Digital Storytelling

I was telling my respected friend and much admired media mavin Bryan of Infocult about my discovery of this most amazing little movie-thing I discovered called "Paper Sky." "Oh," said Bryan, "Paper Sky. Beautiful little story. I'm so happy to hear that it's online again." Again. OK, so maybe I'm not the most astute follower of online media. Actually, I'm not much of a follower at all, focusing as I do on the interactive stuff - like, you know, games. But Paper Sky, with all it's childlike art and cardboard-cutout-look, and poignant accordion music (who'd've thought? Accordion music? poignant?), and it's wonderful, day-in-the-life perspective, is at least as much of a work of play as it is a work of art.

Bryan, sensing that it might be time for me to go a bit further into the art-side of media, directed me towards a website called "The Elements of Digital Storytelling. I was overwhelmed. It's a huge site, built on an analysis of over "thousands of digital stories." Fortunately, for the less-analytical-many, you can skip the carefully structured, remarkably concise deconstruction of it all, and go more or less directly to a collection of Innovative Examples which illustrate, with multimediated clarity, both the brilliance of the analysis and the playfulness of the art.