Captain Carboard VS Bruce Boh
An ad-hoc storyhacking workshop from comics to cardboards
For our StoryCode Singapore August LAB we teamed up with local writer Don Bosco and helped him to prototype the very first workshop for his latest social transmedia project.
Don, being a tech savvy children’s content author, uses apps and other add-on functions to bring his books and novels to life. With his company Super Cool Books he tries to find new ways of giving written words a “second screen” and more immersive impact.
One of his latest ventures is a series of open-source story hackathons for schools and other community institutions. Inspired by the cardboard art of Bartholomew Ting he created THE LEGEND OF THE CARDBOARD HEROES. Don designed a set of open-source tools to guide event participants through the ideation and creation process. Our StoryCode Singapore August Lab was the first event to test run this setup.
Event notes:
CAPTAIN CARDBOARD is the first character spin-off rooted in the THE LEGEND OF THE CARDBOARD HEROES story universe. The frame narrative of CAPTAIN CARDBOARD is about how two kids, Cindy and Faz, who meet an old man who used to fight crime in 1960s Singapore as a cardboard-clad superhero. They try to help him revive his crime-fighting career, only to find themselves caught in one crazy situation after another.
In preparation to the event, Don did a number of prototype comic strips which he developed together with his two kids during rainy weekend afternoons. Below, Don’s entire development process from comic sketches, all the way to a version created by means of an online comic strip tool.
Participants of our Lab took the following steps to create the below listed four stories. [You can try the same process on your own at home! All documents are open-source and downloadable.]
Step #1
Story structure and plotline. By using the below worksheet, participants filled the frame story’s gaps by adding their own plot points.
Step #2
Based on the story outlined on the worksheet, participants started to draw up 5 panels on a large paper and added comic sketches to each panel.
Step #3
The finished comic panels were either augmented with cardboard pieces or recreated entirely with cardboard characters and props.
Step #4
Final results were instantly published on social media (publicly) by using the hashtag #storycodesg.
Lab Results
#1
#2
#3
#4
Do send us your own CAPTAIN CARDBOARD creations or post them to Twitter by using the hashtag: #storycodesg
StoryCode is an open-source, global community for emerging and established cross-platform and immersive storytellers. By developing, incubating and exhibiting innovative, immersive story forms, StoryCode serves creators, technologists and distributors of cross-platform narrative content. We invite enthusiasts and professionals alike “to storycode” — simply meaning, to tell a story in a new way, using the bounty of new tools at our disposal. Born out of the Singapore Transmedia Meetup group the StoryCode Singapore chapter continues to advocate and educate about new forms and formats of narrative experiences set in the media business context of Singapore as well as the South-East Asian region. Check out the next event and join the Singaporean storycoder community.
