DSHW and the Modern Storyteller

DSHW and the Modern Storyteller:

How the DVD-Storybook Hybrid Webcomic Format Can Be an

Online Comic Producer’s Dream Tool for Self-Promotion Whether you’ve heard of it before or not, the DVD-Storybook-Hybrid Webcomic, or “DSHW,” is now here! This is special format of comic book format intended for Internet publication, in which a picture per page is employed to tell a story with captions below (or to the side) of the image in a separate box. Navigation options on every page allow for simple story page progression or for quick-skipping to chapters or re-routing to a main menu page. More complex versions of the format will also feature chapter selection and perhaps additional features apart from the story itself. These could include embedded videos or documentary-style written reports about how the story was made. “Fair enough,” you say, but where did this format come from, and why should anyone care? The DSHW format is in many ways; a merging of Internet, DVD, and old fashioned print technologies to produce a single product that is an art form unto itself. For photocomics (as defined by the unofficial webcomics wiki authority Comixpedia,) where the integrity of the photos is something the writer does not wish to compromise through alteration with talk bubbles, the DSHW offers a promising alternative. The format is also ideal for machinomics, the comic book version of machinima. The concept of machinomics and its relation to machinima is similar to the relationship between manga and anime in Japanese art. Where did all of this come from? To understand that, one must know a little about the history of machinima. As early as 1996, the video game Quake popularized the idea of using video game engines as a cheap alternative to Pixar’s keyframed CGI animation. The first official machine-animation (machinima) production to be produced, edited, and published to the web was a Quke-engineered series called Diary of a Camper. [1] In 2000, Maxis popularized the idea of “machinomics” (machinima-like comics) by including a family album storytelling feature in The Sims. Machinima itself became popular in 2003, when the site DrunkGamers.com hosted the first-ever Red vs. Blue episodes. Rooster Teeth Productions, creators of that series, eventually took down DrunkGamers and replaced it with the Rooster Teeth website. Their Halo-based comedy became an immediate inspiration for independent would-be filmmakers everywhere. The trend would continue in 2004, after Maxis and EA would release The Sims 2 with the capabilities of both storytelling and video capture built into the game. This second generation of their game title proved to be highly customizable, allowing ambitious storytelling that could hide unnecessary game UI elements that would otherwise interfere with the story’s content. The Dozerfleet Comics-operated Gerosha Chronicles would be first attempted in 2005, with a primitive version of The Battle for Gerosha employing the storytelling options in The Sims 2 as a foundation. The official website for sharing Sims 2-themed creations was known as the Sims 2 Exchange, or “Exchange” for short in the community. Originally for creators to share custom content for the game, it was quickly expanded to include options for creators to publish stories and even videos that served as free promotion for the game. Independent comic-creators ages 13 and up quickly flocked to the site to publish their fantasies to the Exchange. The format for storytelling there became quite a familiar site to players looking for inspiration for how to use their own copy of Sims 2. Navigation consisted of a few tabs on the right side of the story to toggle view modes, along with two arrows on either side of an image in story mode to navigate from one snapshot to another. Story caption text was written below the image, explaining what was supposed to be happening in the image. Limitations existed in terms of viewers finding a consistent audience on the Exchange, which has led to several sites hosting their own Sims-based machinomics. Other games began creating machinomics of their own, but Sims-based storytellers remain the dominant producers and consumers for the medium. Those with adequate computer hardware specifications have often branched off from machinomics into producing true machinima. Several independents, such as Decorgal, have become well-known for their Sims-based fiction. With the collapse of quality Halo machinima following the series finale of Red vs. Blue, the biggest competition for Sims-based machinima audiences has come from World of Warcraft machinima. This includes serious dramas in the fictitious maps of Azeroth such as the Tales of the Past series as well as comedies like Chronicle of an Annoying Quest. One of the most ambitious inspirations for Sims-based machinima is Rooster Teeth’s short-lived series The Strangerhood, which parodied numerous aspects of the game used to produce it. In 2005, since the computer station used to create Dozerfleet Comics’ The Battle for Gerosha didn’t have Internet access at the time, the basic design philosophy of the storytelling at the Sims 2 Exchange was copied and modified. The very first true DSHW was born. After the story pages and story page navigation were perfected for this early version of the story, elements of DVD technology were imitated through HTML elements to simulate a DVD experience. Fictional cast bios were added along with other “making-of” mini-features. The quality was low, but it was an early attempt. The problems with the early version of Gerosha led to further experimentation with the DSHW formula. This included evolving the standards for the format. Originally intended for HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD models, the DSHW format specifications were later revised for XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The format was made flexible to include both machinomics and photocomics. Standards were also defined for picture dimensions and aspect ratios in relation to caption boxes. With some exceptions, the typical format for captions was defined to be a mixture of narration by an omniscient narrator and playwright lines in quotations identified specifically as being dialog by specific characters. Characters were always identified in bold, underlined text before their words were quoted. Short photocomics such as When Bikes Argue and Gored By Them Things employed variations on the caption theme. When Bikes Argue, a political satire with bikes as the cast members, featured no narrator. Gored By Them Things, a parody of the Lord of the Rings film series featuring Beanie Babies as the cast, featured a more traditionally novel-type format for indicating dialog. The most work on the development of the DSHW format began in June of 2005 with the desire to create and perfect the Ciem webcomic series. This began with an early version of Ciem: The Human Centipede. This Sims 2 machinomic was a spin-off of The Battle for Gerosha in which one of the children of Stan and Shalia Flippo is revealed to have inherited centipede-like powers from her father, due to him having been part of an alien experiment as an infant. The story borrowed inspiration for both content and website design freely from the DVDs for the X-Men and Spider-Man film franchises. However, the stories were all modified to fit comfortably within the Sims’ environment. Around the same time that Ciem was being made about the Sims-generated character of Candi Levens, a similar character also named Candi was being made popular on the web through the webcomic site known as Keenspot. [2] That site specializes in traditional webcomics, which were usually drawn by hand and colored in Photoshop before being uploaded as strips. Candi, created by Starline Hodge, became one of the most popular traditional webcomic sites on Keenspot and also one of the most popular college dramedy strips of its format online; and also bore evidence of manga influence in its character designs. The Candi featured in Ciem may have been a college freshman at first, much like Starline’s Candi, and had similar hair and they had boyfriends with similar appearances; but the coincidental similarities in the characters ended there. The type of story that Ciem was owed itself to a more filmic approach in storytelling than the serial strip by Starline Hodge. Therefore, the DSHW format was a perfect fit for Ciem. Forum storytelling became a popular way before the rise of the DSHW for storytellers, Sims 2 machinomic writers in particular, to publish their stories outside of the Exchange and find readers. The most popular of these is the Sims 2 Community Forums Outlet, which features a syndicated version of Ciem stripped of unnecessary DSHW format details. Nevertheless, the push increased at Dozerfleet to promote the DSHW format to others. DSHW’s by their very nature are hybrids of a DVD's structure with that of a children's storybook. Websites for each story consist of a main menu similar to a DVD menu but using Javascript and CSS to make the web page function. The menu page links to every subdivision of the story's site, which usually consists of a Play Story option, an About option, a Select Chapter option, and a Contact option. Each derivative page has at least one link back to the main menu located somewhere in its navigation. Story and chapter pages have navigation pages to each other or to other chapters. Usually only one story picture belongs to each story page, followed by a scrolling caption field of relevant story text or dialog. There are usually two formats of text to create the alternating playwright and narrator captions. These are controlled with CSS by creating two different classes of HTML paragraphs. The two paragraph classes are usually along the lines of "dat" (data) for narration and "dia" for dialog. Variations include “p.q” for quotes and “p.n” for narration. The format is flexible enough to include animations and load screens, but the creator of a DSHW should be careful to note which of these features will and will not work on which browsers. The trend for many online comics is to employ Flash technology to maintain a strict level of control over how browsers render content. However, the DSHW format is designed in many respects to find every possible constructive alternative to Flash. Other than syndication of a DSHW’s story stripped of other features, a DSHW creator may find it useful to publish the DSHW version of their story with all the formatting to a web host. This requires some shopping to find good, reliable hosts for a reasonable monthly or annual hosting rate. This offers the maximum level of control over one’s custom DSHW content, without having to make compromises for syndication.

Interested yet? Here are some noble considerations for someone seeking to create their own DSHW format: First, and most obviously, one needs to have a story to tell. Your premise can consist of almost anything. For demonstration, Ciem will be used. Our premise is that a college-age girl discovers she has inherited centipede-like powers and must flee persecution from evil extra-terrestrials while learning how to fight back against them and their creations. Next, we need to decide details of who the character is and the supporting cast. Having a personal wiki, such as one which can be found at sites like Wikispaces or Wiki-Site, can prove very useful for retaining details about the story as it develops and for reporting to interested readers about story progress. Ciem’s civilian alter-ego, Candi Flippo-Levens, has now been defined. Next, one must decide the image type to employ for the story. Are we going to use real actors and make a photocomic-layout story? Will this be like some versions of the book Jumanji? Will we draw everything? Will we use a video game to create the images? For demonstration purposes, we’ll use a video game and make the story a machinomic. The game is purchased, the software is installed on a PC or Mac, and then necessary modifications are made to the game through downloaded Internet custom content to allow for the creation of the desired type of story. At this point, it helps to keep a database of who created what custom content. A “Credits” page is then designed, to resemble the rolling title credits at the end of a motion picture. This page could either be simple text or it could contain an embedded video, at the discretion of the designer. Music may or may not be included based on the same discretion. The actors in the game are lined up and animated, according to their roles. The tools provided in the game dictate how screenshots are gathered. If admissible, one may use the default operating system tools to gather screenshots. In a PC, this consists of having enough RAM to run the game and Photoshop at the same time and then using the “PrintScreen” button to copy the image to memory. The image is then pasted into Photoshop for quick editing after capture from the game. Any special effects are then added to the image. In a Macintosh, this consists of hitting “Shift+Option+3.” A file is immediately created on the desktop. This file may be later edited at any time. Some games allow internal storage of captions, others will require you do use Microsoft Word or a similar word processor to type up captions on the fly to assist your screenshots. The DSHW creator must decide what aspect ratio for the images is preferential. A word processor is ultimately used to store a set of files, one for each chapter of a story. The chapters in the documents are broken up into caption blocks that are associated with a particular image. Images and captions are numerically ordered to be sequential. For example, the caption block of text for the image on page 14 of chapter 7 would be read as the “07-14” group. Images are to be stored in a folder for later recall by an HTML document that will serve as a story page. Since the images are usually JPEGs, a common image file would be recalled in the HTML as belonging to: “photos/07/07-14.jpg.” Navigation arrows are created for each page using either elaborate text characters or raster images. Some of these arrows allow sequential forward or back-stepping among pages. For example, clicking on “Previous Page” while on page 14 of chapter 7 would take us to “07-13.html” of the website. We would end up at “07-15.html” if we clicked on the arrow for “Next Page.” Every chapter except for the first and the last also contains two chapter navigation arrows, which will take the viewer to the very first page of the immediate preceding or immediate succeeding chapter. Once the DSHW creator has all the story pages aligned, it is time to assemble the menus. The chapter navigation menu is a good place to start. This is similar to the “Select a Scene” option on many DVD’s, and lets the reader skip straight to a chapter without having to read previous ones to get there. These pages feature visual links that resemble those of a DVD scene selection menu, often operating on a similar principle of glowing predominantly one color when selected. No DSHW would be complete without a main menu. The main menu should be designed to reflect the basic themes of content as well as the basic features one can expect to find in the site’s subsections. This is where the DVD elements of menu design are most critical. If a convincing DVD appearance is not achieved, then the site may fail to convince readers that it truly belongs to the format. The remaining elements of the site require far less strict regulations about their design. The author of the DSHW may design these to whatever standard is deemed appropriate. Site behavior can enhance the experience for readers and make design more fun for the author. However, care should be given concerning cross-browser compatibility. Without Flash embeds, for, example, HTML dissolve transitions will only work in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer line of browsers. Gecko-themed browsers such as Opera and Firefox will not recognize these features, as they are scripted to call commands from Direct X transform protocols for video cards. For this same reason, custom scrollbars often do not work in Gecko-based browsers. Shortcut icons will ideally work in all browsers, but realize that full support for them is more native to Gecko browsers and less native to Microsoft. Custom cursors, which can either hinder or enhance a DSHW, will only work in all browsers if “, default!important;” is added to the end of the URL specification in the site’s CSS. Otherwise, Firefox and other browsers like it will ignore custom cursor settings. Only Internet Explorer will read custom cursors without the above style exploit. The DVD-Storybook Hybrid Webcomic format can be a very fun way for an independent comic creator, especially of machinomics, to get established independently online and through a format that is easily self-promoting and intuitive to readers. While designing in the format can require tremendous time commitments, it can also offer a semi-professional look and feel to any story and serve as a great promotional tool for the author. The format is also favorable to companies that design games suited for machinima and machinomics; as it provides an intuitive and fun navigational experience that can double as free advertising for a game product. REFERENCES

1. “Diary of a Camper.”  Australian Center for the Moving Image. http://www.acmi.net.au/F729F85EAB66447BBE0FFFD041B258CE.htm

2. “Candi.” Comixpedia. November 5th, 2008. http://www.comixpedia.org/index.php?title=Candi