Starcrossed began as a way to explore media and fictional tropes that we consume daily. Story-telling is an important part of how we communicate messages and teach lessons. Formulaic tropes can be vastly applied to a variety of stories, serving as literary tools that allow easier ways for ideating. They can also be overused or under-developed, creating misconceptions and inaccurate depictions of characters, people, and personalities. 

How can we re-write common fictional tropes to redefine what they mean to us? How can design and user-experience play a part in story development? What tropes do or don’t resonate with an audience? These questions were explored through surveys at MassArt, a series of character and world-building workshops, and experimenting with different story-telling mediums succh as script-writing, comic illustration, and storyboard animations.

The end result of the project was a set of character design illustrations based on the results of the surveys & character workshops, concept art of each character and their interactions with each other (as well as the tropes they embody), a pilot comic featuring two of the main protagonists, and a storyboard animatic to visualize it altogether in a trailer.