Chapter Eleven: Idea Box (or: That's The Most Boring Chapter Title So Far)

Based on an exercise outlined in the book "Thinkertoys"

I may have mentioned that my overarching goal for the Concept Design class I'm currently enrolled in is to create an interesting Choose Your Own Adventure story. The most recent class, I discussed with the teacher the possibility of delivering my story via Flash as opposed to a traditional bound book. Therefore, I'm going to run through the Idea Box brainstorming challenge about how I could construct this Flash framework.

So my challenge is: "How could I portray a Choose Your Own Adventure using Flash?"

Parameters and Variations

User Input
__________

Keyboard
Mouse
Webcam

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Heads-Up Display
________________

Main text indicator
Dice-roller window
Cursor indicator

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Art Style
_________

Faded book lying in the sand
Amethyst stone next to book
Sparkling particle effect

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Features
________

Fade-in text
Page turn animations
Dice-rolling code

I definitely don't have time to implement it, but I think it would be awesome if I could get some sort of webcam integration going, wherein waving your hand (possibly while holding some starkly-colored object or whatever other workaround is needed) turns a page of the book or sets the dice rolling.

I probably need a more realistic art style, too, which I'm not sure I can pull off; I may look into something cell-shaded so I can have a simpler art style that still looks good.

Closing thoughts on this exercise:

This is a pretty simple one as far as Thinkertoys goes, and doesn't seem to be particular inspired. Just list components intrinsic to your idea, then a few possible variations on those components; since you're supposed to discard any components that aren't entirely necessary, the variations on what's left should all work well together no matter what.

A short note about my creative environment:

I wrote this down in the Digital Media open lab at about eight-thirty in the evening. It's the DIGM labs, so even though it's still light outside there's no way I could tell. I'm sitting in a corner of the lab, so it isn't very well-lit. It's a comfortable temperature inside, with the air conditioning whirring away continually in the background. The only sounds are the clacking of keys from other people using the computers.