Golden X Awards Nomination

I nominate Sustainability Man's "Episode 2" for the Golden X Awards.

Sam animated a couple of videos which both contained a strong message but his character joined forces with mine in the second episode to defeat the Evil Dr Bright Lights which was a good example of collaborating with other characters to generate content.

The episode carries a strong message about the importance of saving energy by turning the lights off as you leave a room and Sam created wormholes to the videos by creating posters containing a QR code which he posted all around campus. These posters obviously worked because Sam received a spike in traffic after he put the posters up which means that people were accessing his content on at least two different platforms.

Reflective Blog

Character

MC Sustain is a good character fighting to create awareness of sustainability issues on UC. His heart is in the right place but he gets frustrated with the poor attitudes of the students and the delivery of his message can be a bit blunt. He raps in the style of a gangster rapper which is a style that is meant to be abrasive, confronting and rub people up the wrong way but the idea was that people would get that it was meant to be a joke and wouldn't take it too seriously.

This character was designed to attract to the concert going crowd at UC and those that frequent the bar areas on campus. My intention was to create music that was actually good and contained lyrics that drew attention to people's unsustainable practices and poked fun at them in a clichéd gangster rapper kind of way. By doing this I was hoping that people would notice things about their behaviour that they previously hadn't  and start to think about their habits a bit more.

Platforms

My character has profiles on both Facebook and Soundcloud but Facebook was his main way of communicating. I think that Facebook is a great way to reach an audience as everybody uses it and it's easy to upload a variety of content on there such as images, videos and sounds and instantly get them out to your audience. I didn't get to use Soundcloud as I'd hoped because it was harder to create music than I had anticipated and the music I did create couldn't be uploaded onto Soundcloud as it was already hosted on its own website and couldn't be exported.

You can find his Facebook here, and his Soundcloud page here

Rabbit hole

To get people interested in MC Sustain and act as the rabbit hole to Facebook and Soundcloud I created a couple of posters which I posted up around campus. The posters were made to look like Hip Hop gig posters and had information and phrases on them encouraging students to clean up after themselves and not leave litter everywhere. Littering is MC Sustains pet peeve and he doesn't like what he sees around the campus.

This is my favourite poster. It was fun to make and I think it gets MC Sustain's attitude across nicely. He doesn't mince his words, he just tells it how he sees it.

I put the posters up locations where I thought they would naturally attract the eye as people walked past them. There are posters all over the place at UC and I think most people (myself included) have learned to block them out and don't really pay them much attention on their travels around campus. With this in mind I tried to place my posters in places were you can't help but look at them such as on doors or on the wall above the urinal in the men's toilet in Building 7.

On the window of the Coop Bookshop

Near the bins outside the Refectory

Near the bins outside the Refectory

On the lower doors going into Building 9

On the wall outside the Library

On the wall outside the Library

On the signage outside the library

On the doors to building 7

On the doors to building 7

The men's contemplation area in building 7

The men's contemplation area in building 7

Outside the GD Labs in Building 7

On the doors to the GD labs in Building 7

I shortened my Facebook web address with bit.ly but I was disappointed to see that I didn't receive any visits to my page through those links, not one! 

I think I should try using a QR code next time as even though bit.ly shortened the web address, it still looked like this http://on.fb.me/14J3BaV which is pretty much impossible to remember so unless people actually stood there and type the web address into their phones straight away there was no way they'd be able to remember it later on. With a QR code they could've quickly and painlessly accessed the link so that's something I'll definitely bear in mind if I ever do an exercise like this again.

Music

As far as actual rapping goes, I didn't really create much content and I really regretted my character choice as the unit progressed but by then it was too late to change it. I think the biggest thing that hampered me in the creation of raps is that I felt like a complete idiot every time I tried to rap and most of the tools I tried didn't work out like I had hoped or required me to invest much more time than I had available to produce acceptable results.

The best example I made was created with the assistance of the Autorap app on my iPhone which you can listen to here

Working with other characters

I worked with Sam Bartlett on an animation for his Sustainability Man character which was probably the best bit of content my character was involved in. Sam was responsible for all of the animation but I worked with him to record the audio and provided the beats for my character to rap over in the episode. It was good fun and it turned out really well.

Check out the video:

Observations and Learnings

If I was to do this exercise again, the first thing I would do is choose another character where I could work within an area I was familiar with instead of trying to branch out into something I didn't really know anything about. I felt like I wasted too much time trying to get to grips with new technology only to fail because I couldn't get the results I was after.

I'd also get together with a group of other students instead of working on my own. I think that in order for a transmedia project to work you need to be in a group of at least 3-4 people who bring a varied yet overlapping set of skills to the table. I think it would be ideal if you had enough people to collaborate to develop a story arc with depth while enabling you to work within your area of expertise to generate content instead of trying to fumble your way through an area you're not familiar with. Trying to rap and make beats when I've never done it before is a mistake I wouldn't repeat again.

If I had more funding and the opportunity to develop my character further I would definitely seek out somebody who was able to produce quality tunes and somebody to help me animate a cartoon series and comic strip with MC Sustain as the star. All the episodes would be based around ways to combat pollution and wastage  and would contain raps on the subject that would be available in their entirety on Soundcloud and iTunes to stream and purchase.

Thoughts on the Design Challenge 

Do I think we succeeded in creating a culture of sustainability at UC? No, definitely not. As explained above I think we definitely need to be working in groups containing a variety of different skills for transmedia to work effectively. Doing it on your own is just too hard and the subject material while important, just doesn't have enough meat to it to create any sort of engaging storyline unless you are working in a group that can put their heads together to create content. I think that the UC community are just as apathetic as they were before and only a handful would've noticed the extra amount of posters cluttering the walls around campus and even fewer still would've been bothered to actually go down the rabbit holes to see what it was all about.  For this kind of campaign to work it needs to be much more in your face so there's no way you can escape the message. It needs a captive audience and a really high quality of work to get people interested and unfortunately I just don't think it's possible to get the average person to care about the environment until it's too late.

Working With Sustainability Man

Earlier on in the semester me and Sam Bartlett did a bit of thinking about a character we could use to get the message of sustainability across at UC. Sam had already thought up the idea of Sustainability Man and we threw a few ideas back and forth about the media platforms we could use and different aspects of his character and background. This was before we had the in class exercise to come up with our own characters and for some reason I decided to go solo with MC Sustain, while Sam continued on with Sustainability Man. One of the platforms we had discussed was using Motion to create some animations which we could then upload onto You tube. Sam had already created an episode for his character and invited my character to make an appearance as a waste fighting accomplice in episode two.



Sam did all the animation but I made worked with him to record the audio and came up with the beats for this episode.

More Poster Action

Did another poster today. I styled it like it's a Hip Hop gig poster but used the text to get some of MC Sustain's message across. I like this better than my last one. I think it's eye catching enough to get people to want to have a closer look but then surprise by containing a message instead of just gig details.

The message might be a little bit blunt but I think it's effective.

Poster Action

I had a bit of fun in Photoshop today and came up with this:

I'll be visiting the green print centre in the next day or so and get some of these posted up.

The Rabbit Hole

To get our characters out into the public eye to create interest and get them to see our character on different media platforms we need to create a "Rabbit Hole". A Rabbit Hole is a piece of media that provides either a direct link or clues about the existence of another media platform which the audience can access to learn more about our characters and their story's. Stephen has a great idea for his character, "The Hipsta Barista" where he has placed coffee cup lids lids with a meme and a link to his meme site which should be great to create some interest in his character amongst the UC community.

Here's a quick poster I created in class today.

It's a bit boring so far and doesn't have a link to his Facebook or Soundcloud pages yet so I'll work on it a bit more before I post is up anywhere. I think the best idea for my character would be a hip hop gig style poster containing some messages about sustainability and a link to his Facebook and Soundcloud pages. I'll put them up around the refectory and Zierholz where the drinkers hang out to hopefully drum up a bit of interest. 

Some Beats

So I'm starting to regret my choice of character a little. The idea of a rapper seemed fun at first but the reality of making tunes isn't quite as fun as I hoped it would be and I haven't been getting the results I was hoping for .
iMaschine is a great app and is really quite powerful and has the potential to be used to create some really high quality beats but I just don't have the time to get to use it properly so I'll have to put that one on the back burner and possibly come back to it later on.

Cipher was the other one I had high hopes for and it's really easy to use and has a great library of tunes to rap to but the final product is actually pretty crappy because the sound levels are so low when you play it back that you can barely hear it, even with the phone on full volume. I even tried plugging it into my stereo with the volume cranked but it still sounds like crap and isn't worthy of uploading anywhere. The music is nice and loud when you're recording the rap so I don't know what the issue is with the exported sound levels. Very disappointing.

Autorap on the other hand has been pretty fun to play with and I've had some pretty good results with it so far. I've uploaded the best one onto the MC Sustain Facebook page here and the link to it on the app's website can be found here While Autorap is easy to use, it's very limited in what you're able to create so I'll keep trying to come up with something a bit more legit.

MC Sustain Lives!

MC Sustain, my champion for creating a culture of sustainability at UC is alive and online. His primary mode of communication will be on Facebook but seeing as though he's a rapper, I've also set up a Soundcloud page for him which I'll be uploading his music onto... (gulp).

You can find him on Facebook here and on Soundcloud here

Music Apps

I've been hunting around the app store and have discovered a few apps for my phone that should be able to help me make some tunes for MC Sustain to rap to. The most interesting and powerful one is called iMaschine which looks really cool and fun to play with. I've actually had it on there for a while but haven't really had a chance to play with it yet. Now should be a good opportunity to get to use it without feeling guilty that I'm not doing any Uni work. I WILL be doing Uni work :) The only problem with this is that it's quite complex and I'll have to make the music from scratch, record the lyrics seperately and then combine them together in a separate music program.

Another good one I found is called Cipher. This one has been created for rappers to freestyle to and comes with a collection of pre made beats for you to rap over and record your lyrics to just using the phone. You can then export the finished product directly onto Facebook which should be handy.

Another good one was suggested to me by Sam Bartlett and is called Autorap. This one is a bit simpler again and all you need to do is choose a beat and record yourself talking and the app magically converts it into a fully sick rap for you. Sweet as!

MC Sustain

Students as Villains

After seeing all the mess that got left on campus the other day I was thinking in today's tute about portraying the students at UC as being villains that were polluting the campus with their laziness and unwillingness to pick up after themselves. I see it all the time. People go through Maccas drive through then decide to park by the lake and eat because they enjoy the view and feeling of being out in nature. Then when they finish, they just dump all their rubbish out the window and drive off. WTF!?

I wish I was a super hero sometimes so I could deliver people like this the flying head butt they so desperately deserve.

Unfortunately this behaviour seems to be the norm more than the exception in the younger generations and cleaning up after yourself seems to be thought of as being uncool. I wonder what the best way to change this mindset is. Would the threat of violent retribution work best or would the message work better coming from someone that they can relate to? Somebody who is down on their level yet respected enough to be looked up to.

I think that music would be a good way approach. An artist's lyrics and image can reach people in such a way that they are not being told what to do, they are merely being informed and educated and allowed to come to their own conclusions. If people can make their own mind up, it's likely to be a longer lasting lifestyle choice and not just a temporary change born out of peer pressure.

The only problem is that I'm not much of a musician. Sure, I played piano and saxophone when I was a kid, played drums for a while and have been DJing for the last ten years or so....So actually I uh do have quite a bit of musical history and maybe just a little bit of know how.

But the question is:

  Could I produce some music that could help get the sustainability message across to the UC massive?  

In a serious way, relying on deep lyrics and quality musicianship? No.

In a piss taking way relying on lyrical and musical cliche's and delivered in a fun and amusing way? Mmmaybe....

Makeup Workshop Week 8

This week we had a super quick workshop (1hr) that tried to make up for us all missing the real (3hr) super awesome one that happened last Wednesday. In the real workshop they came up with a few categories for the main audience demographics at UC which included;

• Students
• Staff
• Businesses
• Admin 
• Clubs

They broke this down further into a huge list that Stephen has posted on his blog.

Between the workshop and our supplementary one this week Stephen came up with a few more that he gave us the choice of using for the next step. They included;

• Health Centre Patients
• Banks
• Gym Junkies
• Concert Goers
• Bike Riders
• Car Drivers
• Bus Travellers
• Motorbike Riders
• Deans (who have underground car parks outside building 1)
• Walkers
• Joggers
• Builders & Tradies
• Ping Pong Players

Somehow my group ended up with the Deans as our demographic which made it really hard to do the next step of identifying media forms that the Deans identify with because I have absolutely no idea what they are like.

Working on the assumption that any dean would be super highly educated we came up with a bit of a list of media forms they would use;

• Email
• Moodle
• Intranet
• Academic Journals
• Monitor Magazine
• Linked In
• Mobile Phones
• Advertising & Marketing
• UC FM

From there we guessed that the media forms they would probably identify with the most would be email and academic journals.

Character Development

So the next step was to sketch a character that the Deans might relate to to help create awareness of sustainabilty at UC.

Huh? What sort of character would deans relate to?

People more powerful and educated than themselves I would imagine. But who? Obama? Kevin Rudd? Nelson Mandela?.... How about...The UC Vice Chancellor Stephen Parker?

I really don't know much about him at all but apparently he grew up in the 60's and rides a bike to work everyday. He's obviously well educated and well respected around UC as he is the Vice Chancellor but is he suitable to use as a character to help spread the message of sustainability at UC?

Probably not.

Yuk

I was walking from UC down to Belconnen the other day when when I came across this:

It looks like the kiddies living on res have had themselves a little party and probably chose to do it outside because it was a nice day to be out on the grass enjoying nature. 

Not Anymore!

So UC needs to develop a culture of sustainability on campus? Yeah, no shit. By the looks of all the rubbish and how many goon bags there are hanging about there must have been at least 10-15 kiddies at this shindig and every one of them just walked off and left all this crap behind. It's right outside all the res buildings too so it's not like they wouldn't have seen it the next day either.

Little shits.

What UC needs is somebody to get out there and open up a can of whoopass on people like this who blatantly litter and leave their mess for other people to clean up. 

UC needs a hero...  

Week 5 Tutorial

In this week's tute we got broken up into groups and talked about who we had interviewed for last week's exercise. While each person was speaking the others in the group wrote down questions we had about their story on post it notes. We then analysed the questions we'd written to see if there were any common themes and grouped them accordingly.

From our questions we came up with the groups: "What & Why, Who, How, When & Where".

Post it Questions

From this we deduced that if we wanted to learn a new skill, first we needed to decide "What" we needed to know out and "Why" we needed to know it. "Who" we could find to teach us. "How", we would learn it, and "Where" & "When" we could put our new found knowledge into practice.

We made a rough flow chart to show the process;

Flow Chart

Make Up Workshop Week 4

In the makeup workshop this week we broke up into groups again and spent some time developing ideas based around the user groups we identified last time. As a reminder, these were: Businesses, Residents and Procrastinators.

I somehow ended up working with procrastinators again which was fine with me because I know how they think. All too well...

Procrastinators are attracted by shiny, flashy things that distract them from what they are doing and them get them hooked without them even realising. We thought the best way to do this was with cartoons and browser based games that are simple and addictive.

Garden Survival

We had an idea for a multiplayer game called "Garden Survival" where four players would compete to grow and maintain the healthiest garden with the highest yield of vegies and flowers. The game would be turn based and players would only have limited resources to work with each turn. The aim would be to strike the balance between yield and durability. Every few turns random "events" would happen such as floods, drought, locust plagues and human/animal interactions, both positive and negative. Different crops and gardening methods would produce different outcomes depending on the event and the player who's garden is best suited to withstand certain events could deflect the event onto the other players for additional damage or even summon new events to target certain players.

Scores would be posted on an online leaderboard and people with the best scores at the end of each season would get to pick the plot of their choice in the real UC garden for the next season.

Garden Life

Another idea we had was for a cartoon series called "Garden Life". Which would involve characters based around what was growing in the actual UC garden that would come to life when nobody was around and talk to each other. The storylines would generate interest in the garden by representing what was actually happening there in real life and would be used to give the gardeners tips about the how to look after their plants, the best things to plant for the coming season and the characters would comment on the garden's users and either praise them for their efforts or take the piss out of them depending on how well they were caring for their crops.

Discovery

As part of the task set in this weeks' tutorial to interview someone to help us gather inspiration for the design challenge, Sam and myself thought we should take the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the facilities on campus to see if we could discover anything that already existed at UC that could help us create awareness about sustainable practices.

The first we thing we found absolutely blew me away because even after studying at UC for three years, I had no idea that it even existed. Introducing....

The UC Greenprint Centre

The Greenprint Centre was opened in 2011 and is the only targeted environmentally friendly green print centre in the ACT and manages to recover over 97% of all materials used.

When we poked our heads in down at the print centre we were greeted by the Operations Manager James Dumar. James was happy to answer all our questions and even agreed to let us record the conversation. We recorded the audio on a mobile phone but unfortunately the quality was really poor and definitely isn't good enough to upload on here so I'll provide a transcript of our conversation:

James Dumar, Operations Manager, UC Greenprint Centre

Sam: If we wanted to get something printed here, what are the steps we'd have to take and how would we get it done?

James: You can either register through the website UCGreenprint.com and then submit the job online either through the website or by sending an email with the job to printroom@canberra/edu.au, or you can just come up to the counter.

Sam:  What formats do we need to have our stuff in?

James: PDF

Sam: How are your products sustainable?

James: Well we print on FSC certified 100% recycled paper and we've won numerous global awards including the Deming Award three times and we are the only company to have done that. All of our machines are zero waste to landfill. All of the excess tones is recovered and used for print and we've got quite a few other initiatives that you can see on our website.

Sam: Ok, we'll check that out. If we wanted to get, let's say 50 A4 colour pages printed off, how much would that cost us?

James: It's 28 cents a page.

Rob: And that's regardless of how many colours you want printed?

James: Yes, it's a digital colour print.

Sam: So then if it's in digital does that mean it can be in RGB or does it have to be in CMYK?

James: Yes, because it's a digital print it can be in either format. It'll work itself out.

Rob: Do you advertise at all around the Uni?

James: Yes, we are in the Monitor magazine, we have a regular newsletter that goes out to the staff at UC and we have brochures that we send out to the heads of faculties, particularly in Architecture and Graphic Design so yeah, we do. 

Operations manager James Dumar and print room manager Malcolm Marshall at the UC Greenprint Centre.

 I expressed my disbelief to James that I had been studying at the university for three years and had not heard a single thing about the Greenprint Centre from any of my tutors or lecturers. James agreed and said that the centre was very underutilised by the staff and students at UC and that his emails to the various faculties usually didn't get any response.

As a Graphic Design student, we are often asked to submit high quality, printed versions of our assignments and it just seems crazy that we have all been driving all over Canberra to get high quality prints of our designs when we could have done it right there on campus instead. This is especially baffling considering that sustainability and ethics have become such a large part of the curriculum in the last couple of years so you'd think the staff would be trying to make the students aware of the existence of the UC Greenprint Centre.

The UC Greenprint Centre is owned by Ricoh, who according to James, have been dedicated to sustainable practices since the beginning. Even before it was cool. This dedication spans across all the company's  operations from manufacturing through to printing and is definitely worthy of praise, particularly its policy of Zero waste to landfill. I got this info from their website:

"The Ricoh Group defines Zero Waste to Landfill as a 100% resource recovery rate, or no waste used as landfill. Zero Waste to Landfill was achieved at its major production sites in Japan in March 2001 and at production sites outside of Japan in March 2002. Thus, the Group achieved Zero Waste to Landfill at all its major global production sites."

So there you go, on our first outing to explore what facilities are available that could potentially help increase the campus' environmental kudos we came across that gem. Who knows what else UC may have lurking about that nobody knows about.

UC Community Garden

The first workshop introduced us to the idea of creating a community garden at UC. Apparently UC is one the most wasteful campuses in Australia which is quite embarrassing because ANU has made some great changes to the way they deal with waste and are seen to be leading the way when in comes to sustainable practices on campus. Those ANU kids are smug enough as it is without having that fact to rub in our faces so UC is making a concerted effort to run more efficiently and with less impact on the environment.

The first thing that needs to change is people's attitudes towards sustainability and the environment so Beth Mitchell has been pushing the idea of having the community garden and a seed bank on campus in an effort to raise awareness and get the students involved in creating a greener campus.

Image courtesy of Stephen Barass

Here is an audio recording by Stephen Barass of Beth's presentation from the day after our workshop.



Our workshop was at a bit of a disadvantage as Beth was not present for us to ask questions of her directly but after a quick discussion we came up with a few things that Stephen could ask her at the main workshop session being held the next day. Some of these included;

• What are the most wasteful things at UC?
• Is are recycling at UC actually getting recycled, or are we being deceived?
• Why start with a garden? Why not start with food composting like at ANU?
• What will the food be used for?
• What happens if the garden is not used?
• What about theft/vandalism? How to protect it?

After this discussion we thought about the 3 unique aspects that the garden may bring to UC, these were;

A Unique Social Space - The main epicentre for social interaction at UC is based around the refectory and bar areas and normally includes drinking. The community garden could provide a healthier and relaxing alternative where students can socialise outside while they tend the garden.

A Thinking Space - The garden could act as a refuge where students can escape from the stresses of looming deadlines and have a place to unwind from the fast pace of Uni life. Gardening may help with relieving creative block and provide a place for procrastinators to put their efforts towards something more productive.

An Opportunity to Earn and Connect - With Zierholz, Sizzle Cafe and Mizuno so close by the garden could be used to provide fresh produce to these businesses and create earning that could be used to fund further sustainability projects. Spaces could be rented out to local groups and businesses or allocated to UC Residential blocks to create a sense of community collaboration and healthy competition.

We were also tasked to come up with three user groups we could see making use of the garden. They were;

Businesses, Residents and Procrastinators. 

Our final task for the session was then to break up into groups and brainstorm as many ideas as we could that would appeal to each of our groups. We had procrastinators and came up with the tagline "Are your ideas getting stale? Try something fresh" which works on the theory that people have their greatest epiphanies when they distance themselves from their work a bit and do something to take their minds of it. Things like having a shower or going for a walk are said to be good ways of clearing your mind and gathering  inspiration so why not gardening?

Photo courtesy of Sam Bartlett

Student emails, UC Radio, SMS, and Facebook would all be great ways to engage and educate students about the garden with, Facebook being particularly useful as most procrastinating students would be on there anyway. We could use the platform to provide updated information about the progress of the garden as well as allowing students to upload content about their experiences and show off their crops.

I also had an idea after the workshop that we could create a game along the lines of Plants vs Zombies where the zombies are wasteful students who come in and trash the garden and the idea is to convert them into garden friendly people who help tend the garden instead of destroying it. Players would be rewarded with tips and information about the real garden and could also win real life items such as shovels and seeds as they complete levels and convert students successfully.

What is Transmedia?

Transmedia is the delivery of a story through multiple platforms such as TV, Film, Games, Books, The Internet and Comics. Delivering a systematic and unified experience across different forms of media allows the story's creators to go into much more depth than is possible with one platform and gives them the ability to flesh out parts of the story that may have only been hinted at previously. Back story's can be explored in greater depth and events running parallel to the main narrative can be given the exposure they deserve.

Transmedia is beneficial to both the companies that create the content as well as the audience that consumes it. For example, a Large Hollywood studio like Universal that owns other businesses such as DC Comics, can create interest in an upcoming film and generate extra revenue by releasing comics related to the story. If they also get an associated game produced that tells another aspect of the story it enables the audience to learn more about the events unfolding than would have been possible Through just the film.

A recent example of a franchise using Transmedia is the Game Halo which has spread out to encompass multiple platforms since the original game from Bungie was released as an XBOX  exclusive launch title back in 2001. In the lead up to the game's release a series of cryptic emails dubbed "The Cortana Letters" were distributed to stir up interest amongst the gaming community. 

Bungie also created a lot of interest in the release of Halo 2 with the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) I Love Bees. The game was created and developed by some of the same team from 42 Entertainment who'd previously worked on the ARG "The Beast", created to promote the movie A.I. I love Bees had thousands of players from all over the world working to unlock its secrets and its success has inspired many more ARG's since then.

Why I Love Bees - A case study in collective intelligence gaming by Jane McGonigal PHD

The world of Halo is huge and there is an immense amount of back story just begging to be explored. Luckily, the franchise is owned by Microsoft so there is plenty of funding available to help spread the word. The first  novel based in the Halo universe was "The Fall of Reach"  by Eric Nylund in 2001 that explained the events unfolding in the lead up to the Game. The fans loved it and it went on to become a best seller.

Many novels have been written by a handful of authors since then, each delving into a different part of the rich Halo universe.

Graphic novels and comics came next, starting with the Halo Graphic Novel in 2006 and continues with regular releases from Marvel Comics.

For the release of Halo 4, the latest Halo production team 343 Industries created an episodic live action series entitled Forward Unto Dawn that delves further into events happening before the start of the first game. The series was very ambitious with a budget of more than $10 million and gave hope to fans that the long awaited Halo movie could finally be getting the go ahead. On top of this 343 Industries created the Halo Waypoint site to act as an online hub for all things Halo. Waypoint serves as the launching pad for new Forward Unto Dawn episodes as well as other episodic series such as Spartan Ops. It also acts as a repository of knowledge from previous games and fan created content.

Transmedia is an exciting way to engage an audience and create a buzz around a subject and we will continue to see more of it as more production houses see its worth. Just browsing the 42 Entertainment site is enough to get you excited when you see what it is possible to create through the use of multiple media platforms.