Evaluation

For My final year project I created an interactive comic book narrative “BLACK CHERRY” which allows the user to explore three different endings of a story, “Ultra, Nostalgia, and Eclipse” each of these titles represent three different stories. Each title has a poetic meaning to It. Ultra represents an extremist view, Nostalgia represents an emotional attachment, and eclipse represents a once in a lifetime event. The main story is about a boy played by myself who keeps running into his ideal woman, but each time he’s close to happiness he’s met with obstacles he must overcome, the plot twist is he doesn’t know it’s all just a dream till the end. I used adobe flash animate for this project.

I created Black cherry as Inspiration for a storyboard I am working on. For my upcoming music video. So the narrative is accompanied with a backing track with no vocals on it.This is to give the user a feel, as to what type of music I will be creating. On the homepage there are three buttons which include all three stories with their own original designs. There is a pause and play icon which represents the audio file, the user can click on this too play music. I had originally created this to play once throughout the entire piece but was recommended to change this feature as it wasn’t very efficient. Finally on the home page, there is a picture of myself and a friend which has been edited to look more caricature. All my images are photos which I have edited to look more like a classical

comic. 

Each story is about 20 pages long. When the user reaches the end of each story there is a home button which brings them back to the homepage.

I haven’t changed much from my first meeting with my lecturers I kept my project rather simple and straight forward instead of too technical, my project was more about the art.

The easiest part of my project was the coding as I had used very coding which I am familiar with for the past three years as a digital media student.

All in All the project took me 2 months to do I started at the end of march and finished in may I neglected the blog till the end of my project which cost me marks I should have spent more time on this part of the project rather than rushing towards the end of the deadline

The hardest part of the comic was acting out the scenes I had to take numerous pictures for each scene till I found the one which conveyed the message I was trying to portray this took weeks roughly three till I was happy with all my photos

I am satisfied with the style of my comic. The art is quite appealing as it is both abstract and contemporary I used both Photoshop and my phone app to edit these images. I had done some acting in each scene with the help of some friends which was fun too. In fact, I had finished the comic rather late so didn’t have much time for user testing but the few people that played with it. Told me they loved the concept “as it was indie” and the art was done well. The user testing could have been more thorough in my opinion. Almost all the audience liked the music and gave it good feedback.

However, I think I could have improved the technicality of my project maybe by putting it in after effects for motion graphics, but since I don’t use after effects that often, I wasn’t well equipped so I stuck to what I know best which was flash animate. 

Another way I could have

improved my work was by creating more buttons with different features on flash. I didn’t manage my time well and that is most definitely my biggest regret.

The aim of my project “Black cherry” is to use a platform to express my emotions and thoughts, through a creative lens which is my art. I want to show people that its ok to be expressive we are all humans, we all have are wants and needs and our ups and downs there is no perfect partner out there we all have imperfections everyone goes through certain emotions like, nostalgia or love “Black Cherry” is a reminder that you’re not alone, it’s those who are will willing to express themselves that will experience life to the fullest

Examples of similar artefacts which led to inspiration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ZpTRV1DGMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ZpTRV1DGM

Lost Girl

This interactive narrative shares key similarities with my own comic they both contain speech bubbles a simple form of navigation and they both use good imagery to captivate there audiences

the differences with lost girl is the overall length of this comic and the style uses sound in a creative way in the storyline.

 The witcher

This is another comic which I took a liking to. It has a simple format  and uses speech bubbles for text it encouraged me to use a similar style of navigation as it works so well

and effective. This comic simply has a forward and back button which allows  the user simple navigation.

Broken sword is a very similar interactive comic to my own as it uses its imagery to paint a beautiful narrative of its story the key similarities are its navigation it has a forward and back button on each of its pages which allows the user to navigate through with ease it has back ground music and sound effects which add to its vibe and uses speech bubbles which my own artefact does also

Steve lacy  dark red

This music videos narrative has some similarities with my own. Its narrative is about a boy who is interested in a girl he sees at a gas station. He combines two songs into one music video, which is similar to my multi narrative approach. I also use some of the cool imagery in his video for inspiration in my own through editing. and this music video narrative strongly influenced my idea of  a  Music video storyboard when reading my story its more evident.

References:

  YouTube (2012a) Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror Remastered Walkthrough – Interactive Comic Strip [Video Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JunnTeOQ0EM [Accessed: 21-04-2018]

YouTube. (2018). STEVE LACY - RYD / DARK RED. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-OzspEcQG8 [Accessed 1 May 2018].

 YouTube. (2018). Lost Girl: The Interactive Motion Comic - Chapter 1: Feed. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ZpTRV1DGM [Accessed 1 May 2018].

 YouTube. (2018). The Witcher Interactive Comic Book. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjifvPaFoIg [Accessed 1 May 2018].