our story.

Once we were happy with our plan we decided on a film date, but unfortunately, for one reason or another, none of us where able to make that date so on the next Thursday I came in and instead of using original image I downloaded images from the Internet and used those instead. I was quite disappointed that we couldn't get moving image for this project as the idea I feel was really good and if we had pulled it off it would have been a really good piece, but unfortunately the time management wasn't right and maybe we just didn't work well as a team.

I created a short piece using the images I downloaded that lasted for around 3 stages of interactive narrative. As a finished piece I don't think that it was very impressive but looking back at Isadora I now believe that it is a great piece of software, but maybe not for the sort of thing we wanted to do, I think that it is better used for shows and for music.

For my final project I don't believe that I will be using Isadora as I believe that if you want to create something using this programme you need a lot more time than we have for our final piece, but I may be wrong, it might be because my ideas involve to much work!