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!