Storyboard:
Our storyboard is still in the preliminary stages, but the next iterations will be more focused on singular scenes as well as the interactions and animations featured in that scene. The storyboard will also be cleaned up to make it easier to read.
Research/Easter Eggs:
So far we have narrowed down our research to a few facts that we plan on implementing in Easter Eggs. These Easter Eggs will look like pieces of trash or animals and users will be able to click on them to receive information. Listed below are the facts that we plan on adding to the Easter Eggs. However, they haven’t been refined into the text we’re planning on adding to the website.
- Microbeads are forms of micro plastics that float around in the ocean.
- Gyres – permanent spirals of ocean currents
- If we don’t do anything, seafood can be wiped out in 40 years —> in 100 years, jellyfish may be the only wild seafood left
- In the stomach of whales: hosepipes, plastic pots and disposable bags
- Plastic acts as a chemical sponge known as bioaccumulation
Graphics:
Listed below are some of the characters featured in the comic.
This is Jelly the Jellyfish. He’s scared of being eaten and will unfortunately witness a turtle eating a plastic bag (which it has mistaken for an actual jellyfish).
This is Trashley. She’s the main character whom you will be following throughout the comic. She’ll explore the ocean, coming across many different animals.
Meet Prince Louis, he’s a trash bag that just came back to the New York harbor due to the ocean currents. He has traveled the world and is much older than Trashley. He shows that trash in the ocean doesn’t just affect one place and it takes a long time for plastic waste to even disintegrate.
Website:
Some of the graphics are placeholders, but they will be replaced with our own drawings. We are also looking at changing the text size to make it easier to read as well as more appealing to our target audience (6-10 year old children).
This is the beginning, clicking the start button will cause a gust of wind to blow Trashley into the harbor.
As she lands in the water a seagull will fly past and give instructions on how to proceed through the comic. The user can then start scrolling to go deeper into the ocean.
Trashley will be following the user’s mouse in the future. On the right you can see an anchor which will indicate how deep you are. There is also a placeholder image for how many Easter Eggs you have found to give the users an idea of how many left they need to find. Users will also be able to go through each animal’s story by clicking on the speech bubble.
Here’s the end of the comic. The piles of trash is meant to show how polluted our waters actually are. The subway cart is an Easter Egg that will tell users about how they are acting as substitutes for coral as home for fish.
Audio:
We have some audio to emulate what it would sound like if you were actually underwater. These include bubble sounds as if you just went underwater, as well as general underwater ambiance and background noises.