Dr. Who, and the Waters of Mars

For the making a trailer assignment, I chose to pick a trailer for an upcoming special for Dr. Who, the longest running science fiction show in the world. I've been a fan for a while now, and I've been kind of looking forward to this coming out soon. The trailer itself seems to be aimed at both viewers new to the series, with a bunch of action scenes, and for fans, hinting, or directly referencing pieces of lot that have been in the show, like the "knock four times" comment. I figured this trailer would give me plenty of material for my comic style trailer.

Knowing that the people who have seen this show is in the minority compared to those who haven't, I didn't try to catch the trailer too much with my image trailer. I instead took several screen caps, mixed up the order, and made sense of it with captions. The movie *my* trailer descries would take place on a space ship, leaving mars for earth, and being attacked by a monster made of water they picked up at takeoff, who had taken humanoid form with a space suit. Going, back, that's something Dr. Who might try to do anyway. Something I find amusing is that the easiest person to make look like a monster and antagonist, is in fact the main character of the series, the good doctor himself in a space suit.

Here is a link to the actual trailer for comparison, enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClNAiVhcIMA





Here is also a version with my ideas for captions and sounds:

comic captions assignment

The idea for this assignment was to take the image above, and add captions that would turn it into a story. I chose to make the story more akin to a setup for further story than a complete narrative. I basically used the first page to set up a state of normalcy, to match the images there. The second page is more of set up for action to take place on another page. I left it open ended, for now, but even added page numbers to make it seem as if there is more to come. My perfered ending is that the man swims across the lake to help the boy and save him from the dog, what's yours?

Calvin and Hobes

This assignment was about finding a Calvin and Hobbes comic with no words that I liked, posting it, and explaining why I like it. So the first thing I;m going to do is post some excellent fan art instead of the actual comic... To be fair, this picture sums up quite allot of the comic in one image. To do represent all that the comic series is and all the ideas it gets to would probably be impossible in one image though.















I LOVE Calvin and Hobbes, and have read most of their strips after discovering them in middle school. I still love the tone and presentation of the comics to this day. I chose this picture because it shows allot of what was going through Calvin's head when he was off in his own world of fun. I may have spent more time there than he did when I was in that age range. I also was a dinosaur freak too. Digging up some of the old comics not only reminds me of the time I spent reading them long ago, but the period when I had more time to just sit and stare into space, thinking about this and that, or having imaginary adventures with all my toys. Though I never had a stuffed tiger like Hobbes. In retrospect, that would have been awesome too.

Module 1 part 2: How to Make a d&d character

I decided to do my "How To" page on something almost all pencil and paper tabletop games have done dozens of times. Unfortunately, for those who aren't combat vets of dungeon sieges, this is slightly less intuitive. This hypothesis was only confirmed when I showed gamers the drawing, and they instantly understood it, and everyone else was trying to figure out what was going on. I used comic boxes and scale to try to impress what my personal ideas about gaming entail.

The first box, top left, has 3 people thinking about what to do with their epic heroes. The stick figures are generic representations of stereotypical adventurers. One has a sword, one has magic, and the other a bow. The stage looking multi sectioned thing is a "dungeon master screen," A staple of many games. I didn't give the players faces for 2 reasons. The first, and more symbolic reason is that of deciding on one's identity for the game. The second is that I can't really draw faces well. This will probably occur in many future works I submit, so get used to it.

The next panel is the step that everyone love or hates, depending on the person, and the game- doing the math. I tried to make it look as if the person was rolling the dice you see on the table, and I kind of succeed. This step is crucial for most games, if time consuming, but one or two hours of creating a character can translate into weeks and months of actual play time. The "final panel" is that of a player submitting his character to a GM, or game master, for final approval. You may noticed the cross fingers of said player, hoping to be approved, and to get onto the game.

The rest of the page is done in landscape. The assignment specified comic format, but I decided to take advantage of that in a different way. The panels at the top are the real world, in which all the set up happens, and in which the players are bound to that reality. The landscape, and battle scene have no borders, in my attempt to represent the unbounded possibilities of the world the game has created. This is technically against the assignment, but I figured I'd go for it and see what happens. I also attempted to put in a background that would imply a large world, full over verity, and wonder, not just the foreground of the completed characters, fighting goblins on the road. The end message I attempted to give off is related to the power and fun of imagination and gaming, when you can step into that new reality.

module 1 part 1

For this assignment, I decided to plot a progression of video game graphics through time. I should mention that pencil scans don;t quite translate perfectly to j pegs, especially the way I tend to draw them. Excuses aside, I looked up some of the classic game art of the industry, and tried to replicate some. The first Image is of the first game created with a graphics component, called space wars. I should not that this is not the original art work, but closer to a more modern version that I have played many times. Still, space wars was one of the first great arcade 8-bit games.

If you don't recognize the 8-bit Mario, I really have nothing to say to you. This is actually the second major incarnation of Mario, not counting jump man, and was around in the 80's. It's not until I tried to draw Mario out in his pixilated form that I realize just how strangely proportioned he was back then. His facial hair takes up more space than his arm! Next up, I decided to skip a few generations and go to a 16 bit sonic. This was late 80's early 90's tech, though sonic stayed relatively unchanged until he hit 3D with everyone else. I ended up drawing him out, and then making his curved edges squared off, as that's how he looks up close. The last image is supposed to be a 3D version of Kirby. I wanted to put a 3D drawing in for the last one, and I didn't start with Kirby. I tried link, and Donkey Kong, but I couldn't really get either one. it just didn't feel right, so I went with our pink puffy friend. I also tried to frame the whole thing on a computer screen, so that it would be more apparent it was all computer generated art.

If your unfamiliar with the mentioned characters, here is a helpful image I used for a few drawing ideas

http://www.infendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img1.jpg

In no paricular order....

Right, so this is the 3rd part of the 1st module. It also happens to be the first part that is ready to go online right now, so without further ado:
My chosen image.













and my before image.



Looking at the rest of the posts that were up, most students seemed to have modified images in the same style for the woodcuts to make their images, so i attempted to do the same, though it's not exactly perfect. My before image is supposed to be a man taking a message out of a bottle he found. This explains what the same man is re-searching/translating in the next image. I couldn't find a good image of a scroll or cork in the same style, so you may notice I actually used a feather in the bottle instead. I figure this leaves some mystery as to what is in the bottle, an dhow he found it. Was it some coded message? Plans? A scholar's comments on a piece of art? Who knows.

About those assignments...

Recently, a few Graphic Storytelling assignments were due, and were supposed to be posted to this blog page. Some readers may be noticing the absence of said assignments. Unfortunately, I haven't posted them for a few reasons. First off, Ive been rather sick, and lost allot of time, and I;m scrambling to make up work in most of my classes as a result. Next, because though I brought a nice, shiny combo printer/copier/scanner to RPI this year, I seem to have misplaced a power cord for the device. All the assignments are pretty much done, I just have to figure out where to go to scan them in. This will most likely be done tomorrow, as I still have a bundle of other work to finish today, and I;m stuck in my room making sure I don't fall behind any more. In the mean time, here is something rather awesome.

So this is a blog

This is a blog that I've more or less been assigned to create for my Graphic Storytelling. I haven’t really been in the blogging community at all, but I figure this will probably be more fun than anything else. Little bit of background:

I'm a Games Simulations Arts and Sciences (GSAS) major at good old RPI. My area of expertise is Game Mastering, as well as playing, for a bunch of different pen and paper systems here, including (yes) D&d, as well as GURPS, Exalted, and soon, Sufficiently Advanced. I also am a big fan of Manga and anime, as well as comics and cartoons from the western world, as well as web comics. There’s allot more, but that will probably show up as relevant.

My real name isn't Wash, but it might as well be around here. I look like Alan Tyudic in his roll form the Firefly television series named Wash, and it stuck (watch Firefly, by the way). Now, back to class.......