À tela infinita… e além: um estudo sobre o uso de recursos da hipermídia na criação de histórias em quadrinhos digitais

Abstract

Having become popular in newspapers and magazines throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, comics were consolidated in modern culture in a way intrinsically related to press media. About a hundred years later, the digital revolution, which conditioned new technological and social dynamics to communication media, also opened up space for a possible reinvention of comics. Media convergence and language hybridization unsharpened the boundaries between the domains of comics, audiovisual and games, and hypermedia resources such as interactivity, animation, sound, multilinear storytelling, dynamic layout and infinite canvas began to come up as new possible elements to the comics repertoire. However, there has been little discussion and exploration about this subject: conventional language and techniques are entrenched in such way that many digital comics artworks are still conceived and produced as if they were constrained to the same circumstances of press media. Opposing to this scenario, this research intended to investigate the relationship between comics and digital media, questioning how is it possible for comic authors to consider the use of hypermedia resources in the design of digital comics. Therefore, we aimed to propose thoughts based on a literature review concerning this topic, enriched with a field gathering of examples of comics and interviews with artists who have, effectively, explored hypermedia possibilities in their work with digital storytelling. The thoughts brought up by this theoretical research culminated in the design and production of “Atravessando a Rua” (www.atravessandoarua.com), an original digital comics experiment that, besides contributing to the digital comics cultural collection, was also meant to illustrate a possible empiric answer to the proposed research question.