Week 6 Digital Storytelling: Podcasts

Artism Speaks:  I only discovered this podcast last Spring, and it had just started a few weeks prior to then.  It's tough to find words for it, as there's no real theme to it.  It's just a bunch of people in an online community (mostly within Youtube's art and gaming sphere) talking to each other.  It's hosted by Sparky, and co-hosted by literally anyone else.  The roster of who is on changes each episode, with a few people coming back every once in a while, such as Raycevick, who makes video essays on video games, or ShammyTV, who makes extremely sarcastic game reviews.

Back Issues:  While it does have a video element to it, 99% of the time the video is just 3 people on a couch.  I mainly just listen to it, my eyes focused elsewhere.  In this podcast series, Sal summarizes and discusses comic book stories with his two friends, Ben and Ethan who know little to nothing about comics.  The stories they discuss are both old, new, good, and downright awful.  Occasionally one or two members on the couch will be swapped out (Sal's parents have replaced Ben and Ethan before).  It's a series I've listened to since freshman year, and haven't dropped from it since.

Weekly Planet:  James (Mr. SundayMovies) and Nick (Masso) discuss weekly news in the pop culture industry, mostly relating to comicbooks, films, or TV shows.  Their two personalities never cease to get a laugh out of the listener, with great commentary and longstanding, definitely-should-have-died-many-weeks-ago-but-still-hasn't-so-they-keep-doing-it jokes.  A prime example of this is Masso's character of "Man who doesn't know what Star Wars is because he's been living under a rock for the past few years, and every time he is told about what Star Wars is he immediately forgets about it."

What carries all of these for me is the personalities of each person.  They never cease to entertain.  I don't notice editing too much outside of an intro theme that's barely 10 seconds long.

Week 5 Mars: The Martian Chronicles

I know at the time this was written, every piece of science-fiction had some pretty ridiculous elements to them.  50-ft Spider attacks, robots that do nothing but shoot lasers, and Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles had bee guns.  BEE GUNS.

It was certainly interesting to see the same "telepathic martian" trope, but its played off very differently here.  The humans in the story are assumed to be just a couple of martian pranksters using their abilities to appear to be human.  Instead they get thrown into an asylum.

Its also interesting to see how human colonization ruins everything it comes into contact with, just by a simple disease.  It makes me curious if we try and colonize some other world without sentient life on it, would we be killed by the brand new yet simple diseases there, or would we completely ruin the ecosystem by introducing simple Earth-born pathogens?

Photo Essay Response

At the start, I had zero clue as to what my subject or story would be for this essay.  After seeing the examples used in class, I took a heavy inspiration from "Books from my mother."  Instead of looking at books or movies or any other collection of a medium that was shared to me, I instead looked to comic book panels and how even a single image could capture the tone of the story it was in.  This idea quickly evolved upon learning that it needs to have a real story behind it, so summarizing each book based off of one image wasn't going to work.

My idea became more focused on myself.  What do I want to say?  What do I have to say?  This can't be a review, so what will I say?  After some time thinking on these things among others, I found what my subject would be: the evolution of my taste in comic books, and how my critical eye towards them has developed over the course of a decade (gosh, its been that long?).

My initial list, as you can see in a separate blog post, is pretty different from the one I ended on.  Some of my selections didn't quite make the cut, as I either had nothing to say about the book or if I felt like I would be repeating myself.  Other changes, like Bone, were added because I had forgotten about them, yet upon remembering I saw just how much it impacted my tastes.

I started out with that initial list finding images of the panels and pages I was looking for online.  Some, like the one for Low, were extremely low-res to the point you couldn't make out what people were saying.  Then another constraint came in: all pictures must be your own, and they should all have a consistent aspect ratio.

This constraint had me worried.  While I could easily take pictures of the pages and panels I wanted to mention, most of the issues they are found in are at home, a 4 hour drive away.  There were a few that I have digitally, but I doubt a screenshot would be any better than a Google image search.  Last Tuesday, a stroke of luck hit me regarding these issues (pun intended).

My parents would be coming to visit my sister while they all went up to the Penn State football game.  I asked those loving people if they wouldn't mind bringing up my comic book boxes, and they said yes.  I met them over the weekend, got my boxes and a lunch, and came back to my dorm and took the pictures I needed.  Out of the ten comic books in my Photo Essay, nine of them have an image I took myself.  The only one I couldn't get a picture of was for Bone, as I had no idea where those books went.

The hurdle I was not able to jump was one that's pretty hardwired into me, and that is making these pictures look good.  My aforementioned sister, Bethany, managed to snatch up all the natural photography skill in our family's genetic code, I was left with an eye for a good story, one that I still had to train.  While the photos themselves aren't too pretty, the art within them is incredible.

Overall, I'm proud of the words I wrote for this Photo Essay, but I know the photos could all use improvements, I just don't know what those improvements would be.  They're pictures of pages, how creative can a guy with zero photography experience get with that?  Hopefully, the stories found within this essay reach more people, because all of them deserve to be experienced (aside from Reborn, you can live with skipping that book).

Week 4 Mars: A Martian Odyssey

I have no idea why I find it so hard to read anything from before 1950.  Luckily this was a much easier read than others.  While the main Martian in the story, Tweel, has some humanoid features, the description giving him an 18 inch beak immediately made me think of Kevin from Pixar's film UP.

The story became much more interesting when this was the image that was constantly in my head while reading it.

I did get a laugh out of a few lines of dialogue early on briefly covering how exactly not just these men, but humanity managed to reach Mars.  It's said they used atomic fuel, and that the man who discovered it should rest in peace, implying that he died during his "Eureka!" moment.

The main character and Tweel come across many different species that live on Mars, and I'm always baffled at just how many intelligent, or semi-intelligent species a writer can say are native to one world.  It makes me wonder how different Earth could be if we weren't the only ones to learn how to utilize our thumbs.  Would we still be the dominant species?  If not, who else?  Probably bears.  No, definitely bears.

It is cool to see hard science making its way into fiction, but my only gripe is that its not easy to organically place it in a story or dialogue.  People still struggle with this today.  My main issue with the film Interstellar is that it spent too much time on its science and not enough on its characters and story.

Week 4 Digital Storytelling: Photo Considerations

I've already stated that my basic idea for this was to use panels or pages that in my eyes perfectly summarize what the story is about, display its themes, and so on.  In no particular order, here is:

Saga: Volume 6


Moon Knight: The Bottom

Dark Night: A True Batman Story

Low: Before the Dawn Burns Us

Batman: Zero Year


Batman: Ego


God Country


Batman: The Dark Knight Returns


Batman: The Court of Owls


Marvel: Civil War

Week 3 Digital Storytelling: Photo Essay Idea

I don't have any interesting stories of my own to tell.  Most of what I do is find other stories to experience for my entertainment, and most of those are found in comic books.  The only "story" I really could tell is that of how my taste in comic books has evolved since I first started reading them way back in 2004, maybe a walk through of my personal history with the medium from its origins to the present day.

The challenge is going to be the photos.  Originally I had the idea of finding one panel from some of my favorite stories that perfectly coveys the tone and themes of the comic book they are from, but the work must be my own, so screenshots will not get the job done.  That means if I hope to do something similar, the picture must be of the book itself (similar to "Books From My Mother") or the panel I am discussing.  The real catch is: most of my comics are at home, a 4 hour drive away.  I've still got plenty of graphic novels to satisfy most of this, and I do have digital copies of some series, but a huge chunk is at home.  I was planning on bringing them up after Thanksgiving.  Hindsight is 20/20 I guess... (Below is all I have to work with, minus the digital books)

Week 3 Mars: The "Bad Guy" Aliens

One example of how to do aliens correctly from the start is the Mass Effect trilogy.  A lot of the races look like they could be painted as a "Bad Guy" race just from their intimidating appearances, yet we get to see both peaceful and aggressive examples of them.  Sure, you fight a lot of Krogan, but you also fight alongside them as well.  You get to see why they are a more aggressive race than others normally are.

In a work of science fiction, I always love seeing how different alien cultures and races interact with each other.  Sometimes a work will come along that isn't taken as seriously and the aliens are simply painted as the "bad guys," which is completely okay with me when it comes to a simplistic piece (Mars Attacks! or Starship Troopers, come to mind).  When a work does take itself seriously, I expect characters to be the antagonists in a story, not their entire race.

There are plenty of examples of this "Bad Guy" alien trope in many famous works of science fiction.  In Borough's A Princess of Mars, its is very clear that specific Martian species are painted as evil, not individuals.  This could be attributed to any sort of xenophobia that was around at the time this work was written, or even held by the writer himself.  One of the only "Good Guy" Martian races just happen to be the ones that look exactly like humans on the outside.

Another more recent example is the first installment of the Halo franchise, Halo: Combat Evolved.  There's next to no explanation as to why you should be attacking all the Covenant you come across outside of "Kill it, it's different!"  Thankfully in Halo 2, the narrative provides an incredible amount of detail into the culture of the Covenant, and giving us the story of the Arbiter who the player can sympathize with.


Just about every Batarian you come across has a resentment towards you, but its not because "You're the good guy and they're the bad guy."  It's because you're human, and the galactic council allowed Humanity to establish colonies on worlds that previously belonged to Batarians.

This trope is fine to use in a work that doesn't take itself too seriously, but when a deeper story is to be told, some gray areas in alien races should be shown.  It helps build the world the creator is trying to get across, makes it just that much more believable.

Week 2 Mars: Martians in Pulp Fiction

Its kinda insane how obsessed people got with the idea of Martians when the "canals" were "discovered."  A pretty common theme I noticed was the idea of Martians with different skin tones.  Rather than various shades of black and white as we have on Earth, Martians practically covered all colors you'd find in a bag of Skittles.  Interestingly enough, this idea is still used in reference to Martians today with DC Comics.  In their version of Mars, there are two types of Martians: Green skinned as seen with J'on Jones (a.k.a. Martian Manhunter), and White skinned, as seen with J'on's niece, M'gann M'orzz (a.k.a. Miss Martian).  The White skinned martians were seen as more violent most of the time, and normally looked more monstrous, though all Martians had the ability to shape-shift, along with a slew of other powers.  There is a really interesting Justice League story where a number of White Martians try and replace the JL, which I will point you to a fun summary here.

Week 2 Digital Storytelling: You are about to enter...

It's bright where I am.  White covers the ground, wind has caused it to begin to climb up tree trunks.  The sky itself is dull, covered with the clouds that brought the snow down here.  Not a sound is heard.  The wind -while present- is not strong enough to be heard.  It is cold, yet comfortable.  And me?  I am just sitting on a rock, enjoying the silence.  No thoughts go through my head, as I have nothing to worry about or ponder on.  I only have an emotion: tranquility.  Where this snow-covered forest is doesn't matter at all.  The only thing that does matter is what it is, and that is what makes it my place.