I read some thread on some forum, which was about the webcomics that posters had been involved in. Comparing all the varied styles I thought “I’d like to write a webcomic once too. Too bad that I suck at drawing comics, and also at being persistent.” But the answer to my problem was right before my eyes, and realization suddenly and dramatically hit: “I should make a round-robin webcomic!”
Round-robins are a format in which a group of authors take turns in writing the story. In this case, one comic per author. With this whimsical idea I approached a friend, who okayed me, and then some other people kind of gave me the thumbs-up unenthusiastically. But that’s okay! Because after the first few kick it off, everyone will want in. Especially considering what little effort it takes to just make a comic, and make it part of a larger project.
I will eventually be creating a dedicated website for the comic, and, I guess, draw the very first one myself. In the meantime, in case this idea interests you, here are a few anticipated rules of play, or rather a statement of principles:
Comics should be original, use no copyrighted content and be made specifically for this project.
There will be no restrictions in their aesthetics, plot, characters used, etc. Except for those in the following two points.
At least one element of the preceding strip should be used or developed in yours, to keep a modicum of continuity. Examples: a character, colors used, a part of the plot.
No text may be used at all, no matter what language it’s in (unless it’s a fictional one.)
Strips should consist of a single image file of png, jpg or gif format, in any proportions (there might be a maximum width decided at a later time,) but made to be read on a screen. Maybe we should keep an archive of 300 dpi originals just in case, too?
Those interested in contributing need to be of my acquaintance, or of an author of one of the strips (this is not a completely open project.) No special talent is required.
Authors may not draw a strip again if they have already drawn one before, unless there are no fresh candidates.
The use of a particular logo of the project somewhere in the strip might be a requirement in the future. Maybe a name/pseudonym as well.
Take your strip as seriously or as lightly as you like; that’s the whole point! The rules above are only to make sure that the spirit is maintained, and for basic coherence. Things not mentioned are that I’d like it to be weekly, if we can pull that off, and that we’ll have to decide what to do in terms of authorial rights; some creative commons license should be okay, I suppose. Contact me if you’re totally in, and also to suggest a name for the comic.
This is called Recaída (Relapse,) a decidedly bad and rather cheesy name (the ‘caída’ part means ‘to fall’) for an animation I made for school in 2006. It’s, as I describe it in the video page, ‘a simple story of lost love,’ as told in wiggly pen lines, abstracted characters and two colors.
The story behind its creation should start, I guess inevitably, with my getting dumped by a girlfriend that year…, or maybe the year before that (I’m not putting the ‘water under the bridge’ act, really.) Either way, the truth is that I’ve always liked misty love stories, the more heart-wrenching the better. Yes, yes, I know. The point is, though, that the girlfriend deal I just mentioned was really only an excuse for me to make a story about dropping down from a great height in hopelessness. No, I never considered suicide, don’t worry.
Well, I never stopped to think about this so deeply while drawing the storyboard; it was the night before I had my class, so I had to get something done, and I had previously come up with that squarey character, which looked rather charming and easy to animate to me. In general –and this is a characteristic of mine– I can finish things quicker and be more satisfied with the result the less time I spend thinking about it, and the more I let it just be whatever and blah: get it over with. So then I can be surprised if it turns out sort of nice, instead of underwhelmed because of all the effort I poured into it (like with another animation I made later, Pixevolución.) So for giggles, here’s the storyboard in its finished form, and a pageful of sketches, for those of you who… Ah, who am I kidding, no one cares about this other than myself.
Only thing left to add is that every frame was drawn freehand with a pen. I didn’t even use fancy light boxes or nothing, just like real men do. I cut paper into square pieces and drew on them, then scanned them and… put them in Flash. Which is ridiculous, since Flash is not exactly made for that, but still, it worked I guess. The point was to make an animation using Flash, that was the assignment, but I wanted to make it hand drawn, so I just did it. Oh, and about that breathing sound? Yeah, that was my lazy way of adding sound, which was a requirement; it totally doesn’t fit it, but I wanted everything to be made by me (it’s an obsession, perhaps,) and I can’t play an instrument, sing or make any sort of music, so…
I’m in my senior year, studying graphic design and doing my final year project, which will be due in January 2009. I’m a big gamer; played videogames since I was little and got my NES (which I still keep,) and have kept going at it since then, more or less uninterrupted. So I guess it’s no surprise that I decided to make, for my project, a game; the first videogame I’ve ever made. Nevertheless, this post is not about my project, but, rather, about my opinion on videogames, which I hope will serve to justify my choice. Though I consider myself a critical individual, I’ve cut videogames a lot of slack in the past; I’ve become a lot more critical of the medium lately, though, and done a lot of reading on the subject because of my project. Thus, a collection of some posts I’ve made elsewhere, on the subject of videogames: (continue reading)
It was a busy day! I’ve been setting up this website, and the only thing I hadn’t yet done was post here. Among the update’s there’s a new main page with links to the blog, the portfolio and the piclog. The latter is a Pixelpost installation for what some people call a photoblog, but the word has a negative connotation to me (at least phonetically,) and it wasn’t meant to be for photographs only, so I chose ‘pic,’ for picture. The difference with this blog is that the piclog is more of a gallery with not much other than the pictures themselves; to flesh out the process, the ideas or the anecdotes behind them I will use this blog. So they’re meant to complement eachother.
I set up a script that lets me more or less automatically send my pictures from the piclog to my Flickr account. Why the redundance? Because Flickr is more ‘connected,’ so more friends, or whomever, can find my pictures, comment them, et cetera. I’m not really into text blog communities so I don’t intend to do the same with this blog.
Another thing I spend my time in today was uploading videos to Vimeo. I already had a YouTube account, but since Vimeo has so much nicer image quality, I signed up, and in a couple of hours I had already uploaded everything. Now my YouTube account is outdated; I’ll have to consider whether or not to upload the rest of the stuff there, since I will mostly just be using Vimeo to embed the videos here and get them streaming, to tell the respective tale. Some videos are kind of embarrassingly mediocre-to-bad, though, but I just put them up because they’re interesting one way or another.
So, what’s still left to do? The hardest work will be making a custom theme for this WordPress installation. It seems quite a bit more complicated than with Pixelpost, but I’ll just have to find the time, because I really dislike the overload of most ready-made themes, and the fact that I can’t comfortably go into the code and add a bar with the latest piclog updates, or Vimeo videos, or whatever. What else? Well, I should smoothen out the wrinkles in the piclog, and I also want to, eventually, integrate both blogs with the main page, and maybe the videos too. Not much else, for now!
I don’t like blogs all that much, to tell you the truth, Dear Reader. I don’t think the phrase has much weight when it’s written as my first post in this here blog, though. I usually don’t like them because they feel exhibitionistic and egocentric in many cases. But there are some important, useful, interesting blogs out there, and these are nice to have; and am I to judge what a good blog is, anyway? A blog is good –it is useful– if it’s fulfilling a purpose. I may find some of those purposes less relevant, but it might be very much so for the person writing it.
What makes this blog worthy for me, then, even if I can’t foresee it getting any more than a visit per day? I simply needed a dumping place for my things; little things that might not be appropriate to display anywhere other than this tiny personal space, but which, put together, might form a collection worthy of showing. I lack a timeline for my doings in and out of the Web, one that could document my own growth. And I wanted a more personal web space, something that felt more like myself rather than what I do (my portfolio.) Yes: this blog is my face, my mind, my hands. It’s already starting to feel like it’s my child. I will not post here for you, Dear Reader; I will do it for myself.
El problema de conocer dos idiomas es el sentir la necesidad de comunicarse usando ambos, porque, no importa cuál se elija, siempre se va a dejar a un enorme grupo fuera. He elegido el inglés como el idioma principal de este blog porque es estadísticamente más hablado, pero intercambiaré con el español en la medida en que crea preferible. Espero me disculpes, Lector.
Eso a un lado, te explico el motivo de este espacio que he creado para mí, repitiendo parte de lo de más arriba. Sentí la necesidad de convertir mi sitio web no en aquello que yo he hecho, sino en un reflejo de mí mismo, un pequeño pedazo de mi propia piel que pongo aquí no para ti, Amado Lector, sino (y lo digo honestamente) para mí. Sentí el vacío que siente el que no deja huella; no por pisar poco fuerte, sino por dejar que la erosione el tiempo. Cuando no tienes registro de ti mismo es como si no dejaras de empezar. Con suma envidia del que te resume una vida entre un hache-te-te-pé y un punto-algo, abro este lugar que es hoy mi propia semilla.
