Collaborative Project Deatils

I’ve decided to take Sean’s last lecture as a starting point to outlining this project. Give myself a chance to get it out of my head and also give Chris and I a detailed framework. This also went on to form the bulk of my learning agreement signed off last week. In further posts I will give more detailed examples of the work I have referenced and the techniques I’m looking to employ.

Context
Where does the work go?
The work, although based on comic books and garaphic novels, will exist digitally and primarily online. Many people now read this type of media online for simple reasons, not only does it gives it’s audience immediate access, it does this in their own home and does this cheaply. The audience does not want to wait months for publishing, printing and translation along with the extra costs these things incur when it could be available online at the click of a button. Thats not to say it should be free or to encourage piracy but I believe it makes the case for this to live and be released online. It would also be a possibility to incorporate email technology and have the animated graphic novel installments delivered to people who sign up for it.

What does it do?
Ultimately, the ideals of this project would be to release a serialised graphic novel that would continue to be be released and develop over time. However for the course of this ten week project we will aim to complete one or two sections and develop a method approach to creating the vision we have.
As this is digital it means that this  media of an animated graphics novel can be transferred to other formats such as DVD extra’s or in small pieces for advertising. I have seen it used for pre-stories in the promotion of films, or as a side story to a film for inclusion on dvd. It’s a technique that has also been used to animate short stories, or for a trailer to promote books.

Are there similar projects/work being disseminated?
There are a number of works that i have looked at online that also try to bridge the gap between comic and animation, some more successful than others. There are simple attempts, such as the Watchmen adaptation, where the images are lifted from the the original novel and poorly animated. This I feel is a waste of the technology at your disposal and doesn’t enhance the experience of the user in slightest. A better attempt is made with 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, with which the first chapter has been converted to animation. It vastly ups the production values, adding visual effects, sound fx and voice acting to bridge the gap between the mediums successfully. The promotional shorts for I Am Legend are more visual, often very painterly, and only have small pieces of animation where necessary. The bleak visuals, accompanied by emotive music work well and achieve something less comic book and filmic.
As this is a fairly new way of providing graphic entertainment it is difficult to see how people consume this, but the idea of internet based comic books is far more established. There are sites, such as onemanga.com, which have posted thousands of japanese manga works and continue to as each new edition comes out. All this is translated by fans for fans that don’t want to wait a year for publishing companies to get round to it. It is obviously illegal but what it shows is the massive demand for the work. There is a number of standard, non-animated comics being published in a serialised form online. One good example of this is bfxproject2.com which is a pencil drawn comic, digitally converted and presented online using flash. The creators set themselves an oath and rules to continue in weekly installments which would create loyal readership if the quality of the comic is high.

Audience
At it’s most basic level the work is for people who consume their entertainment in an online environment. Within this it will be aimed and western and eastern fans of graphic novels, comics and manga’s. This is primarily a young to middle age audience which would also be a group with high internet knowledge. With the increase of film and TV availability online greatly increasing with software like itunes, people watch things when they want to. By providing this online as something you can come and go back to we appeal to our audience with the flexibility they desire.
By animating the artwork, adding sound fx and fleshing out the images we will create something that appeals to the audiences of both animation and graphic novels.
Their role will be as observers, watching the story unfold with atmosphere rather than turning pages and maybe feeling distant. On the other hand i hope it has a more considered approach than some throw-away animation. Only the important elements will be emphasised, to provide focus to the piece.
I hope an audience completely new to this will experience a sense of having watched something new, something different. However for fans of graphic novels, comics and animation I’d like it to be a new twist on something familiar.

Partnership Roles
For this unit I will be collaborating with Christopher Rich to create an animated graphic novel. This will be based on an original script written by me and illustrated by Chris.
The production process and roles will be as follows; I will write a section of script, dicuss this with Chris before he proceeds to create the Illustrations. During this time I will be working on the next section of script. Once Chris is done we will discuss, make any changes then I will take on the the illustrations and animate them with motion graphics whilst he creates the drawings for the next section.
Chris will work with traditional hand drawn and digital methods to create the illustrations. I will then take the digital layers of the image and work in Adobe After Effects to animate them. Once we are satisfied with all the elements we will both work to bring together to edit and finish piece and post it in an online environment.
Will be communicating on the piece in a number of different ways. First will be physically meeting and working together when we can, as this is the clearest way to express our work. Also via phone, call and text, as this allows to be in contact at any given time. Our blogs will also be used to show each other work, reference material and opinions.

Outcomes
The creation of this piece is to facilitate many things to both of us. By working together we can create a piece of animated graphic novel that individually may not have been possible.  It is an area of study we are both immensely interested in; personally as possible creator and as art form to be appreciated. So by the end, the hope is to have a piece of work that the creation of which has furthered our abilities in the field and is something our audience would be happy to go online and watch unfold. More personally motivated reasons are that  Chris has wanted to work with someone with a story to write and i have been wanting to work with someone to illustrate my ideas. By doing this we can discover if such a way of working is advantageous to us and produces work neither of us could have done without the other. It is also an opportunity to further our individual skills in the areas we want to go on to make a career in.
In terms of evaluating the outcomes, it will be extremely helpful to have each other to step back and assess. They will understand the project closely but be able to be possibly more subjective in evaluating the other persons work. This should help at various stages along the way when we meet to discuss progress, rather than just evaluation at the end.
Because we will both be spending a lot of time on all areas of the production and final delivery, the project will be jointly owned. We will both be able to use it to promote ourselves and our abilities.

Assessment requirements
We plan to create an animation that can viewed online and will be presented in such a way. It will aim to show up to the stage of the script we got to, that is of high enough quality and finished enough to be presented. Ongoing and part finished work will be referred to if the project is to continue in any way, shape or form.
All development work will collected in our joint blog. Another personal blog will detail and evidence our own individual contributions to the piece.