Hey watcha wanna know about Zoo Soap?

What is this zoo?

The Online Interactive Zoo Soap Opera.com is a collaborative project done by the 1999 Computer Majors and Minors classes at the California State Summer School for the Arts at CalArts taught by Karl Ewald and Laura Hartwick. The students began the project by first building a zoo animal in photoshop. Then each student designed navigation icons and wrote a character profile for their animal, which was loaded into the custom database Karl wrote for the project. Their character profile also accomodated the dialog that each student devised for their character. They jointly designed the layout of the zoo, and chose and designed a geographic area for their animal to control.

How do I get around the zoo?

From the home page, you can click on a geographic area of the zoo to see what animals are in there having soap opera conversations. You can move to other areas of the zoo by clicking on the text links, or by following a cast member to whatever area they are in currently. You can also follow a cast member straight from the home page to whatever area of the zoo they are in.

Who are the cast members?

Click on the "zoo cast" link to find out about each cast member. You can also view a full size image of each cast member in this area.

What is the "animal profile password area"?

This is where the students are able to work on the characteristics of their animal that determine who and where in the zoo it will hang out. They are also able to update the dialog that their cast member uses when it is in an area of the zoo with other cast members. If you don't have a password, you can't get in here.

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