Author: kct285

In the article “On the Rights of Molotov Man”, Joy Garnett and Susan Mediselas discusses the issues of copyrights and plagiarism. From this article, I was reminded of how these issues are undeniably very important, can sometimes be quite ambiguous and unclear. This is especially so in specific industries such as art in which there is the complexity of the relationship between the artist and the content of their work. This was something I wasn’t expecting as I mostly think of plagiarism in terms of academic writing. From this article, I was informed of the importance of how sometimes others may produce work that can be mistranslated or even degrade originality.

From this article, I learned that plagiarism is an issue that goes past merely copying someone else’s work without credit, but also plagiarism may also mean destroying the intent of the original work. This is especially relevant in an age where the Internet allows all of us to access almost anything and everyone’s work. Though this comes with a multitude of advantages, this means there should also be mutual respect within all of us to give credit to whatever work or inspiration we draw from.

I’ve listened to several podcasts in the past, however, “Homecoming” was completely different from the ones that I’ve previously listened to. Despite it just being an audio, it was surprisingly very easy to picture and imagine the sequencing of events happening in your head. I found this especially so with the background music that really added to the life and vibe of the story.

At first, I wasn’t too sure what was happening however, the audio really brought the story to life, enabling the listener to perfectly imagine and follow the story along with ease. Throughout the audio, there were different audio ‘effects’ that make the audio not crystal clear due to the background noise that sometimes interjects, such as some coughing or chattering. Whilst it can be quite distracting to listen to in the podcast, it really added towards the realism and the storyline. Perhaps my favourite part of this podcast was how they were able to seamlessly flip back and forth between flashback and the present – which I was surprised about as this is something that is often difficult to do without visual cues.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the podcast. Through this, I was reminded of the power of audio as it can be a powerful storytelling tool despite its obvious limitations.

Link to our comic 

Our initial idea at the start of the project was a life journey of two siblings from the start of their lives, until the very end. We really wanted to incorporate a ‘full cycle’ storyline, however, when we started planning out our comic, we struggled with the storyline when the siblings would’ve been older than 30 years old — possibly because we didn’t have any personal experience to draw on from.

  

Instead, we decided to focus on the sibling relationship that we’re familiar with, from birth to around age 18, before one of the siblings leave for college. From the start, we imagined our comic to be completely hand-drawn with simple illustrations with light colours as an accent. Almost all of our visuals are hand-drawn first on paper then traced on Adobe Illustrator for a cleaner look and uniform quality.

As our characters are going through their childhood memories together through flipping through a comic book, so we only placed one frame per page to emulate a photo album feel as well. Our initial idea was to also incorporate a ‘flip’ page effect between page, however, we found this quite hard to code and search up a tutorial for. Instead, we opted for straightforward ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons for users to flick through.

When we first started coding, we placed our code in separate HTML pages. However, we quickly realised we couldn’t continue doing this as we wanted to include music that played throughout the whole comic. Due to this, we had to place all of our frames in one HTML file and use javascript to show and hide all of our frames, which was perhaps the hardest coding we had to do for our comic project.

To do this, we initially individually used “block” and “hidden” for the “style.display” elements which took up many lines and lines of code. However, after (greatly appreciated) help from Dave, he was able to cut down all these lines to 3 lines of looping code. Through this, I learned the complexity of coding, like how a hundred lines of code versus three lines of code could execute the exact same function.

 

Throughout through making of the comic, we were worried that we wouldn’t have enough user interaction, as we didn’t have “choices” for our storyline like many other groups used; thus, for our visuals we made many of GIFs and mouse-over effects to make them more like a digital, interactive comic than just a normal comic. With the help of Konrad, one of the most interactive frames we were able to create are frames 3 “bubbles” and frame 5 “block” in which the user can add elements to the frame wherever they clicked on the mouse (using the mouse’s x and y positions).

Near the end of the project, we realised that our comic didn’t have instructions on what to click and where to click which meant that sometimes users weren’t aware of some of our interactive elements. Whilst we tried incorporating some instructions last minute, we didn’t have enough time to find a place where the instructions wouldn’t compromise or ‘ruin’ the overall look/feel as we wanted this to emulate a photo album as much as possible. Hence, this is also something to improve in for next time. 

Overall, we think that we achieved most of our goals for this project. We weren’t able to do some of the “extra details” such as a drawing page or a page flip transition. If we had extra time or if we had to improve our project, this would definitely be something to work on, along with extending the storyline further into the sibling’s older lives. However, in terms of functionality, our project works and is visually stimulating enough, even without these extra aspects.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~kct285/Ex2_ScrollFun/index.html

For a while, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my code and why it wasn’t working. In the end, I realised that I made careless mistakes such as labelling my “class” as “id” and forgetting to link my CSS to my HTML file – a reminder of how coding requires the utmost attention and precision. 

About/Theme: A journey of two siblings going through life

• Each comic frame would be of these two siblings at each time ‘frame’ of their lives
  • EG one frame is when they’re 2 years old, next frame would be when they’re 5 years old, etc etc until they reach old age (or death)
  • The start of the comic would see these siblings reflect the relationship we ourselves see with our siblings,  thus it’s something many people can really relate to and connect with
  • As the comic moves forward, we see the relationship of these siblings develop and change. With their busy lives, ambitions and other commitments, they start to drift.
  • However, once they start to get older, they find themselves spending more time together as they are aware of how little time they have left.
  • In the last frame, we see one sibling left as the other has just recently passed 🙁
• The comics would be quite cute, hand-drawn and would have sort of a simple yet nostalgic feel
  • However, as the comic progresses, we could change this feel/vibe slightly to match the mood 
  • Overall, the comic would hopefully bring out some wistful/happy/heart-breaking emotions that anyone can relate to. 

Some inspiration: