Graphic Novel Librarian’s New Logo – Daily Create Week 16

Daily Create #tdc1581 challenged users to use online text logo design tool MarkMaker to create a personal logo. I have been so engaged in the development of my digital ego – the graphic novel librarian – that I thought it would be cool to have a loge. Playing with the MarkMarker tool was fun – it is interesting to choose some interesting designs and have the tool produce new options based off your choices. I found many elements that worked for me that I wanted to incorporate into the final design of the G N Librarian logo and hundreds of other elements that were cool but did not work for me. That is the strength of this tool the number of elements make simple to choose a randomly generated but stylish logo. Where the tool became less user friendly was went I wanted to mix and match elements I had seen in a non-randomly generated way, I found that in the editing space specific elements were not labeled and finding specific styles of elements became guess work.

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Speed Creation – Week 15 Digital Story Critique

*THIS POST BELONGS TO A COLLECTION OF CRITIQUES OF DIGITAL COMICS AND RELATED MATERIAL, CREATED FOR A MASTER LEVER COURSE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER.

This week I have found a very cool crowd sourced comic for my digital story critique. It is from creator David Revoy, where fans contribute pledges to facilitate Revoy to focus his time on Pepper and Carrot because the donations providing a source of income. There are perks for pledging included having one’s name included in the comic’s acknowledgments section of each issue and even merchandise/illustrations. This comic is not only crowd sourced but it is open source, meaning that the community of views has the ability to uses the images and characters of Pepper and Carrot to add to and remix this digital comic universe.. The results are new fan fiction episodes, video games and toys modeled after the heroine Pepper and her cat Carrot, also community created translations of dialogue bubbles into multiple languages. Revoy goes even further to support this community by creating tutorials to teach viewers how to use the open source tools that he is using to create the comic.

Pepper and Carrot is cute, entertaining and definitely worth a read but I decided to critique one of Revoy’s time lapse video depicting the creation of a page from Pepper and Carrot being crafted with the digital drawing tool Krita.

Story

The video shows the amazing transformation of the digital canvas as Revoy adds layers of digital paints to create the Pepper and Carrot comic. The video also provides a snapshot of the steps that are taken to craft and perfect the process of rendering a page in the digital world. I found it very interesting how often would Revoy just cover over elements instead of erasing or undoing. Which in his creation process would have just been an extra step. This is a fascinating look at the the process from a blank page to a detailed final product.

Pacing

The timing of the screen cast time lapse is well executed and provides a balance between showing the entirety of the creation and slow enough to see details.  Each time I have watched the video I better  understand the tools Revoy uses and how he uses them. this t balance to keep the video both informative and entertaining.

Digital Elements

Revoy does an awesome job of adding video with music in a way that that give the story tension. The tempo of Peer Gynt’s In the Hall of the Mountain King and the sped up time lapse video gives the story a sense of urgency, like running a race, and in the end a a feeling of accomplishment for the viewer. In the end I found myself getting anxious thinking that Revoy was not going to finish adding details before the song was going to end.

Though I highly recommend reading Pepper and Carrot I was just amazed at how powerful this making of time lapse was because it gave me a view into the world of a digital comic producer and gave me a snapshot of his tools and creative process thought this powerful but simple digital story.

Supporting the mission of my Digital Story – A Response to Chosen Text Week 15

*THIS POST IS PART OF A CONTINUING SERIES OF RESPONSES TO SCHOLARLY TEXTS FOR LEARNING WITH DIGITAL STORIES, A MASTER LEVEL COURSE I AM ENROLLED IN AT UC DENVER.

For my digital project that I have launched for ILT5240, I am using twitter to create a dialogue with a community around making recommendations for graphic novels. I have launched the twitter account @G_N_Librarian and a website to archive the 4 tweet recommendations I have been making. I am happy so far with what I have made but it has not been the interactive experience I envisioned. I was hoping that my twitter followers would reach out to me with their other interests and that I could make recommendations for my followers; fostering a digital community and that that would, eventually, lead to community members contributing their own reviews and recommendations. I looked this week for texts with insight into making my twitter feed more engaging and interactive. Hoping to find some strategies to bolster the Graphic Novel Librarian community. I found three texts that provided the best advice for me:

• 10 Twitter Tactics to Increase Your Engagement
• Twitter Cheat Sheet to Increase Engagement and Followers
• A Scientific Guide to Writing Great Tweets: How To Get More Clicks, Retweets and Reach

Each of the articles shared their findings different ways. The 10 Twitter Tactics to Increase Your Engagement is produced by the Social Media Marketing Society as a compact and informative list of strategies with explanations of why they work. The Twitter Cheat Sheet is an infographic that is very engaging. Created by search engine optimization firm LinchpinSEO, the infographic provides a nice view of strategies that are similar to those from the Social Media Marketing Society and accessible for visual learners. Finally, A Scientific Guide provides the most in depth analysis of what make a successful tweet and provides not only general tips but also how to craft tweets for specific purposes and was written by social media blogger Courtney Seiter.

Each of these articles provided valuable advice for increasing followers and engagement for my twitter feed. To develop the community I have envisioned for Graphic Novel Librarian I decided to focus on incorporating the most common and/or powerful ideas from each text. I will apply these promotional tweets that I make between the standard my standard updates of 4 tweet graphic novel reviews, for the time being. The four strategies that stood out the most to me were:  

1. Keep tweets short – shorter than the 140 allotted characters – this frees people to retweet you without needing to edit the tweet
2. Tweets should come out often but not too often. Making sure you have a twitter presence most days keeps your account in your followers active memory but limiting tweets at at most two tweets a day keeps your account from becoming stale. Because of the size of my 4 tweet graphic novel reviews I am shooting for four tweeting periods a week – twice for 4 tweet reviews and twice for promotional tweets.  
3. Ask for viewers specifically to retweet you or to mention you in their tweets and reward, these rewards could be public mentions or retweets, private thank you messages or even tangible rewards and prizes.
4. Mentions, hashtags, and linked content such as video or blogs attract attention and increase engagement (retweets/likes). These tools, however, can interfere with each other if overused. Focusing on just one specific tool per tweet will keep viewer focus on your content and not overwhelm them with links, and more will make them more likely to retweet.

Here is my original promotional tweet, exactly 140 characters and no image:

“Tweet me your hobbies, likes/dislikes, preferences in literature and entertainment and I’ll personalize a #GraphicNovelReconedation for you!”

Here is my new promotional tweet:

“Tweet your interests, get a personalized #GraphicNovelRecommendation! Please retweet!”

Only 119 characters with a request for retweet and an image of the G_N_Librarian 4 tweet review banner (not pictured)!

Please check out my digital story and let me know what you think, also please send me a tweet with your interests so that I can craft a digital comic review for you! AND be awesome and retweet my promotional tweets.

My Sandwich in a Movie – DS106 Visual Assignment week 14

I wanted to practice with some more photo editing and decided to take on an extra visual assignment to tryout Pixlr, which I have read is a powerful free and online photo editing tool. I was drawn to Visual Assignment 559: Creep on a Movie Scene, because I love Star Wars remixes. I decided to go in a little different direction and instead of inserting myself into the scene I added my sandwich, my awesome Death Sandwich! (The secret is using a Death Star waffle iron as a panini press)

To make my final image I need to learn how to do three actions with the Pixlr tool. First I wanted to color the sandwich to look more like the Death Star, I used the magic wand tool to select regions of specific colors and then was able to fill a new color of paint into those regions. I also learned how to make new layers of text so I could move it around independently. Finally, and most important I was able to remove the sandwich image from its background, in order to add it into the classic “That’s no moon” scene from Star Wars.