Narr8.me: Storytelling For New Media
In today’s world, everything is evolving. Phone calls are going video, popstars are holographic, Twitter and Facebook are overtaking social interactions. So why there shouldn’t be another crazy, but good, hybrid. For example television and books. Narr8.me is exactly that.
Interactive Dynamic in Narr8.Me
Erasing boundaries between TV show and comic book series, Narr8.me is a mobile app that offers interactive stories, articles, and motion comics. Diverse array of genres offers multiple series that come complete with animation, sound, music, HD-effects, and multimedia effects that allow you to interact with various elements on the screen. Dynamic indeed!
If you are a fast reader, loading and interacting can be a bit slow and annoying. However, being one of those people, I can say that this forced me to stop and smell the roses. Instead of focusing only on text I explored art more, and that is a good thing. Besides reading, you can rate all content and share it on Facebook and Twitter. But speaking of social, every now and then, Facebook app that I was using, had a hiccup. Sometimes elements weren’t always in sync, but having a minor bug in new version of app isn’t a new thing.
Available Platforms
It has over 1,000,000 users and content is available in four languages: English, Russian, Spanish and Korean. They are also planning to expand array of available languages. Narr8 is available for iPad, iPhone, Android 4.0 and up, Amazon Kindle Fire, Windows 8, and from very recently Facebook. It is first of its kind on the biggest social network, so it has some head start in that area. This year, they also plan to release app for B&N Nook, web browsers and Smart TV.
Art from comic books is simply beautiful. Even without special effects, a lot of the comic books could hold their own. Those elements are just adding something extra to the story. For example eerie music for the horror genera adds a it more tension, and animations in romance series give us feeling that characters are more than two dimensional.
Creating Your Content
With every series updated bi-weekly, there is new content almost every day. In-house team is producing most content, for now, but recently, they have released comic Editor tool. It enables you to create your own content. It has effects, sounds, artwork and music library . There is a way to make money, with whole publisher-author interaction. Creators retain full right to all stories, and because it uses its own currency, and not real money, there is no cut for Apple or Google for selling within those apps. Potentially, more money for authors.
Although app is free to download, the content is not. First two episodes of each series is free, but beyond that, you’ll need to spend currency called Narrs. You can get them by using the app each day, reading comics regularly etc., or buying them, with range from 150 to 2450 Narrs, for 2.99 to 19.99 USD.
Narr8.me is sleek, simple and visually beautiful. It will give competition run for its money. Several comics got me personally hooked, so I will be back. You should be back too, because next week we’ll bring you a tutorial of how to use Narr8 app.
