Monday, April 7, 2008

Avatar

This is just another online Avatar, I am signing up for the "Truth and Beauty Bombs" forums, going to try to familiarize myself with webcomic culture, get some info... they're funny, I want friends.

Anyway the site makes you link your avatar picture, and I'm too lazy to use photobucket, so "TADA!" that Turian Council member from Mass Effect, the greatest game of all time ! (?).




This is how I would look if we were all plugged into the matrix and we could choose our physical self-representations. Yeah I know you don't care, but this could be important when we start talking about futurism; how will we represent ourselves when physicality no longer matters?

You have my answer.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Flavor

Every well thought out sequential artwork uses language, graphic representation and space to communicate a certain "flavor" to its readers. To find my own flavor before I start writing, I thought I'd taste a bit of everything. www.xkcd.com is a webcomic about "romance, sarcasm, math and language" written by Randall Munroe:



His ideas concerning romance, mathematics and self-observation blend together into a distinct flavor as Munroe becomes more confident in his ideas. I'm impressed by the power behind this comic considering the lack of artistic talent expressed:



Munroe's recepie? He appears to take his daily thoughts (girls, math, truth of reality) and simply communicate them at will. The themes are random, but the delivery and central message hold constant. The images become less detailed, with the latest, most flavored comics limited to 2 demensional stick figures.
One reason why we are able to process and appreciate these absurd statements is because the characters are easy to associate with. As Scott McCloud explains in his work, "Understanding Comics":

Universality vs realism, where do I want to place my work? Do I want to use stick figures? No, but I would like my characters to be universal. I'm thinking my heroes could have their facial features hidden behind some sort of mask or visor as heroes often do(ex: master chief, samus, iron man). Attention to detail and can be limiting when the ideas being communicated are what's important.

I also appreciate Munroe's perspective on things in general; the guy worked at NASA and knows his sorting algorithms. Interestingly, it seems that this level of mathematical know-how (shared by one of my main characters) does not hinder real expressions of love or meaning but makes emotional communication clearer, less verbose.

Speaking of which, this post was too long and didn't make much of a point. It's too wordy, but it's a start.

Also, I will be referring to my comic/creative piece as "2045" until I tell you about it / come up with a name. It'll come together, I promise.
-Cos