Notes
I discovered Whimsical as an excellent planning tool during this project and I made extensive use of its documents, boards and diagram functionality throughout. I used it to plan my character personas, write the scripts for each story, and track the development of the course. The stories were planned as instructional elements, as discussed by Rance Greene in his book ‘Instructional Story Design’. While developing the characters and scenarios, I consulted colleagues to ensure that they were relatable and accurate to the experiences, thoughts and feelings that a PhD student might have.
After experimenting with Blender for 3D modelling, I used it throughout the story elements of this course – I created characters, sets, props and textures, eventually producing short animations covering stories interspersed throughout the course. These stories linked to scenarios and questions in each section.
I primarily used Mixamo for rigging characters and pose animations, and modelled objects ranging from buildings, streets, rooms and park environments to a dog, croissants and furniture. Once I had the short animation clips for each scene, I used Adobe After Effects to edit them together and include voice-overs, visual effects and on-screen text. The course itself is built in Articulate Rise.
It’s fair to say that the online tutorial…is miles beyond anything I could have ever done on my own initiative. The copyright tutorial is something I will long be proud to be associated with, it will stand as one of my career highlights. Colin Theakston, Faculty Librarian & Copyright Officer