The Proverbial Sunrise

[Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been – Relient K]

I’ll be posting at least 2 Things on my other (serious) blog very soon.

Today, I was supposed to go with some friends to visit the grave of a beautiful friend taken way too early from a world that needs more love like hers. Unfortunately, I made the selfish mistake of leaving both my assignment and immune system unattended, and now I’m sick and (as you can see in the previous post) still forced to cram out something academic.

The other week, I posted here the results of my photography assignment. I don’t know how obvious it was, but the one of the stove was atrocious. My original plan was doing something else (below), but there was no time for it.

So here is what it could have been.

Alex.

Hosting Issues

A project goes through many iterations when execution, and my CMWP comic idea has morphed to something else. Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of Meg for you to see. However, instead of a big comic book (such as a 20-ish page issue that I was originally planning), I’ve changed it to be several, shorter ‘strips’, of 4-8 panels each, with each ‘strip’ taking up 1-page, or double-page. That also means I’ll be writing several, shorter stories on Meg, which is great, because I can explore that curiously silly dog a lot more.

Another reason for my doing so, is due to considerations in distribution: namely, how I’m going to disseminate the final products on the Internet.

TUMBLR:

My first, obvious choice, was Tumblr. Apart from being a network already sprawling with an audience – younger people who love animals, and are savvy to the style of story-telling, while not too young to not get the medium of comic itself –  who’d most likely be the best recipients of the project, Tumblr also provides an interesting format of consumption in terms of images.

Furthermore, Tumblr offers an unique form of image display: Photoset. As you can see, the photoset layout has given me an automatic comic gutter, meaning I can feasibly simply create the panels, size them appropriately to the dimensions of each photoset panel as required, and upload them. It cuts out the need for me to make a template with gutters for my comic.

Image taken from cynicalidealist on Tumblr.

The photoset layout also means each individual image can be viewed separately, which is an interesting workabout to achieve the panel-by-panel view that would stop large comics being unreadable on small portable devices.

MEDIUM:

The other choice for me, was Medium. WordPress was never really a choice, however I am exploring the possibilities of hosting comics on WordPress.

Medium offers a very simple model of creating and reading. There is no fiddling with various themes and HTML – it s your page, and your feed. You tag your work, you submit it to a collection of similar topics, and others read it and/or share it. This appeals to me, because the one shortcoming of Tumblr is this: Themes. While most of the audience will consume the comic via the Dashboard – a completely differently themed layout, much like a Facebook news feed – the fact is, any external audience who follows a permalink will be coming to the page that sits within my actual blog – my themed blog. Therefore, the way that my blog theme displays the work is paramount when it comes to a medium as important as comics.

Medium will cut all of that hassle out for me.

This is a web comic on Medium – unfortunately you’d have to click on the hyperlink, because I can’t in good conscience steal the Frogman’s comic and put it on here!

The simple layout means that I do lose the natural gutters of the Tumblr photoset, but instead I get a fantastic, fluid reading experience, uncluttered by anything else except for my username and comic title up the very top, and a recommended further section at the bottom.

COMPARISON:

The two sites bring me to this consideration:

Gutters.

I am incredibly interested in gutters (the white spaces between panels) in comics, because that’s what separates a COMIC from a SERIES OF IMAGES, at least for me. Looking at a lot of print comics post 90s, however, it’s obvious that the actual white strip itself is not paramount in defining a comic as such – but a relationship between panels is.

Tumblr would give me this in ample readiness – it’s there, and all I have to do is to make sure my panels will sit in each spot perfectly.

Medum, on the other hand, gives me the freedom of simplicity – I can always manually create gutters for each strip on my computer, OR I can create a comic that doesn’t require gutters at all.

This is something which I can only really decide on after experimenting on both mediums (ha). Furthermore, I do want to look at what WordPress can offer me in terms of image hosting.

Issues to consider for further along: viewing on portable devices.

There is no App for Medium, however the streamlined reading style seen on browsers carries over beautifully on mobile browsers. Having said that, it doesn’t let you select and zoom in on each individual ‘panel’ when on mobile.

The App for Tumblr, on the other hand, is temperamental at best, especially with displaying images in Dashboard. The actual blog page itself (ie, my themed blog), is accessed through the browser anyway, and depending on the theme I choose, it could either take me to a full-HTML website (completely unreadable on a mobile device), or a vertical, mobile version, which is still extremely cluttered with buttons and links that are separate to the theme of the blog.

Right now, I’m definitely leaning towards Medium more. With more exploration and testing, I’m sure that I’ll find an answer soon.

Alex.

P.S. I started using sub headings!

Mark Me Up, Jenny!

When I signed up for a Graduate Diploma in Media with RMIT, it was inevitable that, again, I will be faced with a task where I create my own blog. Thus, all posts categorized by the tag “grad dip”, and categorized under “RMIT” will be posts for marking consideration. Of course, I’ll be adding other appropriate and relevant tags and categories, however, the ones mentioned above are the main ones to look out for. Considering my lack of frequently blogging, there shouldn’t be any confusion when reading from my home page.

And, needless to say, my use of language will be much more formal, and my use of song titles will be noticeably zero.

Currently, I am to share a link to something that interests me. This seems like a very broad requirement, because I can feasibly send a link to tv.com and call it a day. But here is something that really interests me, and may be of interest for the reader, too.

One of my favorite pastimes is to read comics. My favorite series – and the only one which I make sure to buy hard-copy tradebacks for – is Saga, by Brian K Vaughan (also known as that guy who’s writing the television adaptation of Under the Dome), with art by Fiona Staples.

It’s hard to pinpoint my favorite thing – or the “why you should read it too” – of Saga. At a glance, the covers should tell you of Fiona Staples’ prowess in illustrating an expansive and fantastical world. Her mastery over color, even with an art style which calls on more flat colors than gradients, enhances the myriad of species and lights that BKV’s Saga-verse has to offer. When I read the first issue, I was immediately sucked into the dramatic and intricate history of the characters. Despite the slightly obvious Romeo-and-Juliet overtones, that the narrator’s voice comes from the infant child of the main characters denotes a certain “A long, long time ago” feel.

No, I can in fact point at my favorite aspect of Saga: Lying Cat. An interesting creature, the Lying Cat is an unerring lie detector, but also a useful and loyal weapon. Sidekick to the antagonist apparent, a merc named The Will, Lying Cat plays host to many humorous and even tender moments, when the truth – or the absence thereof – is the only thing you can rely on.

So, this is my initial post on something I an interested in, posted on my blog which I set up. What. A. Conclusion.

Alex.

I do not reserve the rights to any of the pages or works to which I’ve linked. Contrary to my wishes, I do not own television, nor do I wish to encroach upon Fiona Staples’ amazing art. I do, however, wish I owned a Lying Cat.

A Little Righteous And Too Proud

[Lost Without You – Delta Goodrem]

My song title choices are starting to crumble my image isn’t it? So I had quite an interesting dream last night, having finally fallen asleep after tossing and turning – I’m pretty sure my blankets should be changed to summer ones, because it’s too warm.

Speaking of which, ahoy summer!

I maintain that one day my dreams will be the root of a killer idea for a successful TV show/movie/book, but for now I’ll be the sole audience, and try to pass it on in my blogs.

I was rather amused by my dream, which was special in itself because it was actually one long run-on dream, albeit with different sections. I tried Googling dream interpretations but all I got was that the dreams I have where my teeth fall out (not even from last night) means I am insecure about my social image, or, as the Chinese would have me believe, that I’m lying and my mind is uncomfortable about that.

Well I already knew that.

So I’m going to make up my own interpretations. I’ve recently been reminded that this blog is public, so there will be a few embarrassing personal aspects of my dream I won’t include, but on the most part I can share the gist of it.

True to my sci-fi riddled mind, and with more than just a little help from watching Heroes for the past few days, the dream had me enroll in some sort of academy/training center that will nurture our special abilities and make us into these killing machines – so, Heroes meet Nikita.

The building that train takes place in is multi-leveled, and massive, and rather well furnished.

A while after training/learning started, we had a sort of royalty visit the grounds. They were very important, and knew everything going on and all the plans that the academy had for us, and it was implied that trainees had to stay out of the way and turn a deaf ear to anything we might overhear.

So, there I was, on the landing of the stairs leading the sleeping quarters to the dining area, and I overhear some conspiracy plot the Royal said to a bodyguard or follower, and I don’t remember the details – or rather, I didn’t dream the details – and I tried to keep myself quiet, but as the Royal was leaving she (it was a she, like the M character in James Bond) turned around and looked towards me, seeing me.

Anyway, that was really the smallest scene from a pretty long dream (I knew my blankets were getting too warm because everyone was stripping in my dream, but hey that could be from another meaning too…moving on). I don’t call myself close to being an expert in interpreting symbolic factors of a dream, but I might give it a shot.

Some dream symbols are really obvious: like when I dreamed I got a low 80 for my ENTER – I wonder what that could POSSIBLY be telling me about myself. Some dreams are much more cryptic: like this one.

The fact that I dreamed myself with superpowers in the first place, apart from reflecting what I’ve been watching, is also reflecting that I am feeling helpless and powerless in aspects of my life, and in my desires I am compensating for it with superhuman powers. I am trying to validate my footprint in my own life by having control over those around me, and the way I do it is through having superpowers .

I enrolled in an academy to train myself, not because I feel that even having powers I am not in control, and need to learn control, but because the academy is full of people who also have powers, so they are in positions to acknowledge my abilities without fearing me. This probably comes from my need to be acknowledged for what I can do, and to find peers who support and better me – which makes it sound like I don’t see my friends as supportive, but I think it’s more to do with my abilities in life than me.

The building is, as I said, multi-leveled and well furnished. It’s like a maze in my dreams, but I knew my way around, and everything was well lit. It could be seen that the building represents how I organize different parts of my life in my mind – personal areas like the sleeping quarters, and my public image in the dining areas. There were other areas, like a huge foyer, and, for some reason, a leisure/shopping area. So it shouldn’t be a far cry to see that the building is the foundations of my known life – things that I feel comfortable projecting about myself: the initial impression (a well lit foyer, warm and welcoming, even if I do say so myself) and the social image that I have created, which is a comprehensive shopping center with little stores for different purposes, or rather different ways of dealing with different social groups.

And then comes M, the Royal. The Royal is a character of power, of money, a character that is protected, and to be feared for the sole reason that they have power over me. The Royal suddenly comes into the building, or my life, and has access to each aspect of the building, because it’s all her property. At the same time, I (or, in this case, the “I” would be my consciousness) am kept at a distance, being ordered to worship and respect the Royal when she is in my building/life. The superpowers I gave to myself through my desires, the self-empowering, means nothing against the Royal, who holds more power simply on principle.

Then comes the fact that I catch the Royal having negative plans for the academy – ie the foundation of power I feel I have – which would have negative impact on the building – ie aspects of my life.  I am aware of this threat against the academy, but I feel safe because I’m hidden from view (I’m standing on the landing of my sleeping quarters, which would be my private life). This safety is dispersed the moment the Royal, standing in the dining area (ie my public life), turns around and sees me standing there. I am caught in the headlights, and the safety of privacy is completely destroyed – the Royal has access to my private life as well as my public life.

The question is, who is this Royal?

Anyway, there were other parts of the dream which probably alludes to different problems in life that I’m tackling, all with the running theme of a superpower academy (and I mean that in a scenery sense. I don’t think the academy has the same meaning in my other dreams as in my described dream). I won’t discuss them because this post is starting to become a bit too long, and also because they’re sort of odd and embarrassing – I already mentioned that people started to strip. So.

Alex.

Madness? THIS. IS. PLAYSCHOOL!

I wrote a REALLY long post in my Uni blog today. (The title was “There’s a bear in there, and it disapproves”)

Without going into risky waters of likening anything to pedobear, I will clarify that yes, I am making a Playschool reference.

I was on the phone with a friend who is still in Yr 12 this year, and in the process of our conversation I mentioned that I actually used to watch Playschool up until I was 17. You know, when you’re reading a book in the living room and complete silence unnerves you (at least, it unnerves me) so you turn on the TV just for the sound. I used to do this during my school holidays, when my parents weren’t home.

In those days, we only had ABC, Seven, Nine, Ten, SBS and that other channel with the fish swimming back and forth for 5 hours each day. During the day, the only shows on the commercial channels were old-grandma shows, like Days of Our Lives (which I did end up watching during a period of time when I stayed home cos I was feeling a bit feverish and thought I had the Swine Flu but that’s another story), or those boring fishing shows for stay-at-home dads. I was a teenage girl. Those shows not only FAILED to capture my attention, they actively DESTROYED my SOUL.

SBS was usually showing a Russian news anchor firing off rapid speech, and for a while I thought he was recounting a particularly distasteful rampage of a rapist, he sounded that angry, but then the story turned out to be some old lady turning 90. (A bit of racist stereotype there. BY THE WAY, I totally got this off the Simpsons. I searched but can’t find the video clip to show you.)

So I was left with ABC. Remember, I had no amazing new choices like GO! or Seven2, or SevenMate for TV shows I actually like, and there weren’t two other ABC channels where I can watch more Arthur (which, by the way, is still awesome).

So, while reading my book, I would have ABC running in the background. As you would, you start to recognise all the shows, and you start sort of having this guilty pleasure in putting down your book when the familiar “There’s a bear in there” comes on.

I admitted to my friend on the phone, who is Yr 12, about to turn 18 and way too cool, that when I was in Yr 10, and I was watching one of the episodes of Playschool (my favorite playmate was Karen, the only Asian chick. Dude. She clearly was better) I actually learned, from Playschool, that avocadoes grew on trees. I had no idea before that. I didn’t know WHERE they came from but I didn’t think it was trees. So there I was, 16 going on 17, doing a VE&T course at Swineburne outside of my school hours, and I learn from PLAYSCHOOL.

When she heard this, my awesomely-cool friend (who we’ll name Brenda, cos that’s totally not her name or anything) started laughing hysterically. She was actually having difficulties stopping, and so I sat there for about 5 minutes while she wheezed with laughter at the other end. When she finally decided to breathe again, she clarified, “YOU learned from PLAYSCHOOL when you were SIXTEEN!?”

And so, 8 paragraphs in, I finally get to the point of this post.

I have spent the past…hmm let’s see…probably since Yr 6 I have been laboriously building an image of myself. Admittably, in Yr 9 when I changed schools, I threw away most of my work and tried to start anew. Still, the point is that, as a young adolescent, I spent quite a lot of time creating this certain image of myself.

And this included the stuff I bought and consumed. I started caring about my hair a lot more when my parents finally let me go to an actual hairdressers, and I cared about my clothes (though still not as much as most girls my age) near the end of Yr 9. I especially started caring about my media image (and this media I mean by internet and technology gadgets etc) by Yr 10, when it became apparent to me that my goals in life involved the Media heavily.

I deleted my old blog on Xanga (which looked great, but had horrid spelling and grammar and it was full of me bitching), and started one on WordPress after going to a Journalism Convention thing. I deleted that WordPress as well, but not because it was horrible like Xanga. You don’t need to know why. I got a new WordPress in Yr 11, and has kept that since (yes, that’s the WordPress that this appears in as well).

I held of getting Facebook for a while, because it felt like it was giving too much power to other people to mold what I appear to them – they comment, they tag, they like – but, in the end, for communications’ sake (and because everyone else was doing it) I got one.

I didnt hesitate in getting Twitter, because that, I felt, was me in power. On my profile, you only see what I posted. I may not have many followers, but it wasn’t like the follower count was at 0.

Finally, I got Tumblr. I got it on the basis that I felt my WordPress wasn’t pictorial enough, and I wanted more pictures. Tumblr gave me the power to follow people with similar tastes to me, and for me to repost what I like. This action of reposting what I like shows to people who subsequently follow ME what kind of person I am.

Brenda was a friend I’d met on Tumblr through mutual friends. The image she received of me initially was a sarcastic and cynical one I have on my Tumblr account. She told me that she thought I was rather “snarky” on Tumblr, because I wasn’t hesitant in shooting anyone down, and I wrote captions that were borderline rude.

She added me on Facebook, which didn’t change her opinion that much. I linked both my Twitter and Tumblr to Facebook, so whatever public image I create on Tumblr and on Twitter, I have to maintain it on Facebook.

But then she added me on MSN. MSN is definitely much more private than Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. I am more like my physical presence on MSN. And it was there that she saw I was different.

Still, I kept a certain image of myself on MSN, as I do in every day life. I was vocal about how much I love TV shows like NCIS, Glee, HIMYM etc, and I wasn’t shy to admit I love Pokemon – anywhere. But one thing that I do not admit too vocally was my tendency towards children’s shows (Arthur doesn’t count). I like watching them to see what they consider approrpiriate codes to present to children, and also because it’s kind of funny to see grown adults play with dolls.

So when Brenda regained her regular breathing pattern, I realized that the image that I’d created had been slightly shattered by the fact that I apparently do something that goes AGAINST the ideology I created about myself. No matter what I said to her, I will always have the label of “Playschool lover” on my forehead.

I’m saying this out loud now, not only because it goes with the topic of branding through what we consume, but also because I don’t see how watching Playschool makes me a loser. It’s all subjective, right? I personally don’t get why people watch the Kardashians show, or that show with Snooki in it. I used to love the Idol and X Factor shows, but I have began to see them as contrived and fake. Playschool is purposefully fake, it’s purposefully staged, but I don’t see any underhanded influencing of the audience (yes, they promote mostly a heterosexual nuclear family, but I honestly don’t see any positives in confusing really little kids with the gay-rights thing. Teaching kids about gay-rights can come a bit later in life, and of course is solely dependent on their own parents).

I’m sorry for such a long post, but I really tried to not use big complicated words because I hate reading them too.

Alex.

In other news, and this I swear was not a request…haha okay it was a teeny bit a request but I’m more than glad to do it:

I think I’m a decent singer, but no way I have enough guts to lead sing in a band. My friend JAYMEE, however, has the guts. And, thankfully for her, the skills to back those guts up.

Check out her YouTube account: MyNameIsJaymeeNotAmy, and below is one of her videos. (And, no, I’m not running ads or plugs now, she asked me to and I think she deserves it. If I don’t know you and you randomly ask me to plug you, um, no.)

Check out her wild emotional hand gestures and her soulful eye closing!

Alex.