The Future of Media

The future of media, literature, comic and game.

In this post I want to talk a little about my personal view on the future of media, literature, comic and game. Personally I can’t really separate any of them with others, as they all have part of each other. Video game, or even paper top game normally has a story which drives the plot of imagination, and that’s literature. Comic, especially graphic comic is basically literature with fancy images, and they are all form of media.

I believe that in the future the different between each of them will be less and less noticeable. Student will be playing game for its greatly written story, and people will be reading more and more books with images. I think today’s world is full of information, data and knowledge, and it will be harder and harder for people to accept information without any visual help. Voice, sound and music will become more and more popular in form of media. Comic, especially online comic will likely to have sound effects or even theme sound to enhance the reader’s experience.

I believe in the future the goal of media will no longer be to deliver the message, but how to make people to accept that message. It will be like trying to read a 3,000 words paper in 5 sec; you can only get that much out of it. People are going to live in a world that they will see lots of advertisement, commercial, shots and images every day. The goal of the media artists will be to create things that people can get it as fast as possible. Shorter the better and faster the viewer can get the message the faster he can move on to the next 3,000 words.

As a game design major student, I can see gaming and net working is moving closer and closer. It’s all about connecting people together, and playing game is one of the easiest way to build friendship with others. I also see the potential of advertising and gaming working side by side. Video game can create a perfect digital market that concentrates all the same type of people together, and this will be create for any marketing or advertisement that’s designed to aim for a specific group of consumers.

When I am KING

For the online comic week I read the When I Am King by Demian Vogler. It is a extremely graphically designed comic, full of iconic shapes and image story telling. The story is light hearted and kind of like the funny on the news paper. All the characters and environment are made of simple shapes. No words or dialog, only images to express what the characters are thinking or talking. It has a unique way use of icons and they simply become part of the world itself.

What I think it’s really interesting is the use of scrolling bar, and the comic is designed to be read like an animation. All frame starts from the right and going to the right, and unlike paper comic there is not going down. It almost made me feel like reading a animatic script. The motion is cool, and I almost wish he could have done the entire comic in one long never ending scroll.

The story itself is as I said light hearted and there isn’t a real goal to the plot, I think he just draws whatever comes to mind. However the image that’s used in the dialog box is smartly designed and communicated well with humor.

I believe that traditional form of comic will never be truly over, just like we are still making black and white film today and see it as an art style. Perhaps more and more artists are going to move their work digital, but there will always be people that appreciate the traditional form of comic and art. Maybe one day in the near future that paper comic will be seem as a form of high art, and will be display in the museum with oil paintings and sculptures.

Arkam

This week I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I have to say it is one of the best and coolest graphic novels I have ever read. The story is complex, deep and has some kind of psychiatric feel to it, which is perfect for the story. The art style is amazing, and every single frame can be a masterpiece of artwork. The collage style make the whole story feel like a puzzle of the mind, and as reader we too need to challenge ourselves in order to understand. Arkham Asylum is dark, bloody, sad and crazy. It’s really interesting to see the different between when Batman first came out, and how it has progress and change through time. It is not a super hero comic anymore, and surely is not for ten years old kid. It is a almost realistic and close look of human’s inner darkness, and even for an adult you will still need to go back to things to pick up little messages that the artist carefully left for the reader.

I had the copy of Arkham Asylum for a while but never had the chance to open it, so this reading is a perfect opportunity for me to finish something I was looking forward for a while. I have always been a batman fan because he doesn’t have any super power, and I can relate to him much more than any other DC heroes. Arkham by itself is an interesting enough place to build the story, not to say when you put in all the old faces like the Joker and Two-Face. Batman in a way is not too normal himself compare to Joker, and in the Asylum is a perfect place for him to face his own darkness.

Arkham isn’t like any Batman I had read before, and it is a unique and interesting take on the graphic novel. The story is complex enough to make me wonder and think about it for a while. Sometime I will need to start from the beginning in order to fill in the questions, and answers to those questions were always hidden in little places. Arkam is a great example of how great and beautifully done a graphic novel can be, and hopefully more and more comic will direct its style toward it. 

COSMIX 2011

The talk from the 1 person immersive was an interesting one. I went to the morning talk on Friday, and had some thoughts after the talk about the future of our media. The technology part of the dome was really cool as it’s the first time I had ever really got to know about such media. I can totally see in the near future we will be going in to fully digital environment, and there will be no more frame in a movie or a game. People will be able to just walk and look around freely in that environment, and even interact to it. Imagine creating the world of Avatar in a fully realistic 3D dome and allow the audiences just walk around the environment, and touch the strange alien plants. I didn’t went to the Saturday show so I don’t know how the actual work looks like, but from what they show us on Friday I can tell it going to be really realistic watching that in a fulldome.

The part about story writing for the dome is really interesting too; I like how she talks about her own personal experience. I had so many classes about storytelling before, but doing story telling for a fulldome it something else. How do you fully use what you have? And as there is no actual frame, it’s hard to stage what’s going to be where. I believe that in the future story writing is going to be more about the environment and the situation as a whole instead of focusing on the story itself. Audience will be able to experience the situation for themselves instead of seeing other characters doing it, which means that script and story writing will be totally different from today. Writer will need to work even closer to technician and artists in order to actually create the perfect experience for the audiences. The progression of the story will be depends on the audiences, and everyone will have a different story of their own. This will make it worth re-visiting the experience again and again, and each time the audience will experience something different due to his personal experience and knowledge of the story. Video games had done this for a while now, but not for movies or novels. Imagine in the future we will be able to watch a movie again and again and base on our interaction to the movie we got different ending and different story happens inside the world of that story. Writer will need to create a more fully develop world before focusing on the main story, and in the end what’s more important to the audiences will be the small things that they experienced differently than others.

Woman's Comic

For this week’s women’s comic I read the Love and Rockets by Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez. It’s not a comic done by women, but it more like a comic that attract lots female readers. The most memorable story I read is “LOCAS vs LOCOS”. It’s hard to pick up the characters and story right away because I have no idea of its story in the past. It has a very strong black and white style with graphic style usage of black space. The story focuses on dealing with problem and social life of some young boys and girls. The main characters are girls, and all of them have very strong personally that make each of them unique and believable. I believe that’s one of the main reasons why this attracts many female readers.

It has a strong punk and anti-culture style in the characters. The story isn’t sometime crazy or unique, but it’s about daily things we all need to deal with. The catch is realism and in depth personality and emotion of the characters dealing with those little things. The dialog is a little long for my own taste, but it also helps to build up the story and personality of the characters. One thing I have to complain about its art style is that all the character feels like the same person with different clothing and hair on it, sometime I can’t really tell which is the girl, and which is the boy.

In some other comics I found the female characters all share the same personality, and the male character is the one that has unique personality that develop throughout the story…but In Love and Rockets it feel the other way around. The male characters still have unique and personality, but the female characters is the one that make the story truly shine.

Half of a perfect circle

Asterios Polyp is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. The story is good, but what makes it GREAT is the art. There are countless different art style going on in Asterios, and they are there not only for the visual, but for the story telling as well. Different style means different personality, condition, feeling, emotion and situation. Polyp himself is mostly a poly constructed person, which representing he is all about function, logic and close to “emotionless”. His world is all about making sense and everything need to function in the way that they are suppose to. (That’s why when his house got burn down by lighting he take it rather hard as none of those things are suppose to happen)

There are a range of different type of storytelling using different types of element, lines, colors, shapes, facial, word and more. One of the most interesting things I found it’s the mix of style when Polyp first meets Hana. They were drawn in two totally different art style (representing personality), and when they start to talk they both has taken the other’s art style and mix within their own. It is visual story telling at its best; not even the best facial emotion drawing can tell a person’s emotion that clear. Polpy’s dialog bubble is always squire and Hana is circle, again, its visual story telling using every element that’s on the page. There in a scene where Polyp visit Hava in the classroom where she is teaching some students, and when they meet the box around that shot become circle to represent they are now a whole instead of individual.

 The use of flashback and what could have been is another great element of the book. Having the “DEAD” twin brother to tell the story of Polyp is a really interesting and fresh style. I realize there is no black ink at all in the whole book, and I think that’s really unique for a graphic novel. I am not sure what was the reason or purpose behind it, but it’s sure interesting to see that. In the end I think Asterios Polyp is more about the icon, shape, lines and color that’s connecting to the reader instead of reading the story itself.

ブラック・ジャック

Black Jack is a manga written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka in the 1970s, who was also the creator of Astro Boy, Kimba and many other famous Japanese manga. He was basically the Japanese version of Walt Disney…well not in term of style. I had been always a big fan of Osamu’s work, but for some reason I never like Black Jack that much when I was a child. I think I was scared by the strange look of the character when I first read it, and never had a chance to return to it ever since. Black Jack is considering the best character that Osamu had ever created by Osamu himself, and I can’t agree more.

It is more of manga for teen and adult, and there are many medical references that children will just never understand. Perhaps that’s one of the reason I never read Black Jack when I was little. The character is a unique hero type, which is always on the grey line of being a hero or a villain. As a black market doctor Black Jack mostly ask a crazy high amount of payment in return for his surgery, and that’s one of the biggest arguments that put him on the border of being a villain. He makes an argument against that by asking how much is worth of life. If you think your life is the most important thing then you shouldn’t worry about how much money you spend, and any price that can save a life is consider to be way too cheap. I personally totally agree with him, as it doesn’t matter how much money you have, as once you are dead it’s all over anyway.

Osamu used a stereotype characters in all of his manga, and basically draw the same type of people with one model and repeat them over and over again throughout all his mangas. This allow the reader easily understand the situation and can focus more on the story.

Black Jack had changed its style more and more toward children after the death of Osamu, and slowly become something that’s almost too childish for adult to read. However Black Jack had became an animated series…well two totally different styles of animated series. One is a realistic and dark Black Jack focusing on the realistic world and the darker side of the story, the other one is a cute and funny style focusing on the lesson that children should learn after watching it.

ABC...D...

(I have no idea who he is, and I don't have the right of this photo but this is what normally a ABC looksl like)

ABC

American born Chinese is an interesting and fresh take on telling a story. I read the story of the monkey king like a hundred times when I was a child, and I must say Gene Luen’s monkey king is really close to the original. It is in a way a WHAT IF story and the mix with a real Chinese boy is a really interesting direction. I love how the story tells you a little about the king and it all turn out to be in the same world. The connection of each character really surprises me, and I love the “all-perfect” Asian guy who turns out to be the monkey king.

The artist use really simple iconic characters and keep the dialog simple too. It is really easy to read and because all those characters are so iconic and simple, it is easy for us to make a personal connection. The takes on the story of a Chinese boy trying to live in an American school isn’t the most unique story, but the way it tell it is fun and easily enjoyable. I think many Chinese or Asians had the same problem trying to blend in to the society, and we all know kids can be really mean. That Chinese boy had done some really stupid stuff to try to blend in and afro hair is really funny.

For some reason I feel that the story doesn’t have a good …or perhaps “HAPPY” ending, and we never really know what happened to the girl he liked and how he is doing in school. The story is really realistic as lots of those things are true, and most of the Asian think being white is better. I used to go to this high school in Taiwan where many girls change their hair color to blond. After graduating from high school I took a month travelling in Asia with one of my friend, and wherever we go he will always be really popular due to his skin color.

American Born Chinese is also known as ABC, and I think it is much different then what it was like before. Many ABC will come back to Taiwan for summer and most of them can speak Chinese, but doesn’t because they feel speaking English somehow make them better. My friends and I don’t really like those ABC, as they speak English to each other, and act like they are better all the time…which is totally not like that boy in the comic. Most of the time ABC had a richer family, and likely to buy a sport car and drunk driving around…well that’s just my experience with ABC back home. I don’t think your skin color matter to your behavior, as it’s where you growing up that will change your behavior. If you are born in America and go to school like everyone else I don’t think you will be too different from everyone else. However I feel America is still a country to judge people on his color, which is really strange for a country with such mix of different nationality.



Mice In Pig Mask

(Shame Mask)

Personally I felt that Maus is more of a novel than a comic, and its drawings are there to help the words. It can be a good novel without picture, but it can’t be a good comic without those narrations. The use of animal as real character and “Human” as cartoon character in the story is really interesting, as it totally take away the individual out of the nation and race. The goal and perspective of each race is therefore clear and reasonable to the reader. We don’t question why the cat is trying to get the mice, because that’s what cat does, and this can be apply and explain why the Nazi is out to get the Jews.

The use of animal also makes a horrible tale of massive murders more light hearted, and enjoyable to read. Seeing lots dead animal is easier than seeing lots dead people, and perhaps that’s one of the reason this is a comic that even a child can enjoy reading. I wonder why the polish is portrayed as the pig in the story…

It shows a realistic take on the event, and there is no hero in this horrible tale. The use of father and son conversation helps to bring some perspective to “us” as the reader  to relate the story, and perhaps the reaction from the son is close what most of the people nowadays will feel. Just like the son, we as the reader are reading this story in a point of view of an outsider, and it is good that the story is not forcing us to read it and experience it as we are there…as we can never understand how it actually feel like to be in the Holocaust.

The story brings us in and out of the past and present, and this helps the viewer to take a break from the intense story that’s going on during the holocaust. This is good for the story to progress some discussion and reflection on what we just experience, and that some time to process those events in our head. The art style also changes from the past and the present, as the past is always somewhat chaotic and the present is nice and quit…peaceful. The past is about action and the present is about reflection.

I love the ending most of all, and the best part is how we can totally see the emotion and thought between the two. The father is sorry for what he did and hoping the son can forgive him and still be around him, but the son is totally sicken by his father’s past action and now is walking away …it’s really sad and a create a strong emotional contrast and shows how things in the past can affect things in the present.

Okay...

I am going to start this blog by saying “Someone actually spent time to create this?!!!” I just can’t believe that there are artists that were willing to sit down and thought “ok, I am gona draw Mickey Mouse porn.” I read the Mickey Mouse Meets the Air Pirates Funnies, and first of all it is not funny, and secondly the drawings aren’t good at all. Some of the pages feel like some high school kid’s work, and sometime it makes me question about the artist’s ability to draw. I understand that underground comic is something that doesn’t get pay well, and no people really take it seriously but I think there is a line of “quick drawing” and “bad drawing”. The underground comic may had bring the adult to the comic book world, but reading a mouse have sex with another mouse isn’t a nice picture. In a way I wonder why would any normal adult that actually want to buy this. I am fine with reading drug use or sexual content in any media, but reading about a mouse having sex with a butterfly is nothing that makes you have nightmare for the rest of your life.

Maybe I had complained too much already, and there are many underground comics that cover strange themes, but this is by far the worst. I also take a look at some other underground comic like the Tijuana Bibles, which is basically short porn with no storyline. However what make the Tijuana Bibles ok is the fact that is about human, and the drawing is good enough so we can see what is what.

In the Air Pirates Funnies it brings realistic human characters in to those cartoon characters, and most of them are either whore or pervert. They all have clear story to tell, and most of the time the “bad” guy lose in the end. Beside the nudity, animal sex, drug use and what not, it still holds the basic idea of a comic at the time. It also has some dark adult humor in it, such as when Mickey is crying about why won’t anybody fuck him…I am sure that will be funny if you bring that in to a casual conversation with someone:   

    Older Brother: Hey Lucy what are you watching?

                Younger Sister: I am watching Mickey Mouse!

                OB: Oh really? I never like that character that much…

                YS: Why? Don’t you think Mickey is cute?

                OB: No.

                YS: I think Mickey is cute.

                OB: Oh yea? If he is so cute why won’t anyone fuck him?

                YS: ….

I am not sure if that is a good joke, but I am sure whoever came up with that joke must thought that’s the funniest thing ever.

The Hero with no superpower!?

Spirit is a character created by Will Eisner back in the 1940s, he can’t fly like superman (or leaps) and he doesn’t have super-human strength. Spirit is one of those characters that connect to everyday people, and because he is so “normal” it allow the readers to believe that they can do it too. We can’t connect to things we don’t understand or not familiar with, and that’s why Spirit as a character can raise alone with Superman and Batman at the time. Spirit had way deeper story lines and thought than most of the comic at the time, as its hero can’t just fly to the criminal and solve the crime with his laser eyes. The story goes through the process of thinking and mistakes before the hero can reach success, and most of the time it ends with the hero making a joke. The spirit defiantly brings the comic in to another level of narrative storytelling, and many others soon fallow its style. As a reader reading it today I won’t say the Spirit is a comic with deep thought and ideas, but I am sure it is compare to the other comics back in the day. 

Eisner believed that we need to show the emotion using every parts of the character in order to connect that emotion to the reader, and not only using the face but the clothes he is wearing as well. However, how do we show emotion using clothes, or a hat? I think what we can use is the expression of the lines and shapes of the objects to farther enhance the character’s emotion, and everything must be seem as a whole not as separated objects. That means what’s important is the shape, lines and colors of the character instead of his facial expression, and what the face is doing is just enhancing the emotion that’s already in the character. A good drawing should be able to show emotion without facial expression or words, as the body language and lines connect to people in a deeper way.   

Superman leaps in to the sky...?!

 I never had a chance to read the original superman comic or even the latest superman comic, but in my mind superman’s most iconic power is the ability to fly…and I find it shocking that I was wrong. In fact Superman can only leap for about 1/8^th mile according to the net, and is to my understanding that not before may 1943 that people can say that superman can fly without being questioned. While flying is surely a cooler super power than leaping everywhere, the history and reason behind it is even more interesting than this super power.

There are many funny and interesting things that I want to point out when superman first come out, and many of them has change since then. The “thinking” bobbles is almost the same as a “speech” bobbles back in the time, and no wonder why they had changed that in to the cloud shape that we see today…it was really confusing sometime.

The first superman only has thirteen pages, and it’s really hard to tell the epic origin story of an original superhero in so few pages. The artist therefore made the story move as fast as possible, and took great advantage use of the narrator, as half of the story was told in those words. I think is really funny how they shows example of superman’s power can be “real” by showing us the ants and the grasshoppers…so why is superman call superman? Not Antman or Hopperman? Sure superman sounds much cooler.

The style of narrative change due to the limited pages, and almost every character feel extremely aggressive. Superman feels a little crazy to me because he keeps leaping around and punches people for some not very developed reason. I also realize there are a lot of yellow in the comic, I don’t know if that’s a popular color in that time or if the technology of printing had something to do with it, but lots novel cover art in the old days also use lots yellow.

In the end I have to say that it’s always nice to learn something in a comic, and as most of the reader are children its good for the parent to know their kids are learning something such as when Superman said: ”Birds site on the telephone wires and they aren’t electrocuted…so human can walk on it too, unless we touch a telephone-pole and are grounded…OOPS!”

Peanuts

To be honest, I was never a big fan of the American comic, comic strips. As I was never expose to them in my childhood. Ever since living in America I started to read here and there some superhero or game related comic book, but mostly due to artistic reference. I never really get use to American comic, especially those deeper comic that makes you think. This is actually the first time ever I read peanuts, but I always know about it, and simple just didn’t have time or chance to read it. I like the simplistic art style allow me to realize. I love how every single characters are children and still they told like some old high class educated people. A comic with such simple style and literally no story progression laid its power on the dialogs of the characters. To be honest I don’t get most of the joke or point that they are trying to make, and yet most of them maybe connect deeply in to the American culture that I had not yet understand.

I also watch some animation of the Peanuts, but I feel that totally destroy the uniqueness of a comic which allow you the time to think or realize during each farm. I think that’s why people enjoy reading it besides its interesting or funny, I think another reason comic strip is appealing to people is the time during each picture and each dialogue.

Peanuts is famous back at my home too, but mostly not about the strip itself but more about the iconic character of snoopy. As I always know when I see snoopy but I never really know where he came from. I think the reason it’s so famous is because it’s a dog that dream and imagine thing like flying. However I still don't understand why it is so famous and known as the best story ever told in the american comic strips...perhaps I just don't get it?

Understanding Comics: Scott McCloud

I was shocked after reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, as there are so many things that’s going on a piece of paper…Time, icon, motion, emotion, motion, sound, space...etc. I can’t really point out ONE thing that I am most interest in, as all of them have some really deep thinking and skill behind them for me to learn and study. However one of the thing that makes we think about the most is how he talked about how art is born because people sometime has nothing to do. He pointed out that art is basically self expression, and the reason we do art is because we can’t read each other’s mind. I think it’s interesting that he literally pointed out that art is basically everything we do to express our thought and emotion including bicycle style, signature…etc, and for who says that he or she did it for nothing but art is basically saying “MY ART HAS NO PRACTICLE VALUE WHATSOEVER!” . He also said that the “Pure” art is essentially tied to the question of PURPOSE and what you want to achieve with what you do or create. I take every artist should have something in mind before creating something, or maybe there is no meaningless art as we all have something in mind when we do it.

After reading the book as I am more interested on the topic I did some research on him and found a talk he gave on TED. The talk is basically about the future of comic and a little background history of where he came from. He was from a family full of scientist like his father who was blamed, and this effect the way he sees things and the way he sees comic as a media. During the talk he pointed out that the comic media is always there ever since Stone Age, and not much has change including reading from left to right, up to down, or the time is always going forward as you go through them. However there is one thing that modern comic is different them the ancient one...the “unbreakable line”. The unbreakable line is a line that your eyes fallowing the images either on paper, animal skin or stone, and most of the time in the ancient “comic” the line is never broken. Modern comic on paper is breaking the line by page, and he believes the flow of the comic is therefore lost because of that. He pointed out that the TIME is being broken because the panels are being broken by the edge of the page, and the time is broken. He believes this can be fixing by using modern technology, like the PC.  He believe that if we see PC as a window and draw the comic in a continues way, the time will not be broken.  (Isn’t this just like traditional animation?)

“All Medias provide us a window back to the world we are living”

Imagine a comic created in a multiple time line, multiple ending, and multiple choices and yet connected to either other like a web. This almost sounds like an information map, but how big of a page do we need for that? We can solve the problem with the modern technology to allow us to have a endless amount of pages and the story can have endless amount of choice which he believe is the future of comic.

In the end those are four things he pointed out that’s important to everyone:

• Learn from everyone
• Follow no one
• Look for patterns
• Work like hell

The Arrival

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a really interesting and visually beautiful silent graphic novel. It takes us with the main character’s (the father) adventure in to a new world, where everything is magical and different. The language is different, words are different and it even has strange creatures that we had never seen before. The whole story was done with illustration only; there are no dialogs or words to describe the story. 

Because there are no words and dialogs, it actually makes the reader feel more personal to each character’s emotion, and the situation that the main character is in. As we are put on the same page as the main character we can totally feel more connect to him, because we are learning this new world while he is doing the same. The use of body language and facial motion really show off the creator’s attention to detail and to human gesture. There are also some funny moments there when the main character is trying really hard to ask a simple question, and that really make me relate to myself when I first arrive to America. 

Almost everyone has a strange creature as their companion, they all look animal like, some are big some looks like papers. I really like this idea because it makes me think about many other film, book or video game that put the character on the same position. The character is in a strange world, and there is his trustful companion, sidekick or a soccer ball with a face like in Cast Away. The introduction of this companion allow the writer/creator to show some really in depth personal feeling that the main character won’t normally show, and therefore brings the reader closer and care more about the main character.

This whole companion thing reminds me the game of Portal. In the game Portal, the game puts the player in a strange experimental lab where the whole point of the lab is to kill the player. Player will later get a “Companion Cube” which is basically a metal cube and allows the player to solve puzzle and therefore survive in the lab. As the game progress the player will emotionally grow a relationship with the only thing in the game that’s not trying to kill him, and therefore become its friend. When the metal cube was destroyed later on in the game, most of the players actually feel sad and lost just like Tom Hanks did when that soccer ball died.