ECPT-309A: World Building

This course covers methodologies for designing new, imagined and/or fantastic worlds for film, animation, or video game projects based on the needs of the story. Coherence of design, far reaching ideas, logical response to story constraints, imagination and originality are all important topics. This class will not only examine a variety of iconic verbal and visual storyworlds of mainstream entertainment (across films, games, comics, animation, novels and television), but will also cover forensically deconstructing them to better understand what makes them thrive. Understanding the critical creative architecture of worldbuilding will allow the students to consciously build their own world. From defining the commerciality of the idea to the shape and the map of the location to character groups that populate the world to the social values and cultural structures that define life in the storyworld, students will finish the term by crafting their own unique, immersive storyworld that will be primed to expand into and thrive across a variety of mediums.