Toys, Comics and Transmedia Play: Tracing the connections between multidimensional storytelling and playability

Abstract

N INDUSTRIALLY PRODUCED TOY MAY NOT COME TO EXISTENCEwithout a two-dimensional image: Often, a three-dimensional toy character first exists as a two-dimensional sketch or as part of a story-world from other media.On the contrary, a twodimensional comic come to fruition without any three-dimensional, or 'toyish' manifestations.Nevertheless, the historical development of these two narrative and popular media-toys and comics-are entangled in a web of shared meanings and tightly woven intertextual relationships.This theoretical essay explores the similarities and differences between the two-dimensional, juxtaposed and serial image (comics), three-dimensional, material objects (toy), and the interplay between these interwoven, visual, material and fictional universes.The essay expands upon my previous work to explore the toyification of culture. 1 'the mediation of things and the 'thingification of media' (Lash and

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