I settled on the idea of making an interactive comic for the ipad. The idea at the time seemed pretty basic but I was still excited to get started, being a comic there is a lot to take in then just pictures in panels. I had to decide on a style, create a story with characters and depth, I needed something that looked eye catching, inspiring and entertaining all at once. I began work on the planning; what would the story be about and who was based around? After a space themed party in Bournemouth I came up with the main character. I had dressed up as a ‘monkey from outer space’ but as someone pointed out to me that night I looked more like a bank robber. I was wearing a jumpsuit and a rubber chimp mask. This soon inspired the main character and the story grew from there on. I developed the idea of a man in a monkey mask who had unfortunately lost his memory from the night before. The character would try and remember the events of last night to discover why he was in the mask. At the time I had been interested in the theme of drug abuse and memory loss and had been watching movies like ‘The Hangover’ and ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ that deal with similar storylines. All these elements sprouted the story and characters and from then on the ideas just kept growing and I had a clear path to begin my artwork.

Soon enough the story was complete and I had begun designing the characters and creating the rough layouts of the comic. It did not take long for me to start drawing, as it was the part of the project I was looking forward to the most. I toyed with ideas of how to make the comic. Originally I worked entirely on Photoshop but changed my mind after being disappointed with the first page. I then tried to work in both traditional and digital mediums but found it was too time consuming and did not create the style I wanted. I then decided to go back to my original plan of the comic being illustrated entirely through Photoshop but I would teach myself more techniques before getting started. I realised this strategy would take up a lot of my time but I took the risk in order to get the best quality artwork. Soon enough I had taught myself how to create a convincing watercolour technique and I was starting to experiment with the style. I was really impressed with the outcome and incredibly happy with the quality of the illustrations. It was most important to me that the images looked as professional as possible and yet retained my own art style. However, I soon realised how time consuming the art process would be. I had to make a decision, keep the quality of the images and only make a short sample or sacrifice quality for quantity. Unlike Juno I chose to shorten my project to produce something that looked great.

During the project I helped other students with their work as well as my own. Alex Campbell asked me to lend a hand while he took some test footage time lapse. We spent hours on a freezing cold beach and a car park over looking a round about until he caught the footage he needed. Juno asked me to work on concept art for his ‘movie.’ I was happy to help and I design several ideas for the scarecrow characters for his film. Unfortunately, Juno told me that it was not how he wanted the scarecrows to look; this of course was aggravating especially as his description of his version of the scarecrows sounded incredibly idiotic, not to mention the fact I had spent my project time working on a concept he didn’t even use. Sam on the other hand was very appreciative of my help. I provided props, filmed scenes and starred in a lot of his videos during the entire stretch of the project right up to the deadline. I was happy to help my fellow students and in return Sam voiced the narration for my comic.

About 2 thirds of my way through the project I went to Newcastle to visit a friend and to look into Newcastle comic book stores for some ideas and inspiration. I was unaware at the time but one of the stores I visited was having a Q/A with some comic artists including Mark Millar and John Romita JR the men responsible for Kick-ass the graphic novel turned hit movie. I managed to fit in a question or too including if they had any plans for making a comic for the ipad much like me. Unfortunately they had no plans but the experience was still incredibly uplifting and motivated me to keep drawing. I read a lot of comics during the course of this project and watched a lot of films. I also briefly looked into marvels very own interactive comics, all these little elements helped boost my confidence towards my personal capabilities.

Obviously the project was not perfect; there were some bumpy patches along the way. I think my biggest mistake was not making a proper time plan. Because of this I was unorganized and lost track of time completely, making the end of the project a bit of a mad rush, this made the last few days were very stressful indeed. I had wanted to make a series of screen-recorded videos the comic process as well but unfortunately the program I usually used was not responding. Screenium failed to record after 3-4 minutes, which is useless seeing as most of my recordings where at least 30 minutes long. I eventually managed to figure out a new way to record my screen for free but unfortunately it was terrible quality making certain areas of the desktop impossible to see. Downloading Adobe cs5 updates was another big problem. Not only did it swallow up huge chunks of memory but it also caused my drawing tablet (the one tool I need) to stop working. I had to install a new driver, which as you can guess, was a huge time consumer. I had problems with folio builder as well. Folio builder is a plug in for Indesign cs5.5; it is the program that sends the document to the ipad. The problem being that it is very new and does not support half the functions that Indesign is capable of. This meant I could no longer have animated panels like originally intended and the interactivity I wanted was half as impressive as I had hoped for. Despite working perfectly well on Indesign it just would not work on the ipad unless it was drastically simplified.

Finally the Project has come to an end and despite the problems I had a lot of fun and I am pleased with the outcome. The comic looks great on the ipad, which was what was most important to me from the start. Although it is only a short sample I am proud of my work and cannot wait to complete it fully. I would certainly like to look into making it a fully downloadable app in the near future. If I could change anything I would go back and properly plan my time carefully although having said that I do not think I would have learnt half the things I did if I had. I enjoyed this project, and I enjoyed helping my fellow students. I look forward to the next project and expanding the comic I have started.

i have finished the comic sample for the crit.

the comic is 5 pages long. not as much as long as i would have wanted originally but time was short, and problems did arise along the way.

the images are of high quality and i am pleased with the style and appearance of it all.

the comic has interactive narration boxes kindly voiced by Sam.

• Trouble with screen recording – every time i tried to screen record with ‘screenium’ the program repeatedly crashed or froze after 5 minutes. this was incredible annoying as i had wasted a lot of time drawing pictures for footage that wasn’t even recorded.
• Folio builder in general – Folio builder (the extension for indesign cs5.5) is in its early stages of development this means that half of the features of indesign are not supported on folio and thus cannot be added to the ipad. this means that the panels are not animated or interactive like i had wanted them to be originally
• updated software – after updating my adobe software to cs5 my memory was severely cut down and my wacom drawing tablet needed a new driver. this took up far too much time and slowed down progress by a large amount.
• being an idiot – twice i forgot to save my artwork meaning i lost hours worths of work.

its a hard knock life

here is how i did it

• COMIC IS NOW ENTITLED ‘IDENTITY’
• FOCUSES ON A NAMELESS CHARACTER WHO NARRATES THE STORY
• CHARACTER WHO WILL BE REFERRED TO AS ‘M’ WEARS A MONKEY MASK THROUGH OUT COMIC.
• M IS SUFFERING MEMORY LOSS AFTER A DRUG BINGE AND CANNOT       REMEMBER THE EVENTS OF THE NIGHT BEFORE.
• M ONLY HAS A FEW CLUES TO HELP HIM REGAIN HIS MEMORY. HE MUST FILL THE REST WITH FLASHES OF EVENTS FROM THE OTHER NIGHT.
• M’S BEST FRIEND WHO IS ALSO WEARING A MASK (CLOWN) HAS HAD HIS THROAT CUT AND IS SLOWLY DYING.
• M ASSUMES HE HAS ROBBED A BANK FROM THE EVIDENCE HE HAS SEEN BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED.
• SOME OF M’S FLASH BACKS ARE JUST HALLUCINATIONS WHEREAS SOME ARE GENUINE SOBER MEMORIES. HOWEVER, OFTEN THE FLASH BACKS WILL APPEAR ABNORMAL EITHER WAY.

STORY-LINE IN BRIEF

1. THE MAIN CHARACTER M AWAKES FROM A NIGHT OF EXTREME DRUG ABUSE TO FIND HIMSELF IN A VERY DISTRESSING SITUATION. HE IS WEARING A MONKEY MASK, HIS FRIEND IS DYING FROM A CUT THROAT AND HE HAS A BRIEFCASE FILLED WITH MONEY. M ASSUMES HE ROBBED A BANK BUT HE DECIDES TO JUST CALM DOWN AND THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. HE REFUSES TO HELP HIS FRIEND, UNTIL HE HAS FIGURED OUT WHAT HAPPENED.
2. M THINKS AS HARD AS HE CAN AND TRIES TO PEICE TOGETHER HIS FEW REMAINING MEMORIES OF THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, WHILE SEPARATING THE LUDICROUS HALLUCINATIONS FROM THE FACTS.
3. M FINALLY PEICES TOGETHER THE EVENTS, WHICH ARE AS FOLLOWS:   HE AND HIS FRIEND WENT TO A MASKED BALL BOTH ON DRUGS BEFORE HAND // BOTH OF THEM ARE KICKED OUT OF THE BALL FOR THEIR BEHAVIOR  // M GETS ANGRY AND BLAMES THE SITUATION ON THE RICH ‘BLUE BLOODS’ AND CLAIMS HE CAN BE JUST AS POWERFUL FOR ONE NIGHT. // M AND HIS FRIEND BREAK INTO A WEALTHY HOME AND START WRECKING THE HOME. // M KILLS THE RESIDENTS PET WITH A GARDEN STONE MUCH LIKE A MONKEY WOULD // AFTER THE DEATH OF THE PET M PANICS AND ASSUMES HE WILL GO TO JAIL FOR MURDER AS A RESULT HE CUTS HIS FRIENDS THROAT TO STOP HIM FROM TALKING TO THE POLICE AND STEALS MONEY TO ESCAPE TOWN.
4. AFTER REALIZING WHAT REALLY HAPPENED M BEGINS TO PANIC AGAIN HE SLOWLY ENTERS THE ROOM WHERE HIS FRIEND IS DYING AND DECIDES TO FINISH WHAT HE STARTED.

marvel comics has released a few professionally made semi-animated interactive comics for the ipad.

each panel is interactive and some are even animated to enhance the experience

although my comic won’t be quite up to these standards i’m sure it’s presentation will be just as striking

recently i went to Newcastle to visit someone i know. i spent a lot of time in the comic shops they have in town. i soon found out they had a comic week going on near the end of my visit so i checked it out.

i met a few artists including mark millar and john romita. jr the artists responsible for KICK-ASS.

i asked a lot of the artist if they had any advice, as well as if theythemselves looked into branching out to the ipad

a few of them were already looking into it and told me a few of their plans for future projects. the experience left me fueled with inspiration to get back to the artwork and crack on with some of the comic.

on my journey up i also purchased a few comics to help maintain the inspiration including daniel clowes’ comic death ray

i have also helped my house mate Ryan with his project for the Bournemouth university by illustrating the title page for his game ‘THE HORDE’

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

- Raoul Duke (Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas)

The drug culture has been portrayed in many motion pictures in many different ways. Sometimes drugs are represented as a fun lifestyle that takes people on amazing adventures, while other films represent drugs as an existence to be feared and avoided. There is a wide opinion on drugs in film and countless people still argue as to whether films can be a good or bad influence. I intend to dive into the true notion of drug culture in film. Break down the good and the positive until I reach a clear understanding of reasons for and against so I may voice my opinion on the subject. I will wonder into the world of drug culture films and the reflection it has on cultural ambivalence and modern attitudes.

By studying the way directors, such as Terry Gilliam, create the illusion of intoxication I will better understand their opinions towards drugs and their intentions towards the audience. The cinematography behind films like Train Spotting (director, date) and Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas are crucial to the appreciation towards the story telling of the Drug culture and its effect on the main characters and audience.

As well as the cinematography, dialogue is a strong aspect to the portrayal of drugs. The way people communicate helps describe their mannerisms and personality, which in turn reflects on the Drug user and the culture. Music also plays an important role in these films. Usually the music used in these films is popular songs from the 60’s and early 70’s a good example of this would be the film ‘Platoon’ when the soldiers begin smoking marijuana. Most of the music in the background is ‘Jimmy Hendrix’ and the ‘Rolling Stones’.  All these details in music and dialogue tell the story that needs to be told and voice’s the true opinion towards drug use.