StoryBlocks

Anneli Hershman, Marc Exposito, and Juliana Nazaré

StoryBlocks is a smart-expressive medium, designed in collaboration with Sesame Workshop, that aims to bring a new level of interactivity into children’s educational media and stories while promoting empathy, social-emotional development, and literacy development through storytelling. In StoryBlocks, children transition between an animated narrative that sets up a social conflict, and an interactive comic-style composition that allows children to construct their own solutions and share their stories while engaging in critical thinking and reflection.

Here is an example clip of the animated video within StoryBlocks. This clip gives you a sample of the transition periods, when the characters talk directly with the user, and the narrative period, where the characters act out their story. This animation uses a combination of physical cut-outs, stop-motion, and digitally animated faces overlaid onto the characters.​

Animated by Saul Woolf

Collaborators at Sesame Workshop: Jim Gray, Jordan Geary, Andrea Palumbos, and Franco Schettino