I had a great time at SXSW 2009. Met a lot of great people, heard a lot of great ideas, and ate a lot of great food. While I was there, I did a quick interview with Gary-Paul of New Riders about my upcoming book, Speaking In Styles, although it was not the most flattering of angles:
It’s a little over a week until I’m at SxSW to talk about Online Comics with Richard Bruning (DC Comics), Ron Richards (iFanboy.com), and comic artist Rivkah. Richard is providing an industry perspective, Ron a reader’s perspective, Rivkah an artists perspective, and me? Besides moderating, I’ll be providing a technical perspective on what is possible with User Interface design.
In advance of the panel, I wanted to get down some of my ideas about User Interface design and online comics for feedback from interested readers.
Based on user interface design, I separate online comics into three basic categories:
Page Mimics
Balance & Grace Online Comic Mimics a Page turning Metephor
Use the page metaphor with the linear “panel” concept for sequential story telling, either using fade, slide, or even simulated page flipping to transition between virtual-pages. Often these online comics are simply scans of print comics, so they keep the same vertical aspect, which is not optimal for the generally more horizontal computer screen.
Examples include:
Motion Comics
Sparks Motion Comic
Although easily mistaken for a cartoon, these comics take existing sequential art and use a “tweening” process to create pseudo-animation. The story is still linear in nature, but becomes a more passive experience than static comics, which engage the reader to imagine the motion themselves. That said, motion comics are better suited than static images for the screen and Internet, but are still a young medium that I hope will become increasingly interactive.
Examples include:
Experimental UI
Experimental Comic "Shadows Never Sleep"
These are still comics in that they use static and/or sequential art, but presented in ways that break with other comic conventions in ways only possible in the online world. For example, “Shadows Never Sleep” allows the user to zoom in and out of the story, exploring the art and narrative at will. “ZoomQuilt II” breaks with the traditional horizontal nature of comics, instead allowing users to zoom vertically down the narrative.
Examples include:
Pontificating about the future.
Last year, I was a speaker at the New Riders Voices That Matter conference in Nashville, TN. While there, I was interviewed by Nikki McDonald, with whom I discussed everything from getting blackballed by gGogle, to how to protect yourself online, to the future of communication. Check out the interview on the Peachpit Web site: How to Protect Yourself in the Future with Jason Cranford Teague.
(Notice the clever Yuri’s Night product placement on my T-shirt.)
Watchmen on the iPhone
So, it looks as if the legal bru-ha-ha between Fox and Warner Brothers is finally over, and the long awaited Watchmen movie will make it to the big screen on time (March 6th) with Fox much the richer for it. But this is not the first time the Watchmen will have been brought to life in motion. In conjunction with the Movie, DC comics is releasing “Motion Comics” of the 12 issues of Watchmen, taking the original panel art and adding simple animation, a music score and a single narrator reading all of the parts.
Currently, episodes are available up to issue 10, each lasting a little under half an hour and selling for $1.99 each through the iTunes and Amazon.com.
The Interactive Watchmen iPhone App
Although I’m sure the author, Alan Moore, would disagree, the overall effect is quite good, and makes for a great way to enjoy the story on the go. The art is well preserved and the animation is smooth, although not nearly as complex as it might be if it had been fully animated. Still, it’s miles better the Clutch Cargo.
The single narration voice is not completely to my liking, they could have at least splurged and gotten a female narrator for female characters. Silk Specter may smoke, but the narrators gravely voice is about as sexy as a lime green polyester pants suite.
What intrigues me most about the Watchmen Motion Comic, though, was how seemingly easy it was to take the static images of the comic page, which require a more active role for the reader to animate the action in their minds, and turn it into the more passive video format. Although this is far from the atrocity that colorizing old black and white movies was in the 1980′s, it does give me some pause for thought.
Moore commented in a recent interview with the LA Times that, “There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films.” In fact, It looks as if they don’t even need to make the film, but simply take the storyboards and animate them. But why is this a problem? It does take a dimension out of the hands of the reader, placing it back into the creator (or a creator’s) control, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
This is one of the important questions I’m hoping that my panel at SXSW will be addressing next month in Austin. If you have any thoughts or will be at the panel and have suggestions, leave a comment her or email me.
Check out the Watchmen Chapter 1 Teaser, and let me know what you think.
Heavy Liquid: Cyberpunk in the cyber-age.
At its best, a good Cyberpunk story will drag you through a gritty future reality while simultaneously taking you to see a world beyond that reality. The graphic novel Heavy Liquid, starts strong along that path, promising even to be an inspired addition to the genre, but eventually becomes too bogged down in secondary charchters and sub-plots to warrant its epiphanal ending.
Although Heavy Liquid starts to touch on political themes and the individual’s role within an monolithic World government and ubiquitous technology, like other themes in the book, it feels as if the author has picked it up to do something meaningful, and then gets distracted trying to push the story forward, forgetting where he left the theme. And that’s a shame, because it feels as if he has a lot to say on this, but never arrives, pushing the reader to think, but not really taking them anywhere.
Still, this was an enjoyable read with a realistic look at one possible future as we head into the singularity. I’m wondering if this is a stand-alone story or the first in a series. If a series, then I think this is a good, though flawed, first chapter.
The Spirit Movie
The holiday break was crazy busy for me, but I spent as much time with my family as possible, as evidenced by the fact that I saw a movie about a midievil talking mouse rather than a dead guy with a red tie. I went snow tubing with the kids, which I had never done before–it was a blas–and I’m still icing my thumb from playing too much Batman Lego on the Wii with the wife.
But tonight I finally did get to see Frank Miller’s The Spirit (the aforementioned dead guy with the red tie) and loved it. Yes, I’ve seen the negative reviews, and even the disappointed comments from my friends, so, maybe I went in with low expectations. But like the pulp comic that spawned it, this movie was something ridiculously fun, with the emphasis on ridiculous.
If you are going to see it, don’t expect Batman: The Dark Night or even the Tim Burton Batman. This is not X-Men or Iron Man or like any other comic book hero brought to the silver screen. The closest comparison is Miller’s own Sin City, but, even though he uses a similar styles, The Spirit goes for wry humor over angsty violence.
There are laugh-out loud moments, smirking moments and even some great groan moments. If you look at The Spirit as a movie to have fun with watching, it’s a fun movie to watch.
Another busy, busy week. I’ve been teaching CSS to Web editors yesterday and today, and will be heading to NYC to teach more Web editors Thursday and Friday. In addition, I’ve been getting people on board for my SXSW Online Comics panel. So far I have Richard Bruning of DC Comics, Ron Richards of iFanboy.com, and artist Lee Marrs, plus I’ve got a few possible surprise guests. We’ll see.
Now for the project update.
The new Yuri's Night Web site design (click to see full size version).
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’ve been doing the Web site for Yuri’s Night: The World Space Party for the last 4 years. The 2008 Web site was a huge success, but took a lot of time to build and maintain.
This year I have some big plans for the site, including using WordPress as my CMS, adding more community and social-networking features, using Zazzle.com for products, and a bunch of other features. The good news is that most of these features are off the shelf, so the site should be, if anything, easier to build and maintain.
The biggest change, though, will be that I’m setting up a permanant year round Yuri’s Night Web presence, and a separate party specific site for 2009. This will let us put all the evergreen and management content in one place, and have the party Web site really focus just on the parties.
The design for the main site is done, I’ve installed WordPress and cut the chrome. Now I just have to find the time to build the pages this week! Then, to work on the 2009 party site which will be up and running for the new year.
Wanna’ help? I’m looking for designers, filmmakers, and musicians willing to give their time to help build illustrations and downloads for the sites including desktop wallpapers, buddy icons, site badges, site widgets, posters, signs, flyers, music, videos and anything else your creative little minds can think of for the site.
If you are interested in helping, contact me at jason at brighteyemedia•com.
Wow, I’ve been busy the last several weeks! Besides entertaining the in-laws for Thanksgiving, a presentation on Web fonts to Refresh DC, and of course my full-time job at AOL redesigning Pixcetera and teaching classes on CSS, I’m working on and finishing a few side projects. Over the next few days to warm up for a good nights writing on my new book, I’ll blog a bit about what I’m up to. Tonight! Sci-fi!
Blake's 7 Web Site
Last Winter I was at The LA Doctor Who convention (yes, I’m a huge Doctor Who fan) and met Andrew Mark Sewell who is rebooting another one of my favorite Brit Sci-fi shows, Blake’s 7. If you are not familiar with the story, it was a great and epic space opera that I have little doubt was part of the inspiration for the awesome FireFly series. We got to talking, and I agreed to do the site.
Eight months and a lot of work later, I’m proud to announce the launch of the new Blake’s 7 Web site! There are still some details to iron out, but it’s ready to promote both the exiting audio adventures and the planned animated and live action series.
I decided to use WordPress as the CMS, something I’m doing a lot of these days, added a great flash based slide scroller called Featurific (thanks to Rich Christianson for all of his help), and then did a lot of work laying transparent PNGs with CSS. The overall effect has a lot of overlapping images and gradients seamlessly merging together.
As always, constructive criticism is appreciated.
Let’s hope this relationship has a happy ending!
(sorry about the ad, and this site in no way endorses Dell.)
Whether you like your science hard or with a bit of fiction on the side, Barack Obama has the Right Stuff to take America into the future. Obama has long praised and supported NASA, recognizing that it has been crippled by eight years of underfunding and programs designed for political expediency. He knows that NASA has fallen on hard times and has detailed plans for turning it around. These forward thinking policies have won him the support of many in the aerospace industry. Obama has never waivered from his promise to increase spending at NASA and has set a clear vision for its future.
Obama has the right stuff to take us into the future.
As for John McCain, despite recent comments that NASA would not fall prey to his federal spending freeze, he is now waffling on funding. Just this week, he made confusing statements that NASA would have it’s budget frozen. Given his indecisiveness, and the fact that he has not laid out any clear vision other than the same-ol-same-ol of the Bush administration, there is little doubt that a McCain administration will be no friend to space flight.
Human space-flight is vital to this country! And Barack Obama knows that. That’s why veteran astronauts like John Glenn and Bill Nelson have long endorsed him. Now former Space Shuttle astronaut Dr. Dan Barry, founder and past president of the Association of Space Explorers Rusty Schweickart, and former Space Shuttle astronaut Dr. Kathy Thornton all signed on to be Obamanauts in order to show their support for Sen. Barack Obama’s space policies.
Other Obamanauts, like the first American woman in space Sally Ride, are speaking up for Barack Obama, because they know the stakes are just too high. We need someone in the White House who can lead us into a future of peace and prosperity in space, not drag us back into the mistakes of the past. She says in her editorial:
Obama also has impressed me with his grasp of the challenges our space program faces and his agenda for where we go from here. Obama clearly understands the importance of human spaceflight and exploration.
Even noted pointy-eared alien, actor Lenord Nemoy seems to have a fondness for Obama, talking about meeting him at an event where they exchanged the hopeful Vulcan greeting “Live Long and Prosper.”
There are a lot of reasons to vote for Barack Obama, and even reasons not to vote for him. However, If you simply do not trust Barack Obama, if you are paranoid that he is not what he seems to be, then there is little I can say to you. But I can at least ask you to open your mind for a moment and know that Obama’s vision of the future is one of hope, exploration, inclusivity, and, yes, adventure, the same vision that Gene Rodenbery had for our future in Star Trek. In Star Trek, Rodenberry asked us to believe that humanity would boldly go into space to make our own world better.
Isn’t it time we elected a president with the right stuff to get us back on the right track?