Jason Alderman – MS IDT Project Documentation Generating Comics Narrative to Summarize Wearable Computer Data Jason Alderman Masters Project Documentation Information Design and Technology Program Department of Literature, Communication and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology April 12, 2006 Committee: Michael Mateas (Chair), Michael Nitsche, Thad Starner Abstract As people record their entire lives to disk, they need ways of summarizing and making sense of all of this data. Comics (and visual language) are a largely untapped medium for summarization, as they are already subtractive and abstract by nature (the brain fills in the blanks and the details), and they provide a way to present a series of everyday events as a memorable narrative that is easily skimmed. This research builds upon the research of Microsoft, FX Palo Alto Labs, ATR Labs, and others to further ground the procedural generation in the comics theory of Scott McCloud, et al. 1 Jason Alderman – MS IDT Project Documentation Table of Contents INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................................4 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM..............................................................................................................................5 WIDER CONTEXT ...............................................................................................................................................6 WHY NARRATIVE?...............................................................................................................................................6 A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY OF COMICS GRAMMAR AND THEORY .........................................................................7 Fundamentals..................................................................................................................................................7 Visual Language..............................................................................................................................................8 Through the Eyes of Graphic Design ...............................................................................................................9 Comics Rhythm ...............................................................................................................................................9 Story Grammars and Generation...................................................................................................................12 SURVEY OF COMICS GENERATION TOOLS..........................................................................................................13 THE ASSIST PROJECT........................................................................................................................................15 DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION.........................................................................................................................16 DESIGN GOALS ..................................................................................................................................................16 Breaking Down the Problem ..........................................................................................................................16 Goals for Software .........................................................................................................................................17 DESIGN CHOICES ...............................................................................................................................................17 Narrative vs. Report ......................................................................................................................................17 Abstraction....................................................................................................................................................19 Why use Flash? .............................................................................................................................................20 IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................................21 XML Format for Activities............................................................................................................................21 Narrative Generation.....................................................................................................................................22 XML Format for Comics and Panel Descriptions...........................................................................................23 Rules for Internal Panel Layout.....................................................................................................................26 Rules for External Panel Layout....................................................................................................................27 Border Shape.......................................................................................................................................................................28 Panel Size.............................................................................................................................................................................28 Gutter Size ...........................................................................................................................................................................29 User Interface ................................................................................................................................................30 DESIGN ISSUES.................................................................................................................................................30 REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................................35 APPENDIX 1: SUMMARY OF COMICS GENERATION TOOLS.............................................................39 APPENDIX 2: PANEL VARIATIONS.............................................................................................................41 Panel Shapes..................................................................................................................................................41 Panel Sizes ....................................................................................................................................................44 Panel Spacing (Gutter Sizes).........................................................................................................................46 APPENDIX 3: NARRATIVE DEVICES ..........................................................................................................48 APPENDIX 4: ACTIVITY TYPES ....................................................................................................................51 APPENDIX 5: PSEUDOCODE WALKTHROUGH.......................................................................................52 APPENDIX 6: PHP SOURCE CODE ...............................................................................................................63 activity.php....................................................................................................................................................63 2 Jason Alderman – MS IDT Project Documentation run.php..........................................................................................................................................................66 comic.php ......................................................................................................................................................68 testbed.php.....................................................................................................................................................70 APPENDIX 7: FLASH ACTIONSCRIPT SOURCE CODE...........................................................................74 Panel.as .........................................................................................................................................................74 Comic.as ........................................................................................................................................................82 p4.fla .............................................................................................................................................................84 APPENDIX 8: USER INTERFACE WIREFRAMES.......................................................................................90 3 Jason Alderman – MS IDT Project Documentation Introduction In today’s information-saturated world, context is everything. How do you take large tracts of raw data and imbue it with semantic meaning? The answer is rarely simple or easy. As information and interaction designers, it is our job to recognize patterns in information and make it understandable and accessible to all people. Computers are becoming a larger and larger part of people’s lives (Intel 2005). As prices for consumer electronics drop, more and more people are documenting their lives with digital images, video, music, and recordings (Imation 2003). Some researchers see the field of wearable computers (or wearables, for short) as the future of this trend. Wearable computers are small, unobtrusive, fully-featured computers that are, as their name implies, worn on a