Digital Comic Book
As more sites start forming that allow us to be networked closer than ever, and technology and software evolve to allow media to be altered with greater ease, more users will begin to use new ways to tell stories. As of a few years ago you could log onto Facebook or Myspace and upload an album. This was your story, still image after still image with nothing more to add. One dimensional. A couple years later YouTube came along and changed the way we tell stories digitally. Now using video we were able to add a second dimension to our stories: Motion. As PC and and Mac offer downloadable software to manipulate media we are able to add our final dimension: User Configuration. Users are able to form digital media in almost any way. The way I chose to do my project was to utilize still images and turn it into a video by adding motion (ken burns), and manipulating the still images. I used Comic Life to make my still images look like a comic book, and used a template in iMovie to add some more comic feel to the movie. A difficult part of this was the actual accumulation of photos. I couldn’t take just one photo for each frame or shot, I needed multiple photos from multiple angles to make sure if one shot didn’t work I had other ones to use. Also timing each shot so that the voice-overs would match up was another problem. To fix this I did a voiceover and see what shots I could elongate. After adding time to different shots I would manipulate the voice overs as well to make sure it matched with the right shot.
I may not have had a story in the sense that there was a definite beginning and end, but the reason for that is that the Digital Comic book went meant to be part of a larger series. The cliffhanger at the end was meant to keep people guessing what was happening next in the mini digital series, and so that it would just be a continuation of the storyline. This was done to peak interest and keep viewers, and not make it just one viral video.
The piece uses Comic Life effectively to add polish and style to your superpowers story. You are right to point out in your Statement that it really is only the beginning of a longer narrative, a problem which makes it hard to identify with any of the characters or understand what their motivations might be except in a very general way. Movement from frame to frame is executed mostly well, a technique that propels the action forward (although at one key moment when one character is pinned to a wall, some important dialogue happens over the middle of a cut (we’re looking for a long time at the division line between two frames instead of either of the frames it separates). Your Statement does a good job articulating some of the issues with digital media production, and you make a solid point about our ability to tell stories with new tools like Comic Life. Overall, this piece is a good showcase for what Comic Life can do, but does not effectively convey much of a story.