Gosma: a project with a transmedia approach

Abstract

The success of a cartoon series is often connected to their ability of reinventing what is expected of animation as a medium. Over the last eight years there have been a number of cartoon series that have in common both a widely spread fanbase and their deployment to other media such as video games, comics and books. In order to expand the universe and often integrate the audience’s storytelling experience, the transmedia presents a variety of solutions concerning the ways visual and narrative worlds are built, while being consistent with the main series concept. The integration can be accomplished in either using the audiences expectations and concerns or creating an environment in which the audience’s choices decides their experience. “Gosma!” is a transmedia project being developed at the Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave which explores the transcoding of an animated short by the project team members into a compilation of comics exploring each artist’s vision of the same universe and its characters. By researching ways in which a narrative could be created we held a participatory research activity with children in order to analyse how they would contribute to the narratives by putting themselves into the roles of the characters of a fictional universe. This article analyses the ways in which the development of this project could address the features of the evolved media through examining the results of this research activity and the development of recent cartoon series and what this might reveal about the creation of a transmedia relationship that expands the universe of the animation to comics.