26 November 2013 Documentation

It's week 4 already. According to my Gantt Chart, I should already started developing ideas, refining storyline, study character design, doing sketches, study comic panel management, digitize basic user interface, study HTML5 coding, study Adobe Edge Animate and Muse. However, what I manage to keep track on is just study character design...

It's very stressful to think about the Gantt Chart time table. Today, I managed to have another discussion with my lecturers. During the discussion, we mainly discuss about story flow of my hypercomic. From their advises, I know that I my primary storyline is lack of interactivity. They suggest me to create different endings for different decisions made by users rather than creating a boring loop that do not provide much interactivity. After the discussion, I suddenly have a flash of idea that I can make different characters save the day for the ending of my story.

About the character design studying, I am quite happy that I had done some progress on them. I manage to find a book in the school library that have some interesting "Chibi" character design. The book name is "New Species: Contemporary Character Design Made In Asia", it showcase all the successful character design done from Asian designers and here are some photos of pages that I find useful for my project development:

I actually start drawing some samples of my characters by referring to the references I have found:

Well, that properly what I have done for this few days. I am aware that I have started to lost track of my Gantt Chart schedule, so I will constantly remind myself to keep going on.

Reference:
Narain, S. 2007. New Species: Contemporary Character Design Made In Asia. Singapore: Page One. Annotation: This book showcase some of the successful Asian Character Designers and have some interviews with these designers. From the examples shown in this book, I managed to get some inspiration that may be useful in creating my own "Chibi" characters.

19 November 2013 Documentation

Finally submit the STI part A, now is the really hard time production, STI part B. Well, after discussing with my lecturers today, I know I need to start finding art style and create the content, which is the story of my comic. 

My primary idea is "Chibi" art style, usually refer to cartoon characters that have larger head and smaller body proportion. At first, I don't know the term for this kind of big head small body character is known as "Chibi", and Wikipedia is the one which teach me the term is known as "Chibi". This is very helpful to me as after I know the term, I manage to looked for tons of reference from the internet. From what I understand from the reseach I have done, "Chibi" characters' eyes usually very big and are rich in facial expressions. Here are some examples that I had found as my comic characters' benchmark:

For the storyline, basically I just had a rough idea about the story flow, still haven't think of details about the story. From my lecturers advices, I know that I should create a complete storyline first before starting other work, because a complete storyline can help me estimate the project scale so that I can scale them down if the storyline is too long.

Reference:
Wikipedia. 2010. Chibi (term). [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chibi_(term) [Accessed: 19 Nov 2013]. Annotation: This website teach me that the term for cute character that have big head and small body is known as "Chibi", and help me improve my research as after I know the term, I can look for more specific search result from the internet.

16 November 2013 Documentation

After spending a few days working on the learning plan and project proposal, I am able to finish them a day before the submission date, which I am quite satisfied with.

At first, I am quite confuse about the difference of learning plan and proposal, because in my primary perception, both of them are the same. It take me more than a day to figure out the their differences. Apparently, learning plan is a guideline for me to conduct my learning process for what I going to learn in the following 12 weeks, while the project proposal is the description of what I am going to produce in the following 12 weeks. 

While doing the learning plan and project proposal, I still need to spare some time on create a Gantt Chart as my production timeline for the following 12 weeks. Personally, I think the Gantt Chart is the hardest thing to produce among the three things that I need to submit on next Monday. I am not a very good time-managed person, so it give me a lot of head pain to figure out a proper Gantt Chart that is achievable by me.

Last but not least, here are 3 example of hypercomic that I find may be my benchmark for my project:

1. Tron Legacy
2. NIKO and The Sword of Light
3. Our Toyota was Fantastic

12 November 2013 Documentation

After finished defining project outcome, I have a short discussion with my lecturers about my project. First of all, the learning scope of my project meet the requirement of this module assignment, so what should I do next is think about the topic and story of my project.

The topic about my project is ninja and my story is about the the important of social learning theory and friendship among the youngsters. My lecturers think that my story-line and the interaction are not strong enough to promote the social learning theory, teamwork and friendship. They suggest me to create characters with different abilities and use these abilities together to get though obstacles so that the audience can learn the important of teamwork and friendship. After the consultation, I have refined the story and the social learning theory will further be utilize when these little ninja facing crisis during their graduation ninja test and readers need to interact with these little ninja by solving the crisis through different abilities of each little ninja. This can ensure the social interaction that enable readers to learn the teamwork and friendship.

I also start to create my learning plan and project proposal after make sure my idea is approved by my lecturers. 

9 November 2013 Documentation

After spent some days to look for ideas and inspiration, I have decided to produce a HTML5 based hypercomic which is a group artefacts including Illustrations, Decision Making Interaction, Animations and Sounds elements.

This is my first time creating hypercomic, so during this project, I will learn how to draw comic properly such as character design and panel managements. I will use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Edge Animate and Muse to create my artefact. My artefact will be a responsive dynamic content which is able to display on PC, Laptops and other mobile devices. As I am new in HTML5, I will take this opportunity to learn the production of responsive dynamic content using HTML5. As my artefact will be display on a website, I will learn how to create a user friendly interface and experience through this project.

My hypercomic will narrate a story about a group of little ninja that live in a hidden ninja village. These little ninja apply social learning theory by competing and learning from each other while studying in ninja academy. The story will end with a summary from the ninja village leader about the important of social learning theory and promote teamwork and friendship among the younger generation ninja in the village.

My objective to create this hypercomic is to learn how to visualize my ideas into responsive dynamic contents that can be displayed on different digital and mobile devices. My target audience will be teenagers aged between 13 to 19 years old and my artefact delivery platform will be different digital and mobile devices such as PC, Laptop, IPad and Iphone.

5 November 2013 Documentation

This is the first week of my Authoring Interactive Narrative class. I was briefed by my lecturers about the project we need to produce in this semester. We got 2 assignments this semester, which are Specialist Technical Inquiry (STI) part A and B. In STI part A, we need to produce a learning plan, a project proposal and a Gantt chart while in STI part B, we need produce the digital artefacts that we propose on STI part A and record the learning process in a blog. According to my lecturers, the assignments in this semester are focus on learning process rather than the finished artefact.

In this first week, I need to start thinking of what I want to produce for this module and define my project outcome, which are what I want to learn through this semester on the following weeks. We were given lectures on proper ways to do our learning plan and project proposal by referring to SMART targets. It was quite a complicated subject, after the lectures, I know I still need to do my own study from the internet to get a better understanding about SMART targets.

In this week class, we also given the format of project outcome and need to submit the project outcome to our lecturers on the second week. My lecturer, Zui, also give us some example of interactive art reference which he wish to give us some clues and inspiration about what we should produce for this module. From his reference, I see a lot of them are interactive art installations, which I think are too hard to accomplish individually in just 12 weeks, so I decided to do a smaller scale digital artefacts.