Exercise 2 Video
This video is under Public Domain at the Internet Archives
Exercise 2 Text
TO COLONEL WOLF Under whose careful supervision so many have received their Military Training in order that they may show the world in battle the true spirit of American manhood.
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Military Instructors Manual, by James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Exercise 2 Image
U.S. Soldiers in Iraq, March 23 2007 by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway (DOD)
This image is under Public Domain at Creative Commons via flickr.
Exercise 3 Modified Image
This image is modified from David Simonetti's photostream collection image Fox 025A dated 20 February 2008 on flickr via Creative Commons.
Remix Project
This is a 'lost-in-translation" project that translates a simple four word poem by me. The translations are of every language I was exposed to in the order I encountered them and back again. All of the flags are images derived from Creative Commons with permissions for their modification for academic use.
Final Project
Ok, first off making a web-comic turned out to be harder than I anticipated. A lot harder. This gave me the inspiration to revise my final project into a commentary on how technology has changed the comic industry with a particular focus on comparing web-comic artists with traditional print media comic artists (syndicated newspaper comics and actual comic book artists). Some of the topics I’ll be covering are mainstream perceptions of web-comic artists and how these artists reflect the new generation of on-line readers they cater to.
One luxury the web-comic artists have over have over their print contemporaries is the fact that they are not as bound by deadlines imposed by publishers. Virtually every web-comic artist is his/her own boss in terms of when the next installment will be published. Normally this is either a short comic strip like one would find in the comic section of a syndicated newspaper or an actual comic page as though it were ripped from a comic book. A couple examples of web-comic artists who emulate the daily newspaper strip style of comics are;Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, Sluggy Freelance by Peter Abrams, and VG Cats by Scott Ramsoomair (note this last entry sometimes contains mature content). Then there are web-comics who pace and edit their work like an actual comic book on a page by page basis such as Chris Hastings and Kent Archer's The Adventures of Dr. McNinja and Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston's MegaTokyo.This luxury however is a double-edged sword in several ways that unfortunately gives some credence to the perception that web-comic artists are on a lower level of prestige than print comic artists.
The reason for this perception is because many web-comic artists are notorious for either missing their own self-imposed deadlines or submitting work that is sub-par to their normal quality. The criticism and stigma for web-comic artists doesn’t stem so much from the fact that they miss deadlines rather frequently however. It seems to be related more to the trend that many web-comic artists embrace their procrastination directly through their work such as this sample from VG Cats. Or this sample strip from a Sluggy Stick Figure Week for example. But unlike their print contemporaries web-comic artists are able to self-parody these shortcomings to their overall advantage.
If a syndicated comic artist working for even a small-town local newspaper were to miss a deadline that would effectively be the end of his or her career. The paper’s editor would undoubtedly drop the strip due to traditional publishing costs/logistical constraints nor is likely to accept any explanation for such a delay short of an unforeseen grave illness or a death in the comic artist’s family. Peter Abrams however is able to explain both through his comic and its web forum the reasons for his delays directly to his audience who, based on the fact that Sluggy Freelance is still posting new material regularly, generally accept these explanations that would never pass muster at an editor’s desk. A possible reason Abrams’ readers are willing to accept these explanations is because they are able to form a more intimate relationship with him than they could with a syndicated newspaper comic artist courtesy of the web's inherent community networking tools. Some traditional newspaper artists are taking advantage of this closer connection to their audience via the web such as For Better or For Worse.
Another trait of web-comics is that they are not limited to the constraints of their initial styles of editing or even original medium. Take a look at Mega Tokyo for instance which started out by following a four panel strip and then eventually evolved into a Japanese manga format. Then there’s this other example from VG Cats where Ramsoomair breaks away from his comic altogether with an animated piece (caution it gets a little messy). Web-comics have even moved away from the tradition of actually being drawn by hand as in the case of Brian Clevinger’s 8-Bit Theater where sprites from an old 8-bit Nintendo game, Final Fantasy 2, are copy and pasted into their respective roles. Granted it's assumed he has gone through the appropriate copyright protocols to avoid being sued by SquareEnix for use of their IP.
In spite of the perceived laziness of web-comic artists as a whole, there are many others who have consistently maintained a professionalism that rivals that of their peers in traditional print mediums. Tim Buckley managed to keep his web-comic Ctrl+Alt+Del regularly updated and even succeeded in releasing two DVD’s of an animated series based upon it. Holkins and Krahulik are able to proudly boast their success through the impending release of a video game inspired by their Penny Arcade comic on Xbox Live Arcade. To say that web-comic artists are on a lower level of prestige than comic artists in traditional print media therefore is inaccurate. Rather web-comic artists are the vanguard of a new generation of comic artists who can tailor their craft to hold the attention of a multi-media infused society yet pay tribute to their predecessors within the realm of printed comics (just look at the homage to old stark black and white comics evidenced in Dr. McNinja).
To give an indication of the labor involved in creating a web-comic I'm submitting these draft sketches of
my attemped rendition of my group's game project. One of the things I discovered was the editing process alone is incredibly
time consuming. Take a close look at the men's room symbol on this draft sketch of the comic's first page.
When I realized it had taken me fifteen minutes alone to edit such small portion of the comic I had to recalculate my
initial estimate of how long it would take to draft, sketch, and edit the remaining 9 pages. The new estimate was not
encouraging. The next image is a draft sketch of the fourth page where I intended to depict the scene where the protagonist
Joe Metheus discovers another one of the phyre tabs.
The following series of images below are the concept design sketches for the characters I was planning to feature and a few of the bathroom's prop images. Designing an entire bathroom from scratch is not fun. The grue creature was another reason I had to scrap the web-comic because a more thorough search on the web revealed he was the licensed mascot of Japanese television station NHK. Therefore using him in the web-comic as the grue monster would most likely have been illegal.
