Task 6: An Emoji Story

1. Relying on Syllables, Words, or Ideas: In my emoji story above, I relied mostly on ideas that were symbolized through emojis rather than syllables or specific words. The emojis that I selected were chosen to symbolize key scenes in the plot, characters and actions from “Batman: The Dark Knight,” focusing on conveying the storyline and emotions of the characters effectively. Emojis represent a new mode of communication, different from traditional written language. They convey this story through visual symbols. Just as Kress (2005) discusses the shift from text to image, using emojis in storytelling demonstrates this transition. Emojis allow for a more concise expression appealing to a visually oriented audience or learner. Actually, my five year old daughter loved it and thought it was a really cool game!
2. Starting with the Title: To be honest, I don’t have time to watch a lot of television so I tried to think back to a program I’ve seen at all within the last little while. Other than hockey and cartoons, I remembered watching the end of Batman not too long ago. The title definitely came first because it was something simple that I could make out of symbols. It began with emojis representing Bat-man and then came Gotham City, Joker and went rolling from there.
3. Choosing Based on Visualizability: The choice of  The Dark Knight was definitely influenced by its visual and narrative simplicity, making it easier to visualize and portray through emojis. Like I mentioned above, this paid into the reasoning for my selection but was also sincerely something I recall recently watching. The iconic characters like Batman and the Joker, along with Gotham City and good vs. evil, lend themselves well to emoji representation, making the story engaging and recognizable. Kress (2005) notes that the order of information in multimodal communication is much more open. In the example of my emoji story, a reader may interpret the sequence of these emojis, creating their own kind of narrative.

The first step I took was to give the main characters each their own emoji so that my story would be simple enough to follow. The emoji used for Batman was the easiest to pick out as it seemed to fit him perfectly and I suppose you could say that I blended BAT-MAN per syllable. The Joker was also quite easy to pick as the joker card emoji fit him perfectly but I had to throw in the clown next to it to make it more recognizable. Harvey Dent was easy to select as well since he was the district attorney, therefore the scales of justice emoji symbolized him well. Later in the story, you might see that I changed Harvey Dent into the dramatic masks representing his transformation into Two Face. For Commissioner Gordon, I decided on the police officer emoji to symbolize his role in law enforcement.

The most difficult emoji to decide on was Rachel Dawes since she was a complex character, both a lawyer and Bruce Wayne’s love interest (notice the hearts ????). Since she often guided Bruce/Batman, I considered giving her the woman detective emoji but I stuck to the simple brunette one for simplicity sake.

The criminals in Gotham influenced by the Joker were also fun to express through emojis as I used the purple “evil” face emoji (fits too because Joker’s colour is purple) along with an emoji of a gun. I used an arrow emoji to signify the progression of a scene or idea. I found this very useful for myself.

Overall, I heavily relied on the symbolism/ideas of the emojis to convey my story. There were many emojis that directly linked to the plot of the movie which made it easier to complete. I really enjoyed this assignment as it reflects our evolving ways of expressing ideas, emotions and narratives through images and digital symbols. We simply continue to evolve… I’m curious to see what happens next with our text and symbols in the future. ????

Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5-22.