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2015
'The Fairy Tale' is an amazing genre within fiction; one that spans time, location and culture. We all know of Snow White's apple, Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house and Rapunzel's long, long hair. I am passionate about Fairy Tales and their place within the cultural discourse of society. One particularly interesting aspect of these fables, myths and legends is the fact that similar narrative elements and thematic ideas are found in variant stories from communities around the world. The compelling theory is that of a singular point of origin to these tales, which have been passed on through oral tradition with varying societal-flavouring added along the way.
The online SurLaLune open source database is a passion project of linguist and information scientist, Heidi Anne Heiner. The database records these "variant stories" as entries against the popularised editions that we know today. The database keeps track of fields such as a tale's alternate name, country of origin and year of emergence.
"Project Disney" derives its name from the fact that the Walt Disney company popularised these tales in the mid 1900s. This project was an exploration into Unreal Engine 4 and the visual-coding framework known as Blueprint. In an effort to create a truly immersive experience, a 3D fantasy world was built that housed iconic structures from three well-known fairy tales: Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and Rapunzel. As the user approaches one of these structures in the application, they notice a storybook sitting atop a pedestal. The storybook displays a globe that appears around the user with specific points of interest highlighted, each representing a similar tale from that locale. The user can focus on a point of interest and see supporting information displayed on-screen, sourced directly from the SurLaLune database. This realises the project goal: to visualise historical fairy tale data in a way that fosters wonder and imagination.
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