Playful creation of digital stories with eShadow

Abstract

eShadow promotes a new way of dramatized and personalized digital storytelling inspired by the rich tradition of shadow theatre. It enables game-like interventions combining several digital tools for the production of digital stories covering all five phases of filmmaking: scenario development, pre-production, production, post-production and distribution. eShadow can be used (a) to create digital shadow puppets, and (b) to set up, perform and record the scenes of the digital story (production phase). This way, digital story creation is wrapped around interesting game-like decisions, playful improvisations and creative learning. eShadow has been extensively used to support cross-curricular learning mainly in Greek schools. It is currently extended to support marionette-like interactions to promote its use in countries with relevant storytelling cultures.