Bibliograpy

Youtube: 

Early Abstractions (1946 - 57) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBGhWjqo_4&feature=player_embedded
Thought of You, by Ryan Woodward - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBk3ynRbtsw&feature=player_embedded
Noggin the Nog, Noggin and the Pie, part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTcStBUW2Ao&feature=player_embedded
Skin up baby Jesus - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn6Dq2UehSw&feature=player_embedded
VW stop motion animation commercial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ6I2dz-WQY&feature=player_embedded
All New Yaris vs Gadget Guy Toyota UK TV Advert - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DYmVs3PNE&feature=player_embedded
Devendra Banhart, Carmensita - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_QAPjtO2cA&feature=player_embedded
Stop motion animation. Claymation, Faces by Guldies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaFT9DXuEE4&feature=player_embedded
Stop motion tutorials. Claymation, how to: Flying objects - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EIQ1Voylo&feature=player_embedded


Websites

Home Stuck - http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6
1000 words - http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=1000+words#/d23ifgd
Comics Launch Pad - http://www.comicslaunchpad.com/comicslaunchpad/home.html
My Cardboard Life - Pirates - http://mycardboardlife.com/2628
Menage a 3 :: Kind of Soft...  - http://www.menagea3.net/?module=articles&func=display&ptid=17
Yu + Me page 003 - http://rosalarian.com/yume/?p=27
Yu + Me page 793/4 http://rosalarian.com/yume/?p=2166
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Merlin_Goodbrey

Evaluation

When I originally picked this question ‘Exploring different ways of creating a narrative using a digital approach.’ I was influenced by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, he has worked on various webcomic projects that involved ‘digital mutations’ of comics as he likes to call it. This includes hyper-comics that effect the sequence of events, outcome of events and the point of view through which events are seen. 

When I first started I looked into rota-scoping, since this was going to be flash project I thought, okay this should turn out interesting. The first few rota-scopes were pretty rough as I was looking into how to use line with the movement, the more I did the more refined the technique got as well as the line. My personal favourite in the series of rota-scopes would be the V for Vendetta clip, I like the use of colour and line, as well as the fact that the two characters are interacting with one another. 

After the series of rota-scopes my next line of thinking was I’ve done rota-scopes what about digital means of animating? So I started to look into Claymation/stop motion. These experiments proved to be a lot harder than rota-scoping. Both techniques are time-consuming as is everything in a moving image. I did enjoy the stop-motion experiments; I produced a series of little movies of them, lasting a few seconds (each has been saved as a gif file for ease of access). With each Claymation I created I learnt something new each time. The timing with the movement, how many frame per second should be shot, you needed to be very precise with the movement of the little sculpture. If I had gone into this with more time and looking into using this form of storytelling I would’ve attempted to have characters interact with one another to create a better dynamic.

Once I got over the initial excitement of stop motion I went to look at flash and played around with its more basic features, motion tween. I popped out a quick little experiment, as I’ve used it many times before in the past I didn’t need to fully mess around with the feature. 

I worked only once using photo and animation on top throughout this entire project which is a shame I think, if I had more time I would’ve looked into this more, it would’ve proved to be an interesting set of experiments.

As I started nearing the deadline I began to look into how some people have approached their own webcomics and made it successful by using interactive means. I picked up a few techniques here and there and applied it to flash and produced some rough experiments. I looked at creating buttons and using those to turn pages, as well as clicking on certain panels to take you to another page. Then I began to look at what you could do with using the mouse to hover over a panel, which seems to be more fun and interesting compared to the last. I made a few roughs for this again and experimented with layouts and ways of changing image. 

Once I was happy with the initial roughs I began to finalise the artwork from Light up your Sky (LUYS) for the first page and created my last experiment in this series. Overall I think this has been a successful project, I’ve looked into different ways of experimenting using digital means, made some animations stand out a lot more and had fun in the process of doing so!  

LUYS: Comic by ~Shaz-da-baz on deviantART

After cleaning up the linework and adding colour to this, I really do enjoy how it's turned out.

I did the artwork in Illustrator and then imported it into Flash, this way I keep a higher standard of quality to the linework, and it's easily edited in either program as they both are vector based.  

LUYS

This is a really unrefined experiment. I wanted to see what I could do in flash with the roll over feature. I like it but I feel that compared to what the previous post contains this is a rough that needs to be worked on so the quailty is to a much higher standard.

Mini Me

This is an experiment I did just to see how you can interact with a mouse. Hovering over the little figure causes her to frown, whilst hitting/clicking on her causes her facial expression to change to shock. I find it amusing and entertaining to just click. I will have to look into more little interactions like this.

Digital Comics

Back in 2011, in June I attended the Comics Launch Pad with a few friends. There was a lot of useful seminars that went on, and new crazy ideas as to what comicing will be like in the future. With the coming of the digital age, less and less people are using books to read and more are using digital technology. For example, the kindle, many use it for reading as it's easy to carry around, it stores hundreds of books and it only weighs under half a kg. The same will happen for comics.

Nowadays, newer generations are growing up reading everything on a screen, comics included. Many don't care if the comic is digital or paper back they just want to read comics. When buying comics it has to be of a high quality if they are to be keeped. If its a cheap looking comic then it is most likely to be disposed of, if its high quality it is bound to be put on a book shelf. 

Web & Webcomics

The internet and webcomics have been around since the 1990s, their has never been a middle man between the internet and webcomics. There are lots of different formats for comics online but the most popular seems to be strips. Some examples below:

                             My Cardboard Life - Pirates by Philippa Rice

                          Menage a 3 : Kind of Soft


From what I've seen with the online comic industry a lot of artists start online with big projects then move more towards printed projects once they gather a big enough fan base. For example Yu + Me: Dream, a very popular webcomic where the artist managed to entertain a huge audience and make some money from merchandising products from the comic. She also improved her art work as she went along over the years, as well as contain many different styles through out the story to fit the dream like world she created.

<-The start of her comic in 2004.
Megan Rosalarian, has improved vastly over the years the image of the right is near the end of her webcomic. She built up a huge readership and she finished the comic to suit her and her readers need for an end. She has six volumes of this comic in print, as well as other projects.







You need a readership of over 10,000 to make any real money in webcomics as only 1-5% of your audience will actually buy things from you such as t-shirts, books etc.

To achieve this you need to stick to a schedule, making regular updates, so if you're doing a regular comic format page you need to update once a week, if its a strip comic then it's at least 3 times a week minimum. You need to keep the readers coming back for more so you need to feed them chunks of your story to keep them hanging on and wanting more.

Advertising yourself correctly works as well, it gets you out there and people find your online presence more easily. For example using face book, twitter, comic message boards, blogs etc helps. Getting to know your audience is always good too, shows you want to know what they think, make them feel involved with the project.

Jan and Sam: Nice Day

Again another experiment, this time using my roughs that were on the previous page and having it set as a click through using the arrow buttons. My mistake in this was the page size. It's rather too big for ones screen.

I did nothing by ~Shaz-da-baz on deviantART

Hit the first hyper link. Uploaded it to DA as blogspot does not support swf. file types.

This was an experiment to see if clicking over an image would take me to another set of images. It worked but it's layout is a bit confusing so I'll have to work on it.

For my interractive comic I will use this story here. It's short, self contained and I'll be able to experiment in a few ways with this. I feel this story will be more special with a self contralled way of reading it.

1000 Words

This story is a self-contained short. It is about a girl whose parents are about to divorce and she thinks if she can draw beautifully that she can keep them together, so she seeks the help of a wandering artist that happens to be in the area. The story is sweet and the way it has been put together is beautiful. The colours are gorgeous as well as the use of colour. There isn't much interaction other than hitting the next button for the page, which in its way does have the reader interacting with the story.

The story is panel by panel so you don't know what to expect next as you don't have it laid out for you on the page.

After my series of experiments for stop motion I've come to want to do an interactive comic, I've researched into current interactive comic projects and their is a wide bredth of them, they're appearing up and are popular.

Home Stuck

This animated/click through comic is rather entertaining! It's style uses pixels to its advantage, it isn't one that you'd judge on its style, its up to your own interpretations as to how you view the comic. It uses the basic of tools that you'd find on your system, microsoft paint and uses it to illustrate a story. Certain areas are animated and others are just still. It uses a various different animation techniques.

This comic is about a boy named John, who is homestuck. He mainly looks around the house for interesting objects. I haven't gotten too far into the story yet but from my view of it, it is drawing.

This is an example of what I meant. When the user rolls over the image it pops up an image to the right of the screen.

 Here it shows how the reader moves from one page to another whilst exploring what else is on the page, for example the 'pester log' as the author named it. Giving you more insight into what John does whilst he is at home.

I think this comic is well crafted and reaches it audience rather well. I may use some of these techniques when creating my own short comic.

beak

This started off as an experiment again, but I realised the images where coming out really orange, so I scrapped this idea and re-did it.

This is an updated version of the one above, it all started off well and fine until his beak fell off which caused me to giggle and leave it as it is.

I found this on youtube when I was researching videos for stop motion animations, his work is really smooth and flows very nicely. Inspiring video.

Twirl

This originally started out as a little fun experiment however I didn't have much of a story planned out for him, so it cuts off really shortly. I've learned that when doing this again I shall have to create a story board for the character.

I don't know what this one is, I was going through my camera the other day and I came across a series of photo's I took. I decided to put it together, I learned from my last mistake, I should use photoshop instead of Flash to put it together. There is less pixelation to it than in the previous stop motion experiments.

Prep the oven

A tutorial for creating a simple game.

Rolling dough

Where I'm going with my animation experiments.

Research

Research,

worming my way up

Not much to say, just a small experiment with animating ontop of a photograph.

Zoom Experiment

This is just a random little experiment using the tween function in flash.