Final Major Project; webcomic

If I did my Final Major Project again, I might try to tell a slightly more abstract story, rather than a narrative which is explicit in telling the reader what is happening. It might be more interesting to let the reader draw their own conclusions about what happened, or to only show a slice of what is part of a larger mystery. As it is, I feel it could be improved through greater detail in the panels, and perhaps better planned dialogue, but I do feel that the end result is a good reflection of how I work- it’s quite straight-forward and not very abstract, and I put a lot of thought into the planning of the project. It also reflects the areas of art that I am interested in- namely illustration, although I haven’t done a lot of sequential illustration before so this was something that helped push me outside of my comfort zone somewhat. This does reflect in my work, and you can see I spent a lot of time on character designs and the “cover”, so overall I’d say this is a good representation of my work.

Storyboarding the comic was a fairly new experience for me, as I haven’t worked much with sequential illustration before this project. I tend to work in quite a lot of detail, so persuading myself to just sketch and not worry too much about mistakes was a challenge. If I did it again, I’d like to be more explicit with my dialogue, instead of leaving it mostly blank.

It was here that I first really tested out the longer hair, and decided I liked it. I did feel that he still looked a bit too human, so I also added cloven hooves to his design. This is a reference to the kelpie, a famous Scottish water demon which takes the form of a horse.

The idea of making the character a vampire came to me when I started drawing out the cover and was adding the reflection of Gwen in the water- it made more sense for her to be involved if she was a supernatural creature than if she just happened to be friends with the protagonist (not to mention that the hours DJs work tend to be rather late, giving her a good excuse not to go outside when it’s daytime).

After a while I decided to move slightly away from that idea in favour of clothes suiting a more athletic life-style, which is when I decided to look at “The Scout” from the game “Team Fortress 2″, who is well-known as a speedy character. I decided to take influence from his design, and changed the boots to trainers, which are more suited for someone who spends a lot of time running around. I did decide to keep the comfy hoodie though (although I changed it’s colour to match the design better), and I think the final design reflects the character far better.

The most recent adventure on MS Paint Adventures, and by far the most popular and influential comic hosted on the site. It ran from April 13, 2009 to October 25, 2016, and followed 4 teenagers as they play a reality-altering video game that brings the end of the world, and must work with an alien race known as "trolls" to create a new universe. It is noted for it's complexity and considerable length (at it's end it reached a length of over 8,000 panels), as well as it's flash mini-games, soundtrack, and animated panels. The adventure itself is characterised by time travel, mystery, a complex fictional universe, and frequent references to pop culture and previous adventures. It is arguably one of the most influential webcomics of the 21st century, and has inspired multitudes of other webcomics that often use the same format as Hussie.

By 1993, distinct genres began to arise- computer/tech strips, gaming strips, and geek-interest strips (usually rich in sci fi references). However, now some people were beginning to play with the possibilities of the format. “Argon Zark!” by Charley Parker 1995 was full-colour, visually experimental, and animation embedded (and probably fell into the geek-interest category). And he wasn’t alone- Jesse Reklaw’s “Slow Wave” (1995) latched onto a smart, but simple premise- readers would email in descriptions of their dreams and Reklaw adapted them into 4-panel strips- a concept that would be nigh impossible without the instantaneous communication of the web, and it presaged the importance of reader/creator back-and-forth communication in the world of webcomics. Around 1996, as the online population reacted a crucial event horizon, webcomics exploded. Suddenly you could make money from them. Newspaper style strips continued to dominate, but now emerged a new genre of ongoing serial adventure strip (usually fantasy or sci fi) began to emerge. New art styles surfaced. Manga-influenced art began to appear in the late ‘90s following the popularity of anime such as “Sailor Moon”. The most notable webcomic like this was “Megatokyo” by Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston. Sprite comics like “8-Bit Theater” and clip art comics like Ryan North’s “Dinosaur Comics” or “Wondermark” made people realise that they didn’t need to be able to draw well to be webcartoonists. The first real boom in webcomics climaxed with the publication of Socc McCloud’s book- “Reinventing Comics” in 2000, which devoted a sizable chunk of it’s pages to what he saw as 3 areas in which computer technology and comics could intersect- digital publication, digital delivery, and digital comics. Reception was mixed but McCloud was right in all the areas that counted; comics and computers were becoming increasingly inseparable. “Reinventing Comics” ushered in a flow of new webcomics and experimentation. Patrick Farley launched Electric Sheep Comics, a website for his many experimental comic projects. In 2002, Cat Garza began “Cuentos de la Frontera”- a collection of Hispanic folk tales and urban legends adapted to explored McCloud’s idea of the online “infinite canvas”. In 2001 Justine Shaw published her entire longform comic “Nowhere Girl” in a single chunk, in pages formatted to fit the web, which inspired a wave of online graphic comics. Around the same time, a loose group of cartoonists calling themselves “Pants Press” launched a substantial series of smart, engaging, and popular longform comics- all the more impressive when you realise that with the exception of one, the people involved were all teenagers. Autobiographical work became another popular frontier amongst the webcartoonist community. Often it was mixed with comedy and fantasy elements to make it more digestible. Part of what was so appealing about webcomics was that self-publishing allowed people to explore topics and genres that classic publishers would not be interested in. The most popular comics tended to be gag strips about nerd interests. Comics about video games tended to outstrip all else in popularity, with “Penny Arcade” and “PvP” standing atop the pile of lesser (yet enormously successful) “two gamers on a sofa” strips. In fact as the 200s wore on it became increasingly clear that gaming strips were simply the most prominent example of a larger trend in webcomics: special-interest niche strips. On of the most successful comics of the era (“Unshelved”, started 2002) was a strip about librarians. The jokes might only be funny to people who work at bookshops and libraries, but a lot of people worked at bookshops and libraries and everyone who did read “Unshelved”. Often this kind of thing was what proved to be most successful. One of the most widely-read comics even today may be XKCD (2005)- the holy grail of obscure maths and physics jokes. During this period, web and print began the feed from each other. If a comic wasn’t successful in print (most small publishers began to lose their footing with the rise of the internet) it could be published online for a fraction of the price, and likewise, if a comic was successful online it’d often be put to print. In 2007, the website MS Paint Adventures was launched by Andrew Hussie. Despite the name, most of the comics were created in Adobe Photoshop, as Hussie decided after the second page of the first page of the first comic that using MS Paint was simply not feasible. The webcomics published there relied (like some of it’s predecessors such as “Slow Wave”) on reader input- the first 3 adventures “Jail Break”, “Bard Quest”, and “Problem Sleuth” took the first suggestion from readers to drive the plot forward. This was also the case with his 4th adventure- “Homestuck” for a short while before the erratic suggestions caused the story to become "too unwieldy and made it difficult...to tell a coherent story”, after which Hussie switched to controlling the main plot himself. The comic itself inspired a new format of storytelling amongst the community of “extended adventure” webcartoonists, and spawned a number of other webcomics such as “Ava’s Demon” by Michelle Czajkowski, “Prequel” by Kazerad, and “NEOKOSMOS” by Amber & Shelby Cragg, as well as all the fan-comics on the official fan site- MS Paint Fan Adventures. Today, strip webcomics are increasingly moving off the web, and are adapting to social media. Edgy, and dark-humour comics such as “Cyanide and Happiness” are becoming more frequent and a bigger emphasis is placed on accessibility- moving them onto Facebook and iPhone-compatible websites and apps for example.