Tristam mentioned picking a topic i'm interested - for example 'dreams' like Little Nemo and it got me thinking, I do really like stories that are someone going into a fantasy dream world, portal fantasies, etc, and that a lot of the examples I've been looking at do have that theme.

• Little Nemo in Slumberland obviously
• The Land of the Magic flute has the protagonist crash his car and go into the lake, entering a magic land, and at the end swimming up to the surface and being rescued by ambulances etc and thinking it must've been a dream (but then seeing a tentacle slip back into the lake...)
• Thunderpaw has characters also in a car crash, then find themselves in a weird creepy forest)

Having the contrast of reality/fantasy world is something that could really be played with style & layout & medium wise (as it is in the above comics)

Like Alice in Wonderland,


In terms of representation (lgbtia+ -wise, mostly), the majority of the comics I read have it as a normal, given thing, rather than something the comic is about - e.g. the main characters are lesbians and that's treated as normal and not any source of conflict, it's about normalizing them. So in whatever I do, I'll definitely have diverse characters, but it won't greatly affect what the story itself is about.



I also downloaded a whole lot of fairytale books (Andrew Lang's coloured fairy books mostly) to look for lesser-known fairytales I could possibly adapt, and have found a few that interest me, though I'm

Second Showing (week 7)

My presentation - it's basically the same as last week, I just added some more details. And I finished my Mistlands parallax

I chose the inform group because that's basically what comics and storytelling is, a device used to inform people, about whatever the story happens to be about. I suppose it's mostly about interaction and direct exchange, as well as being subjective (depending on the narrative?). In our group we didn't discuss very much how it informs or what kind of informing it is in specifics - because on the surface level it's fairly straightforward.
I didn't get that much feedback from talking to other classmates to be honest; most people seem to think I've got my direction and know where and going, and that it's all clear - which it is to an extent, I just need to figure out what my story is going to be about which will open up more need for research into different areas. I also need to do more detailed research into the things I'm already looking into - what I put up in my presentation is fairly simplified (so I don't have too much text up there.

When talking to people, they mostly brought up how it's very cool and interesting, and they like interacting with it (possibly because they haven't seen my project before), as well as suggesting other cool examples and different areas of webcomics, asking about the overlap of print and web comics - questions about the broad topic rather than specifics. This probably indicates I need to present more succinct detailed information.
I had a few people suggest that my narrative could somehow involve, conceptually, the idea of digital forms of storytelling. Someone also got me thinking that I could create a story in which part of the narrative is a webcomic and part of it is print - like a dual narrative, or from different POVs, and show how the different mediums can be used? I think that's a little off topic and would require a bit of rethinking of my project. My main goal now is to figure out what my story is about, and at least have a more specified and solid direction for that.

notes

what you need & will have to go forward
inform - imperitaves, education, instruct

design issues in research to date

essential/interaction - direct exchange
formative/subjective
informing - storytelling is an informative device


precedents of types of comics like what i'm interested in

The Language of New Media Lev Mavovich

pull back up- interaction design and media design
& narrative

block out points

be conscious about practice


exploring interactivity to enrich storytelling

The video Fiona wanted to show me was this - which is interesting, it's not really a comic or anything, but she thought in terms of narrative (how it follows a coin) could be relevant to my work somehow, considering I'm not sure on my story yet.

Second Showing

Second showing went really well! Apparently not many people knew about it, so I suppose I was more prepared?

• Not many people had questions because my idea is pretty clear. A few people suggested some cool comics to look up but I can't find them (so far).
• A few people suggested that choose your own adventures are cool. 
• Also suggested thinking about the web community / live aspect of it, and having people contribute to the story, using patreon somehow.
• Affordances of the web: the community, and how people use it

Tested little nemo with Kez - they tried to scroll down at first so that's something to fix maybe. They thought it was very cool and liked when it went into the falling bit

Sam also tried to scroll sideways, half way down the mushrooms

-so it definitely needs a scrollpath, I think

I wrote down all my thoughts and keywords onto pieces of paper to sort out my ideas
-on the left, various existing comic artists, contemp and historical
-in the middle, stuff about what the web medium allows in terms of audience and creator
-right, stuff i've done, who/what/why questions

Talking to Kerry Ann and Caroline

I talked to Kerry Ann after class

She suggested a few things, including

• Looking at my work in relation to another artist, compare/contrast my work in regards to 
• how they work, their contexts compared to mine,  how/why they work
• A comparison between me, a contemporary, and historical comic artist
• I'm not sure how well that'd work since I don't realllly have a lot of comic work of my own? I have my single webcomic and the one I did for sequential art, that's all
• Though in general looking at the contexts of historical artists is important
• Maybe talking to a contemporary comic artist, like Toby Morris, and something about my final work being about a 'conversation', which is an interesting idea
• Or just somehow my final comic being about the links of storytelling on the internet
• Create a strong case for my research, figure out thematic links, why it's important, visual storytelling etc
• Suggested looking at Winsor McCay, especially his Little Nemo in Slumberland comic.

I also talked to Caroline in Illustration Studio, because I heard her mention Little Nemo as well. She suggested some things

• There's a lot in the scope, figure out which part of it is important to me and focus on that
• Look at historical stuff, all the way back to trajan's column
• Why it's important - visual literacy
• Suggested also Moebius as another artist similar to McCay
• Look at what the medium allows
• in practice, as the artist what can you do to enhance the storytelling
• and for  the audience, making it more accessible, immersive, etc
• Look up interactivity and multimodal media - print books are multimodal (text+image), web allows you to bring even more into that
• What are comics, what do they do? They started off as something subversive and became more acceptable and normal
• Maybe adapt an existing comic into a web format?

Different methods of using the web for comic & the types of story they tell



To extend or emphasise the storytelling (scale or time) - Infinite canvas

• To show depth or scale of the setting of the comic (eg. falling down, or walking along)
• to show time - more breathing space between panels to space the whole thing out time-wise (always human)
• to show drama - eg something breaking out of the panels to fill the whole screen
• in more normal cases, it's the natural way to read on the web and makes it easier

To hide extra pieces of story/world/character for readers to find/interact with

• clicking around like margot's room, non-linear storytelling,finding out more and more deeper info
• finding out more worldbuilding and secrets -eg instagram map
• things can also be hidden behind the layers with parallax

Set up for first showing

The info I printed out: 

Who ( is it for) - I'm looking primarily at the kind of webcomics I read, of which the audience tends to be a millenial kind of audience - or late teens through to 30-something. Also generally lgbtq+, diverse in other ways, and sci-fi/fantasy
What ( is it about/does it address/do I need to find out) - how the different methods are used to tell different kinds of stories, how to actually do it (coding, hosting on web, etc)
Why ( is it needed/important/neglected) - Storytelling is important? And finding new and innovative ways of doing it is good
How ( what process,methods will you use) - web/digital comics
When ( a provisional time line)

Social media as a storytelling device

Some more about social media storytelling. I made a tweet asking for examples of fictional characters' social media and got a few examples! I'm focusing in on comics here, but there are a lot more for other media.

There are a few articles on the subject (not that helpful), but most deal with the type that's based around advertising. Arguably all of these are a form of advertising; having a twitter account in which all the 'photos' are drawn is uncommon and likely to be obvious that it's fictional in some way, and possibly create interest, but I doubt it's that effective; there's far less twitter followers on most of these accounts then there are subscribers of the main comic (if that's public).
It's more of an extra content thing,  for fans. Breaking the fourth wall in a way is interesting, especially when the comic is set in, for example, the future, or is sci-fi/fantasy in some way - there's a kind of juxtaposition of that and the fact that the account is 'real'. Another thing which is really effective is the interactibility  of it - many of them actually interact with people who reply to the tweets.

I don't really 'talk' to any of the characters below, but I talked to a fair few webseries characters. (I don't watch so many webseries these days) I won't list them here because there are a lot and it's going a bit off topic from the webcomic theme, but most LIW (literary inspired webseries) are very fourth-wall breaking, they're in vlog format and the youtube accounts actually belong to the characters; they talk to the viewers. So most of them have a variety of social media accounts - here's some examples - I tweeted Omar quite a lot because we have similar interests. It's interesting how you're aware that they're a fictional character, but it still feels like you're talking to a real person? And there's a certain thrill to having the character talk to you; it feels like you're part of the story, and gets you even more invested.

There's a TV Tropes page on this called Character Blog. Here's some of the description:

The Character Blog may serve several functions:

• It can provide a new angle to the existing plotline, by writing the story in first-person perspective rather than the omniscient view of the story that the audience usually gets. This can be highly effective if there are blogs for different characters in the same show — The Ditz will probably have a very different take on things from The Smart Guy, for example.

• It can offer supplemental stories, filling in the time that the characters were "off air" or providing relief from the main storyline, such as doing a silly entry or personality when the Canon plotline is rather dark. May also fill in backstory or provide more Character Focus than the canon can afford to provide, or keep the audience informed on a character who is currently Out of Focus or uninvolved in the present rotating arc. This is a popular use of the Character Blog for webcomics, which often don't have the time or space to fit in all the stories an author would like to tell — it's much quicker to write a text entry than to draw a comic.

• It acts as a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, allowing the fans to interact with the creators, with the alias of the fictional character as an intermediary.

• Basically, it makes the character seem more real.

Usually, the Character Blog is seen as positive, a quirky addition that exists between Canon and Fanon; it adds to the story, but isn't mandatory reading.

Examples

Griefer Belt // Scott's Twitter / Lars' Twitter

Griefer Belt has two main character twitter accounts, which were started up only in the latest few chapters. They're not essential to the story, but have interesting extra details, and help flesh out the characters in ways that aren't generally shown in the comic. They also reply to real people who talk to them
It also shows contrast between the characters - Lars is very social media savvy, whereas Scott obviously is not and barely knows how to use twitter. They're 'real time' in the sense that the tweets happen in relation to the comic pages, though obviously one scene might take three weeks, so the tweets on the twitter timeline will be more spread out.

Project Nought // Mars' Twitter

Project Nought is actually set in 100 years, so he's not tweeting in 'real' time, though as with above, it is in relation to the comic updates. He's also a character who is very social media savvy. An extra level of interactivity with this (and Lars above) is that patrons of the comic can get a selfie with him - in story, they're 'time travellers' (in Griefer Belt, they're Lars' party guests) Patrons of both can also get cameos in the comic itself.

Check Please // Eric's twitter

This is an example in which the tweets are in real time - which means that they're ahead of the comic. - Therefore the account is locked and we can only see archived tweets. This is an example of a more streamlined account which is more directly related to the story. The comic itself is told in 'episodes' which generally start out with the character vlogging, talking to his audience, and though that's not as direct of a 4th-wall-breaking as webseries with actual youtube accounts, it's still something that connects to having a real social media account.


Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club // Twitter

I'm not familiar with this - but after some brief research, it looks like she's the main antagonist of the game which is a visual novel, that seems like a dating sim but is actually a psychological thriller? Which makes use of breaking the fourth wall a lot - therefore giving the character a real twitter account goes along with that theme. The account's only got a handful of tweets from the last year, and doesn't interact with people


Steven Universe // Peridot's twitter

Steven Universe is a kids cartoon about aliens living on earth (kinda), and Peridot is a character who uses a recorder to record diary logs, but it breaks, so Steven gives her a tablet and shows her twitter to use instead (as far as I remember). Her twitter was made when that episode aired, and the tweets are great - it really suits her character to make a lot of all-caps tweets in a way that shows she probably has no idea what she's doing. After that first episode she occasionally tweeted things relevant to new episodes just before they aired, which helps keep it realtime

The Bright Sessions // Caleb's Instagram

The Bright Sessions is a podcast, and some characters have various social media accounts. They're mostly faceless photos as it's an audio medium, and the actors don't look like the characters.


Radio Silence // Colbie's Twitter / Instagram / Wren's Twitter / Shy's Twitter

This is a webcomic I haven't read - but from glancing at the twitter accounts, they seem really realistic, in terms of the random tweets, retweets, commenting on real-world events etc.



Some other things of a similar vein:


Manuel, Dear David, Ver_acity

Dionea House 

I haven't looked into this much but apparently it's a story told through emails and blog posts, which branches out into different blogs later on.

Workshops

The first workshop I did was Kerry Ann's; Creative Process, in which we wrote down a whole lot of topics/issues, audiences, contexts, vcd outcomes and creative references; and then used them as a kind of random output. It was very much oriented towards issue-based ideas so not so much useful for me? But I think I will still be having to think of those things

(worksheet for my own reference)

 

Then I did Research Methods with Tristam, talking about different ways to research. I think it was helpful to look at it from more of the view I'm coming from (researching digital comics, investigating that rather than issues).

Some ways I can research:

• reading/playing things and recording my own (or other people's) reactions to them, how I/they react to it and interact with it
• I will read some digital comics that do interesting things and write about how i interact with them, maybe observe some other people too
• making things, responding to it with my own judgement - the important thing is writing about it!!
• 
  

Also clarified proposal vs report - proposal is looking into things you find interesting, taking x approach based on what you've discovered;  report is starting on an issue and designing for it

Thoughts

• I'm interested in the ways comic storytelling has been advanced in the digital medium, both from the technical side (animation, code, parallax, infinite canvas) and human side aka using social media platforms, and how people interact with it
• >> interactivity and making comics more immersive and involving people
• research how comics have changed over time in regards to interactivity, history and development
• 'issue' is storytelling and narrative, application is web technology?
• proposal report
• in terms of what my narrative for when (if) i make a comic for my final thing, I'm interested in something like retelling classic stories with a more diverse cast and inclusive story, making it more modern etc. This also ties into interactivity and immersiveness in terms of making it more accessible to audiences who are not (straight/white/cis/etc)

Initial thoughts

I'm unsure on what kind of direction I want to go with my research - I have a lot of things I'm interested in, but not in specifics or connected ideas?

I think the most refined (in comparison to my others) idea is something to do with webcomics/digital storytelling. I actually already started looking into this for my other paper innovations in illustration because we need to research 3 mediums to learn more about, but now I'm thinking about shifting that over to this paper because I'm very interested in it (and also the other thing I'm looking into is sculpture and that's very different - I'm not sure how i will connect them)

Aspects of this I'm interested in are: 

• Taking advantage of the medium - webcomics that use animation, parallax and infinite canvas
• Transmedia storytelling (often in a fourth-wall-breaking kind of way, to further the story, not so much the way we use transmedia in VCD as touchpoints) like Instagram maps, character social media accounts, or where some of the comic is printed with more content digital

Other things I'm interested in which could probably all intersect with this as an issue (probably more than one)

• scifi/fantasy, worldbuilding
• diversity, representation, 
• in regards to lgbtqia+ people particularly
• retelling stories with more diverse & modern casts
• wordless sequential art
• environmental issues (no specifics here but there are endless things I'm sure)