확장형 트랜스미디어 스토리텔링을 위한 세계관 디자인 연구: 구름빵의 사례

Abstract

Background Transmedia storytelling is often viewed as a way to solve the prevailing shortage of stories for the content industry. In order to achieve a highly efficient extraction of stories from a story source or to expand an existing story to more “offspring” stories, transmedia storytelling demands the designing and establishing of a story-world first and foremost before any expansion takes place. Hence, understanding the nature and composition of a transmedia story-world is an imperative step towards the successful expansion of a story. Methods This paper looks into the case of designing a transmedia world by closely analyzing the case of Cloud Bread. As the best-selling children’s book looked to expand into an animated series, the producers designed the world of Cloud Bread first and then went on to develop the expansion. We have employed the transmedia world-building criteria of mythos, topos & ethos to analyze the designed details of the Cloud Bread story-world that has been opened to the public to determine whether the designed world satisfies such criteria. Result We have found that the successful expansion of the children’s book Cloud Bread to an extensive animated series can largely be attributed to the fact that the producers decided to design the story-world first. The animated series consistently adheres to the criteria of the designed story-world, and this is reflected by the content throughout. And to achieve this, we found that the rules about, knowledge of and guidelines on how to act in the said world are the critical criteria in transmedia storytelling. Conclusions The case makes a compelling and strong argument for establishing a solid story-world before a transmedia expansion to guarantee that the purity of the original concept can be maintained no matter who the author is. Thus, designing the world with the criteria of mythos, topos & ethos can be considered a feasible guideline.