Atomhawk and Mbryonic return to the idea of crowd-sourcing in search of a story for a Realm-inspired interactive book.
The Realm team have created their own unique concept to harness the creativity and support of the online community in taking the project on its next big adventure. The concept, known as My Crowd Story, is inviting the public to create their own stories inspired by The Realm‘s beautiful artwork. The best story will be selected by a panel of judges and made in to an interactive storybook for tablet devices to be published and sold on the app store.
After a soft-launch to fans of The Realm and supporters of its Kickstarter campaign last week, 130 users have already signed up to start creating their story. The competition will now run for 6 weeks and is open to all. Participants are presented with 26 of The Realm’s best images and asked to use them in any order to write their own unique story. There are also four blank “wild card” images where users can describe what’s in the scene to create their own additional content. The winning entrant not only gets the chance to become the published author of an interactive storybook, but will also receive a cut of the profits from its sale on the app store and have their wild card scenes brought to life by one of Atomhawk’s world-class artists. Runner-up prizes include copies of The Art of Atomhawk book and limited edition Realm prints.
The Realm was initially conceived as an internal project by award-winning art and design studio, Atomhawk,intended to stretch the team’s design skills and showcase their creative abilities through the design and development of their own IP. Inital sketches exploring the characters and environments which would form The Realm universe were turned firstly in to polished images then in to an animated video, capturing the imagination of the studio’s clients and followers.
In April 2013, Atomhawk and Mbryonic developed the idea of The Realm as a point and click adventure game to Kickstarter, with the aim of raising £195k to design and develop the game. The Kickstarter campaign generated an amazing level of publicity and excitement, raising £95k from almost 3,385 backers, but sadly not enough to bring the game to fruition.
Atomhawk and development partners, Mbryonic are now taking The Realm back to its roots as a series of beautiful images designed to inspire each viewer to create their own interpretation of the landscapes and characters they depict.
Atomhawk’s Ron Ashtiani explains more:
“One of the things that we found really interesting from our Kickstarter campaign was how involved our backers became, sending us ideas and advice on what the project should be and contributing. We also had a lot of other creative people take inspiration from our artwork and the universe of the Realm, producing their own music and stories.
We started to wonder if the fun would be in playing the Realm as a game, or if the creative process of interacting with people all over the world to build a universe, characters, story and interaction, would be the most rewarding part.
By crowd sourcing some of our creative ideas, we are experimenting with audience participation at a new level.
Tom Szirtes of Mbryonic adds:
“At Mbryonic we work with organisations like Atomhawk, helping them leverage technology to build new innovative products and services. Inspired by our Kickstarterexperience, we wanted to go beyond asking people for finance and invite them into the creative process itself. Hence, we built this easy to usewriting platform. Besides getting a great narrative from our contributors, our belief is that this approach will give the final product a rich backstory and engaged audience even before its launch.“
The live Crowd Story site can be viewed at therealmgame.com
If you would like more information, please contact Karen Hinchliffe on 0191 490 9160 or email khinchliffe@atomhawk.com
About Atomhawk
Atomhawk is a world leading design studio, offering bespoke digital art for the games, film and online media industries. The company strives to provide outstanding concept art, intuitive user interfaces, inspired motion graphics, stunning marketing art and innovative interactive experiences. More information and examples of our artwork can be found at www.atomhawk.com.
Recent projects include Thor: The Dark World (Marvel), Injustice: Gods Among Us (WB Games), Mortal Kombat (WB Games), Dead Island: Riptide (Deep Silver), Wonderbook: Book of Spells (Sony), Pottermore.
About Mbryonic
Mbryonic is a digital innovation consultancy offering strategic, design and development services to organisations wishing to leverage technology to create exciting products and services. We work in partnership with our clients, from an early stage, to develop small ideas into great products, expertly guiding them through the process of digital innovation. For more information visit www.mbryonic.com.