H’okay, as you should know, I’m doing a webcomic based on some of the totally wacky dreams I’ve had. I’ve drawn the first comic (hey, I never claimed to be good at drawing) and as I say in the first post over there, I’ll do one comic a week. Depending on how I pace it, this could mean I get only one dream done this semester. I’m starting with one that simply must be done, for obvious reasons. After this one, since I’ve already started, I may decide to make larger comics with 1 dream per comic. There’s a plot framing these dreams that I was going to start with, but I want to get comfortable with a drawing style before I even attempt it. I want it to look like what I see in my head, and until I can manage that it’ll stay in there.
I’d like to try 2 comics a week, and if I can I will, but I spend a bit too much time being annoyed at my artwork to promise that many. So for this class, I’ll do one comic a week, more if I can manage it. Hopefully over break I’ll be able to build up a backlog. And make my comicpress page more pretty.
Monthly Archive for February, 2010
I’m no expert with a camera. Sometimes I can take an excellent and/or artsy shot, but most of my pictures are just point-and-shoot. I’m the person in my group of friends who always has a camera, and who has the most annoying habit of wanting to document everything. For this, flickr is alright, though most of my pictures are on facebook. Since the majority of my pictures are of my friends, facebook is the way to go, as no one who I’m not facefriends with is really interested in my adventures.
I can’t get my flickr plugin to work with this theme. I have no idea why, I’m working on that. Right now my account has some of the aforementioned documentation from this weekend’s exploits.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47424424@N07/
My favorite flickr story is one I’m sure at least some of you have heard. Aaron Nace and Rosie Hardy, both ridiculously talented artists, met on Flickr, fell in love and started their own photography website. I absolutely love their work, their photoshop talents never fail to wow me. And of course, I always like hearing about how online relationships work out. >.> I couldn’t possibly link to all of the photos they’ve made that impress me, I encourage you to check them out.
On an unrelated note, I’m 21! Crud, when did that happen?
On a slightly more related note, wheee! http://jarofbees.net/comic
Not as pretty as I’d like it. Working on that.
Well, it’s tough to say what I’m using for inspiration. I’m really just reimagining my dream blog as a comic. If I had to point to one comic for my inspiration, I’d have to say Sluggy Freelance. Sluggy Freelance was the first webcomic I read. Pete’s written and drawn one of the longest-running webcomics out there, it’s from 1997. Talk about an archive trawl. The best thing for me about the massive archives is if I need an idea or a reference for how to draw a certain scene in comic form, chances are he’s handled it. I read a ton of webcomics now, some good and some bad, and all of them will help me figure out pacing and plotting for my own.
For other resources? Um…. I’ll natürlich continue blogging about dreams I’ve had. My dream last night involved a girl I was babysitting getting kidnapped by Lex Luthor. And that’s just terrible. Did you know he stole 40 cakes once? I had to save her and ended up having to fight faceless goons in his private jet.
When this gets going I’ll talk to the nice folks over at Giant in the Playground about my strip and get their input, and if I can get people over there to check it out and like it then frankly I’ve won who I want to win. I’ll post a strip or two on my Deviantart. My comic is not for a specific audience. Except for the lovely ladies from high school who thought I should write a story out of my dreams and got me to start blogging them in the first place. One shouldn’t start advertising a comic until one has at least 20 strips in the archive, though, or is at least far enough into the first story arch for a reader to figure out what’s going on.
Ich habe gerade gelernt dass mein Aufgeregtheit sehr ersichtlich ist. >.> Ein schlechte Sache? Offenbar nicht! ^_^
I was thinking about brainstorming story ideas (despite already having one; I spent all day reading class blogs rather than doing other homework) when I thought of this. These poems were an idea my father came up with in early January and posted on his facebook. Basically, in thinking of completely unrelated, but individually funny words, my father discovered that one word led to another in unexpected ways. He also found he thought of them in groups of four. There is something aesthetically pleasing about the groups he came up with. For example:
Spanking eggplant hostess mazeltov
Pester caulk fulsome killjoy
Fussy scalding alpine pinochle
Gargle farfetched umbrage inlay
Poprocks beanbag martingale sleuth
And some examples of my own:
Corset zebra peanut baroque
Palace cancel theoretical cabbage
Variable diffuse omelet sparrow
These words must be unrelated, and the group must not express and idea through normal English syntax. Letting your mind wander into these groups is an interesting mental exercise with entertaining results. And might be helpful in prompting a story. Well, maybe. If you can create a story from “Corset zebra peanut baroque“, I will give you $5.
Once I pay my outstanding debts to my roommate and my sister.
Also, such a thought process might be related to some forms of schizophrenia.
First of all. Here’s a story told 3 ways.
1 (pikistrips)
2 (flickr 6-word story)
3 (joggle; coming soon)
The tale of Batshark is a joke between me and my boyfriend, inspired by, of course, bat-shark-repellent-spray. This one test of the 50 tools has absolutely nothing to do with the story I’m actually thinking of telling, my aforementioned webcomic idea. The tools provided aren’t really what I’m looking for to present that story. Reece, meanwhile, was so inspired by the pikistrips comic above that he wants to continue making Batshark comics. The real reason my joggle version isn’t done yet is that he wants to do the voices and he hasn’t had the chance yet. I think a Batshark strip could get a decent audience. Tell me if you think otherwise!
The pikistrips one was by far the most fun to create, a comic format is really the only way to deal with such a story.
Onto my webcomic idea.
I’ve linked to my dream blog already, which in retrospect was probably a mistake, as most of my story is stolen almost directly from those dreams. It will be several of the more plotted ones, perhaps spliced with the ones with less plot but cool elements, and all of these will be linked together by a separate plot that I’ve thought up. It’s sort of mad-sciencey. I haven’t quite finished thinking up the plot, it doesn’t have a definite ending, but it has a beginning and the beginning of the middle, and combining that with the dreams I’m planning to use should put me well over 10 weeks. I’m going to be drawing the strip myself, by hand or using a vector program, as that’s really the only way to get the look I’m hoping for. I figure combining that work with the other schoolwork I have, it will update on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule. No one has anything to read on t/th anyway, what with most other comics updating m/w/f.
Now, I won’t want this to be posted on my wordpress blog. I’d hope to do something like jarofbees.net/comic. Or stick it in a subdomain. My other more secret plan for this blog is to turn it into a site to talk about my needlework hobby. You know, with a gallery and all that. Possibly a related theme (see Charlie Rocket’s blog header for a similar idea.) Needlework is my real passion, and I’ve been wanted to blog about it for a while.
Basically, jarofbees.net is going to be an outlet for all of my artsy endeavors, with some nattering about the German language on the side.
Digital Storytelling: “Digital Geschichtenerzählen.”
Irgendwann werde ich ein Blog Post ganz auf Deutsch schreiben und alle euch verwirren!
This article by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine seems to me to describe our course and elaborate on what we’ve already read. Actually, not elaborate so much as reiterate. Basically, there is so much potential and so many forms of digital storytelling on Web 2.0. Content is shared across multiple spaces, stories are told and then branched into new stories. We write stories in our blog posts, they’re spread to the UMW blog, commented on by other people. Those comments create stories in their own way.
Almost everything we’ve read involving digital storytelling has mentioned how hard it is to define. All it is is storytelling (“the conveying of events in words, images and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment” – wikipedia) with digital media. I really don’t think it needs to be more defined than that. The problem is, if I use that definition of storytelling, it discounts most internet conversations, comments and such, because I don’t think someone’s opinion on someone else’s story conveys events. Well, except the event of them reading and (dis)agreeing with what one has to say. Not all of the sharing of content that goes on online is meant to tell a story. Is it only storytelling if one means to tell a story? That’s where the problem of defining it comes in for me. But so much of web 2.0 is opinions, I don’t think we should even try defining it. If someone wants to write a story on the web, they have tons of tools at their disposal to make their story happen, that’s all that matters.
The article also talks about how this should be used in schools. I agree, it should be taught. I would definitely take a class on digital storytelling.
Rule #74: If it exists, Tony Stark could build it in a cave with a box of scraps.
I enjoyed this article. Web 2.0 is much more user-friendly, and a lot about the participation of people. Web 2.0 is about the average person using the web, and not being all about the biggest business around as it was with Web 1.0. It gives someone like me, an internet junkie, hope that they’ll get noticed. Also is the reason I got addicted in the first place. >.>
“The Web 2.0 lesson: leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.”
Also, it’s about Google. I’ve posted before, Google is taking over. Google’s replacement of Netscape, and the fact that they’ll make a version of nearly every service Web 2.0 has to offer, it’s scary.
“While the jury’s still out on the success of any particular startup or approach, it’s clear that standards and solutions in these areas, effectively turning certain classes of data into reliable subsystems of the “internet operating system”, will enable the next generation of applications.”
EL OH EL Google Chrome.
Microsoft won’t be able to beat Google: “Microsoft’s business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google’s depends on everyone exploring what’s new in their computing environment every day.”
I am not at all against Google, I love their services as much as the next person, but yeah, they’ll soon take charge of everything. And do it splendidly.
On a different note, I found this wonderful photocomic two days ago, when I was linked to this specific strip. It’s talking about photocomics in particular, but I think it’s also a good job describing webcomics and digital storytelling in general versus conventional art.
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