THE WEBCOMIC MANIFESTO - HOW THE PEOPLE GOT THE POWER
I. INTODUCTION
1. COMIC BOOKS SLOWLY INTRODUCED TO A NEW REGIM
2. THE BABY BOOM - WHAT'S OUT THERE NOW
3. IS THIS REALLY A CHANGE, OR JUST POLITICAL CHATTER? - WEBCOMICS AS A NEW STORYTELLING MEDIUM REVOLUTION AND NOT JUST A FORMAT CHANGE
II. COMICS, COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET
1. WHAT TECHNOLOGY WAS KEY FOR THE REVOLUTION
A. THE INTERNET
B. DIGITALISING ANALOG THROUGH A SCANNER
C. DRAWING DIGITAL AND THE GRAPHICS TABLET
2. NEW MEDIUM, NEW FORMAT, ALL THAT NEEDS A REDESIGN!
A. ADAPTING TO THE SCREEN AND ITS RESOLUTION
B. ADAPTING TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB, AND CONNECTION SPEEDS
C. CUSTOM DOMAIN OR SIMPLE BLOGS, THERE'S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
3. WEBCOMIC DESIGNS: WHAT UNITES THEM
A. WEBCOMIC BROWSERS
B. ARCHIVE SYSTEMS
C. CONNECTION TO THEIR READERSHIP
III. THE PEOPLE'S REFORMS - HOW DEMOCRATISATION AFFECTED THE COMIC WORLD
1. ONLINE SOLIDARITY - CROSS REFERENCING
A. MY SPAGHETTI MONSTER EXPERIENCE
B. PENNY ARCADE AND STEAM
C. WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE - LAID BACK RELATIONSHIPS AMONGST WEBCOMICS
2. PRINT TRIES TO CATCH UP
A. ONLINE COMICS BUT NO REDESIGN?
B. ADAPTING PRINTED COMICS TO THE INTERNET
I. ANIMATED COMICS
II. EXCLUSIVE AND NEW CONTENT IS MANDATORY!
3. WEBCOMIC SUPERSTARS AND PRINT RECOGNITION! - SUCCESS STORIES.
A. PENNY ARCADE AT THE SAN DIEGO COMIC CON
B. ZERO PUNCTUATION
C. CYANIDE & HAPPINESS AND SIMON'S CAT HIT THE PRESSES!
IV. THERE'S NO TURNING BACK, I'LL TELL IT MY WAY - WHY WEBCOMICS ARE UNIQUE AND HOW THEY HAVE PLAYED TO THEIR STRENGTH
1. IN THE LAND OF SELF-PUBLISHING, THE ARTIST IS KING
A. NO ONE IS THE BOSS OF ME!
I. YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
II. HOMEPAGE SAFE HOMEPAGE - SURE, I CAN PUT A DISCLAIMER, THEN NO ONE CAN BOTHER ME
III. XKCD LIKES TO PLAY WITH FORMAT - WHEN THE PUBLISHER'S OUT, THE ARTISTS GO OUT AND PLAY
B. IT'S THE INTERNET, I CAN SAY WHATEVER I WANT! - PENNY ARCADE, ZERO PUNCTUATION, CYANIDE & HAPPINESS
2. BUILDING A FAN-BASE AND MAKING MONEY?
A. SUCCESS IS FROM KNOWING YOUR READERSHIP (XKCD ON PENNY ARCADE)
B. A HAPPY READER MAKES FOR A HAPPY ARTIST - HOW TO MAKE MONEY AND ALL BE HAPPY!
I. MERCHANDISING
II. ADVERTS
III. DONATIONS
V. RESTRICTIONS FROM TOTAL FREEDOM - TECHNOLOGICAL BOUNDERIES ARE STILL TO BE OVERCOME!
1. I WANT EASIER WAYS TO CREATE A WEBSITE! - WHAT THE HELL IS HTML, PHP, AND CSS?
2. I WANT FASTER INTERNET FOR ALL!
3. I WANT BETTER HARDWARE FOR ALL!
4. I WANT THE CHINESE TO STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP!
VI. CONCLUSION - WHY NOT TRY IT YOURSELF? THERE'S NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.
1. £10 A YEAR FOR A .COM, £4 A MONTH FOR WEBSPACE, EMAIL AND INTERNET SECURITY? I CAN AFFORD THAT
2. IS TIME REALLY THAT PRECIOUS?
3. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL YOUR STORIES? - THERE'S SO MANY POSSIBILITIES, EXPERIMENT
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Plastidip
For my stickmen statue I was recommended a substance/material for the finish: Pastidip. Basically, it's spray paint (or just paint) that will cover your surface with rubber/plastic. Yes, aerosol plastic! It must be the must unnatural substance in the world. The fumes are pretty nasty though, so I ordered a spray paint (light chemical and particle filter) mask. As long as I'm not actually using concentrated asbestos in a can, I should be fine.
I got 2 cans of plastidip yesterday and have been experimenting on the finished. It's really quite impressive stuff, but doesn't work well with cloth or anything too absorbing, and to my surprise, it looks fantastic on bear tube, and really cool on duct tape. I need to do a couple more coats on my sample to have some realistic results (the thing need about 3 to 4 coats on average, might need 5 on duct tape). I'm actually thinking that high grade masking tape would be the best thing to have as an undercoat. Once the plastidip is applied, you can't tell what's under it, and it doesn't drip and looks quite homogeneous.
I got 2 cans of plastidip yesterday and have been experimenting on the finished. It's really quite impressive stuff, but doesn't work well with cloth or anything too absorbing, and to my surprise, it looks fantastic on bear tube, and really cool on duct tape. I need to do a couple more coats on my sample to have some realistic results (the thing need about 3 to 4 coats on average, might need 5 on duct tape). I'm actually thinking that high grade masking tape would be the best thing to have as an undercoat. Once the plastidip is applied, you can't tell what's under it, and it doesn't drip and looks quite homogeneous.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Adpating comics for the web
I've already posted on part of what I'm going to write here a while back when I compared webcomics and their layout to translated manga, and English adaptations. I'll just come back to this a bit later.
I've been reading Will Eisner's "Comics, a Sequential Art," and have been putting my readings in parallel with my webcomic. Will Eisner analysed, like quite a few other comic book experts like Thierry Groenstein and Scott McCloud, the sequence and design of comic books. When you look into the design of a single page and it's sequential art inside that defined space, webcomics work in the same way. The pages in most webcomics can be read following the "right to left, up to down" occidental reading method.
I've illustrated this by adapting a couple of sequential pages of a speechless comic into an animated .gif picture. This experimenting has allowed me to explore and visually demonstrate quite a few differences, similarities, obstacles, and adaptation techniques of printed comic books to webcomics.
I have adapted these 2 comic pages into the following .gif:
The images in the comics have been organised in the .gif file in the logical sequential reading order. This brings me swiftly to two points: adapting printed sequential art to the internet, and digital medium sequential artwork representations which cannot use digital technology that cannot be reproduced in printed form. That sounds really long, but what I mean by that is that there's quite a few ways to adapt a printed comic into a digital sequential art form, but only one way to go adapt it the other way around.
In the digital world, the tools are infinite to tell a sequential story, and mixing the media to create a digital comic book, say like mixing the layout of the comic, but adding animation to some of the page and images allows for a whole new storytelling method that cannot exist (without a substantial budget, resources and research) in a physical print form. All I'm saying here is that by digitalising comic books, many more options are given to us a part from the printed sequential form.
Now if one has a look on my webcomic browser and remembers the previous post I have written about webcomic browsers, which can be summed up easily by: webcomics favour people revisiting the website to newcomers by placing the latest page/comic in the place of honour. On my webcomic, while placing the 2 directly sequential pages which should/would be following each other in an order that would make the most logical sense. Therefore adapting this to a new medium causes some logistical problems (as I like to call them). This is just worth pointing out seeing as I already discussed quite extensively the reasons for my browser setup on my website. One has a choice to make, and generally, like most choices each decision contains pros and cons. The pros outweigh the cons, but the frustration of not having a perfect system is there: what if I put a few sequential pages on my webcomic, and people read the end before the beginning because of the browser setup? Nothing is perfect.
I've been reading Will Eisner's "Comics, a Sequential Art," and have been putting my readings in parallel with my webcomic. Will Eisner analysed, like quite a few other comic book experts like Thierry Groenstein and Scott McCloud, the sequence and design of comic books. When you look into the design of a single page and it's sequential art inside that defined space, webcomics work in the same way. The pages in most webcomics can be read following the "right to left, up to down" occidental reading method.
I've illustrated this by adapting a couple of sequential pages of a speechless comic into an animated .gif picture. This experimenting has allowed me to explore and visually demonstrate quite a few differences, similarities, obstacles, and adaptation techniques of printed comic books to webcomics.
In the digital world, the tools are infinite to tell a sequential story, and mixing the media to create a digital comic book, say like mixing the layout of the comic, but adding animation to some of the page and images allows for a whole new storytelling method that cannot exist (without a substantial budget, resources and research) in a physical print form. All I'm saying here is that by digitalising comic books, many more options are given to us a part from the printed sequential form.
Now if one has a look on my webcomic browser and remembers the previous post I have written about webcomic browsers, which can be summed up easily by: webcomics favour people revisiting the website to newcomers by placing the latest page/comic in the place of honour. On my webcomic, while placing the 2 directly sequential pages which should/would be following each other in an order that would make the most logical sense. Therefore adapting this to a new medium causes some logistical problems (as I like to call them). This is just worth pointing out seeing as I already discussed quite extensively the reasons for my browser setup on my website. One has a choice to make, and generally, like most choices each decision contains pros and cons. The pros outweigh the cons, but the frustration of not having a perfect system is there: what if I put a few sequential pages on my webcomic, and people read the end before the beginning because of the browser setup? Nothing is perfect.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)