VU professor and Disney insider details legendary company鈥檚 innovative storytelling
in new book
October 20, 2020
VINCENNES, Ind. 鈥� 日韩中文字幕福利片 Visiting Professor Newton Lee is co-author of a new book on The Walt Disney Company鈥檚 use of technological innovation to create characters and stories that engage audiences in many different media from early film to today鈥檚 video games and online environments.
Lee authored the second edition of the 2020 textbook, 鈥淒isney Stories: Getting to Digital鈥�, with Georgia Tech Professor Krystina Madej.
鈥溾�� chronicles Lee鈥檚 10-year stint with The Walt Disney Company serving as a senior staff engineer and senior producer of more than 100 online games for children.
During his tenure at Disney, Lee founded the Disney Online Technology Forum鈥� a community
of resources and conversations with monthly meetups at Disney offices in Los Angeles.
He was active in Disney's employee volunteer program (known as VoluntEARS), earning
four project leadership awards.
鈥淒isney exemplifies the creative and financial success of Transmedia storytelling with books, movies, TV shows, music, Broadway musicals, toys, theme parks, and of course video games,鈥� Lee said.
Disney stories are, more than ever, present across all media.
The second edition further provides key moments in the development of animated films as they evolved to embrace digital technology. The stories-across-media theme includes Disney鈥檚 new 鈥淪tar Wars鈥� films and Galaxy鈥檚 Edge at Disney theme parks which allow audiences to enjoy the animatronic character Hondo Ohnaka on their way to see the Millennium Falcon in an across-media digital experience.
Associate for Computing Machinery Fellow and Turing Award laureate Dr. Alan Kay lauded the book in his review: 鈥淎n affectionate portrait of how 'the mouse' learned to use the mouse.鈥�
The book is optional for the game design courses in the VU Information Technology Department and is a required textbook at the Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media, and Communication.
鈥淒isney Stories is a great companion book for game design students at VU,鈥� Lee said. 鈥淚t shows students that game design is not a standalone field in a silo, but it is more of a cross-disciplinary and across-media experiential design.鈥�
痴鲍鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;Programming and Game Development Degree provides students with unique opportunities. They get hands-on experience, learn how to design and develop video games on multiple platforms as well as how to publish and market software applications.
"Disney Stories: Getting to Digital" is published by .
###