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.