Author: jhr360

This week, Jannie and I worked on delegating tasks between the both of us. I am in charge of the artistic aspect of the project, and have drawn the first four panels (two of which not pictured) on Photoshop using a Wacom tablet. I hope to be done with the whole comic by Saturday so that we can begin the interactive part of the project. We plan to use what we have learned so far in JavaScript to make it interactive, such as user input, which will make it a choose your own adventure narrative.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jhr360/week3//javascriptintro/

Getting the buttons to work took a bit of time as I grew more accustomed to using JavaScript, though I eventually got the boogie right button to work. I had trouble with getting the boogie left button to work, though I figured it out eventually.

For my third button, I inserted a photo of Shrek, but when you press the button, a different photo of Shrek replaces the first one.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jhr360/week3//webwcss/

For my updated html site with CSS, I decided to make a completely new site instead of using the first one I made. I used a background image to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I had issues with getting the background to look smoother, and while I’m not completely satisfied with it, this is the best I got it to look with my code. 

I used the model of the portfolio CSS exercise for the navigation sidebar and using the float function. I added a fixed footer advertising my Instagram, which is linked. For the navigation bar, there was a good chunk of empty space so I made the position fixed as well. I wanted to include an image gallery and used sample code from w3schools to help me out there, and I now have a gallery with images that link to the images in better resolution. I lowered the opacity of these images as well. 

Lastly, I added a site title  using emojis. 

For our interactive comic project, we will follow the journey of a dog through the Shanghai Metro as he makes his way back home to his family. On the way he encounters some interesting objects and easily loses his way, so the reader will have different paths to choose from in order to get him home, like a choose your own adventure comic. However, our main character will always find his way home; different paths might just take longer.

There will be little widgets to play around with in the comic that the user can click, but overall will have no bearing on the storyline—they will simply be aesthetic choices to make it more interactive and fun.

The comic will be hand-drawn in a very minimalistic, cute style, and the comic itself will be very lighthearted and humorous. The drawings will be made using Photoshop. The style will be similar to that of artist Alison Zai.

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics sheds light on the history of comics, emphasizing the abilities of comics to convey ideas, just as other, more mainstream, media do. I had never thought of comics as something that can be used for academic purposes, but McCloud seems to do this rather seamlessly as he aims to educate his audience through comics as a medium. This does make learning about the history and capacities of comics more engaging, as he says it himself that icons and images do not require the same brain power as reading.

What I found particularly interesting was the discussion in Chapter 2 on how our brains automatically search for images of ourselves in the world, and how comics and icons create vessels for us to inhabit. I’m intrigued by the idea of a universal form of communication, and the potential for that through the use of iconography, as iconography and visuals allow us to transcend language barriers.