Professor Craig Caldwell’s Story Structure and Development provides a clear and practical approach to understanding the essentials of storytelling. This book distills fundamental elements, principles, and structures, explicitly tailored for animators, game designers, VFX artists, and XR creators, so they can seamlessly integrate these concepts into their work. It is a comprehensive guide, enriched with extensive insights and advice from industry professionals.

The thoroughly revised and updated Second Edition introduces new film and animation examples alongside over 200 vibrant images designed with today’s digital content creators in mind. Organized to enhance accessibility, this edition offers a structured approach to the story fundamentals critical to today’s movies, animation, games, and XR. Readers will gain valuable insights into the universal patterns of narrative, gaining a deeper understanding of the core story concepts that directors and producers often emphasize with the phrase, "It’s all about story."

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Story Structure: This approach consolidates universal story frameworks across the digital media industry into a single, accessible text
• Visual Learning: Features a wealth of illustrations and visuals that reinforce and clarify key concepts for visual learners
• Flexible Organization: It is structured to allow readers to access sections in a non-linear manner, either for individual reference or adaptation to various teaching methodologies

Craig Caldwell is USTAR (Utah Science Technology and Research) professor in digital media at the University of Utah. Having worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation and Electronic Arts games he has extensive experience in the industry approach to creating animation and games. Caldwell has been a co-founder and arts director for one of the top-ranked interactive games programs, Entertainment Arts and Engineering (EAE – University of Utah) with its numerous award-winning games. He has served as head of the largest film school in Australia—Griffith Film School, Griffith University, as well as chair of the Media Arts Department and associate director of the New Media Center at University of Arizona; as well as having been selected as a DeTao Master, Institute of Animation and Creative Content on the SIVA campus, Shanghai, China. Caldwell speaks frequently on story at major conferences such as SIGGRAPH, FMX, Mundos Digitales, industry, and universities. He earned his PhD from the Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design, Ohio State University.