Author: zmb5135

As the semester comes to an end, I’m comparing myself to who I am now to when I first began my classes at Penn State. I can say that I have definitely seen myself grow and become a more confident individual with my work and professional attitude.

Everyday I would ensure I was on time and attentive in class, even arriving early so that I was ready right away once it was 9:05. I would collaborate with my peers, work, and plan what my next goals were as I completed the ones I was currently working on. I would take the time in class as time to be distraction free and focused on creating my comic.

Outside of class, I took any moment I was able to and continued making my comic. Being on a shorter timeline than the other students in the studio made me set a series of short term goals to accomplish within the week. I always met my goals and submitted my work in a timely manner. Having these goals lined up made me feel extremely confident in my work and kept me going throughout the semester. Ending with excellent results and a success comic that was put into the Senior Exhibition.

With the conclusion of the Strawpoll and Twitter Poll, the audience’s choice was “Guide”! This meant that the character Avrin would immediately go and meet the character Ceri in Chapter 2. While comments were quiet on Twitter, and it received six votes total, it was a very clear and obvious winner. The Strawpoll on the other hand received 15 votes, 13 for Guide and 2 for Ignore. While there was a clear winner, it is interesting to see that people wanted the Ignore option!

Once I gathered the final numbers of 19 to 2, I began working on the next chapter in which the Guide route was followed.

Here are what I currently have for the next episode.

Avrin and Ceri meet! And the story of their adventures begin.

Additionally with the exciting news of recieving the Bertha Lears Purchase Award, we are going to run a small publishing of my work! I really am so excited to get that part moving, and figure out inDesign for publishing it. I have yet to decide what dimensions would be best for the size of the book though.

I also have been thinking about my final presentation. I plan on of course showing the work I had done after the Senior Exhibition, and how the published work will look. But, I also hope to discuss my plans for the future with my work at this point! Right now, I have many ideas, either going with sticking with webtoons 100% and hoping for author verification to then gain ad revenue and payment from webtoons itself. Or, going to route of publish on more platforms such as Tapas, while the format is clicking/flipping pages rather than scrolling, I think the comic will not struggle from formatting differences. Along with the possibility of potentially having a patreon where readers can subscribe and see a few pages in what the alternative route that lost the poll could have been. I had also taken the time to develop a Discord server for the comic and will share that in the presentation as well! Discord would allow for a more direct communication route between me and my audience, possibly creating a strong and exciting sense of community that partake in the story’s choices.

During this past week, instead of focusing on working I instead had two receptions in the art gallery! Showing my work to the art faculty, and then to the public. During my faculty presentation I received excellent feedback and great suggestions pursuing forward. John recommended I look into the artist Matthew Ritchie who has many digital avant-garde  art pieces, John said I have a great focus on the popular culture aspect of art, and should investigate the avant-garde side of it. Alongside this I received a lot of positive feedback which really boosted my confidence in my project! Especially since I won the Bertha Lears best in show prize, and will have my work printed now! I look forward to working toward having my work printed and I think it’ll be amazing to be able to physically hold the work I have made.

There was one small issue at the public reception, where the internet crashed in the gallery and I had to reset the iPad and monitor. Luckily the fix was easy and just needed to turn the wifi on and off again on the devices. Just a bit of a flustering moment to deal with in front of friends and family.

From here on, I aim to make the next episode of my story. Originally, my first episode was going to actually be two! I figured since it was being shown in the gallery, it would be easier to have readers not have to flip pages in order to see more. Which, would risk leaving the page or not being able to get back to the first page. So the next episode might be a bit shorter than the first one. I really am looking forward to seeing what the final results of the polls from twitter and strawpoll will be since I am still receiving some votes! Once the polls conclude, I’ll begin working on the next episode.

 

This past week I worked with my capstone project group and we finished setting up the gallery for the exhibition! All of the technology we wanted, the Apple TV and new iPad, came in time and was no hassle to set up with the help of IT. John also created the QR code stickers that are seen in the above image! Seeing my project on a big screen is so exciting and I cannot wait for the two receptions we’ll be having.

I did a presentation to DART 410 and the 300 level class as well. Doing this presentation in the gallery made me feel more confident about presenting to the art faculty on Monday! I got a lot of great feedback, hearing everyone’s thoughts is giving me a lot of ideas on how to continue this project post exhibition. Among those ideas is making sure I do not stray too far from what my intentions of the story are while satisfying the voting results from the audience. Other feedback I received was also working on my lighting and shading skills to make it look more accurate, and earlier panels text looking a bit cramped. These are all things I want to keep in mind while pursuing forward with my comic!

While certain things I cannot control, such as trolls or people who might take advantage of the anonymous polling option. I want to have a community that communicates and discusses what could possibly happen. Not every chapter will have a voting option, as I think it is important for me to be the primary story teller and not leave it completely open every chapter. I also think making voting more of an occasional occurrence will also make it more of an exciting event, getting readers more eager for the next chapter when there is such an option!

This last week I had been working to set up the gallery for the Senior Exhibition “Perceptions, Connections, and Impressions”. Due to my technology that would present not arriving until Monday April 4th, at 10 am I helped the other students with their set ups in the gallery so putting up my stuff would be less of a hassle.

I also published my webcomic to webtoonz! It’s really exciting to see it live, and I have a straw poll live with it as well. The strawpoll and the twitter poll that will be live the week of the 11th are linked in the authors notes. These links are also QR codes I will hang in the gallery around the TV and iPad set up.

In addition to all of this I volunteered to make the card for the exhibition! The group really liked my custom hand writing font and chose that for the card. I also made a cover for my comic because I forgot that the host I am using doesn’t require only a thumbnail, but a full cover image as well.

 

 

This is the final version of the first chapter! Instead of splitting it into two chapters, I decided to make a long first chapter. This would make it easier to present in the gallery for my Senior Project and avoid any error or potential misclicks into completely unrelated content or ads. I made my first strawpoll as well (here) which can be up for as long as I need it to be, and view votes without needing to vote myself. I will create the twitter poll the week of the gallery opening as twitter polls can only last a week. This is an experiment to see also what polling platform the audience prefers! If it seems like a strong lean for strawpoll or twitter, I’ll then know what platform I should use exclusively for future polls. Once I get the results from this chapter, I’ll then upload the next one following the route the audience voted on.