Friday, February 24, 2017

Update for Feb 24th

Spring break is here and I intend to come into the studio at least every other day this week to work on pages all day. Hopefully that will give me the boost of extra time I need to work on my thesis.

In the meantime the most relevant research I did was on the ARG 'Sara is Missing" in which you play a stranger investigating a lost phone that might belong to a kidnap victim, and you have to dig into her virus riddle system, read through all her text messages and look at all her photos for clues.

It really draws the audience into it's creepy and layered story. The gameplay accents the story beats by crafting the scares to what the player would be logically thinking once they are suspend their disbelief. A useful thing to keep in mind

Nightmind did a really good cross examination of the game and it's flaws.




And for a fuller experience, good old markiplier did a solid playthrough.

Other than that I am still trying as hard as I can and trying to schedule my other classes with my thesis meetings. I will keep trying.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Post for February 18th

Things are collapsing in on me but I am going to try my best.
I need to work more on my thesis and last time I wasn't able to find a time to meet with the Thesis consultant and I don't want to miss her this time around.

In other news I have been researching Night Mind (NM)
A youtube channel that focuses on what makes good horror, good suspense and just an all around good story.

(I think I even linked to his twin peaks video in a much earlier post during my initial research.)

His recent video on Resident Evil VI is a great resource for how to lead an audience's anticipation to a scare and how to 'train' the audience to expect things in certain situations.

As I am working on inking the first several pages of my comic, I really need to keep in mind how my 'setup' for the story 'teaches' the audience. You need to warm the viewer up to the world and how the tools of your fiction and really focus on what effect my decisions will lead to further down the line.
It's all about foundation. Strong foundation, maybe it won't topple later.
I hope.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Post for FEB 11th

Well, it is only 8 more weeks until my IP is due and I am going to be doing less and less research and more and more just, working until I physically can't anymore.

The last bit of inspiration comes from a genuine relic from the internet.

MARBLE HORNETS

We all know Slenderman, the internet meme gone awry. Slenderman started as a photoshop contest to make convincing  'haunted; photo, and this one (below) ended up winning, it eventually spiraled into
fan theories, fan art, spin offs, video games and even more spin offs until the creepy "Slenderman" became a meme of the bare bones basic "Spooky urban legends creature," a short hand cliche trope that is no longer considered original
Image result for slenderman


But there was a golden period, right after the photoshop contest but RIGHT before the Slenderman mythos became a pop culture phenomenon.

MARBLE HORNETS


Marble Hornets was a short form web series depicting an old student film found on tapes after the original owner went missing. When his childhood friend re-watched the old tapes, he starts to notice a creature following them in the background, from a distance. A monster known as "The Operator" long before "Slenderman" existed, terrorized the cast and crew of marble hornets. His very presence drove people slowly insane to the point of obsession. The fact that the video series is grainy old footage with the monster hidden in single frames at a time, the audience has to become obsessed themselves, looking at every single image frame by frame to see the horror, just as the characters do. The hidden nature of the operator causes the characters to look for him behind every corner and constantly doubt their eyes, and the abstract low budget quality of the show itself makes the viewer take on the same roll as the characters. This is the exact blend of form and function that I hope to embody in my own work.
I hope.

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Post for Feb 5th

Progress has been made with the storyboards

More than that I have the plot outline ready.

Outline: A nameless hacker and a cyber bully spends his days working as a nurse, and his nights harassing people online. He vents his hateful urges onto other people he doesn’t know as a way to live his normal life without guilt. He doesn’t think of himself as a bad person because he is kind and helpful to the people he meets in real life. He justifies it himself as a hobby, a way to test his skills as a hacker and a just a way to keep himself occupied. He is often paid to hack people's webcams and send the footage to his clients. He often hacks into strangers computers and mess with their files purely as a joke, he often sees it as nothing more than pranks. He frequents sites on the dark web but rarely ever buys anything.
Things change when another hacker tries to shut down his system, he is angered and retaliates by finding out where they live and buying dark-web drugs as them, then tipping the cops to their location. He reads a local news report days later about the other hacker getting arrested.
After this, he begins to feel guilt for the first time, and suppresses it as best he can. Things start to go wrong as his computer suffers some minor viruses and his house starts have electrical issues. He finds evidence of tampering with his wires outside his apartment and calls an electrician who never shows up. His computer refuses to start up, but then acts normal when he tries to leave for work. He calls in sick to spend the day tearing his computer apart to look for the problem. Small inconveniences keep him from finishing, he begins to suspect that someone from the dark-web has found him and has found some way to infect his computer and maybe even damage his electrical systems. He stops going online for a while and work begins to consume his time. Tired and lacking sleep, he decides to check his semi-functional computer only to find that he has apparently been logged on several times in the last week. Not only that but threatening messages appear hidden in the depths of his computer.
In anger he buys a brand new laptop to tries to get to the source of this problem, only finding that the same threatening messages are already on his brand new computer. He tries to call the tech support only to hear a strange voice on the other side of the line.
He smashes the new laptop and goes to the old computer, his face is talking to him, mocking him for all the horrible things he has done to other people and the hacker he sent to jail. In anger he takes a butcher knife and slashes at the computer, smashing it with his bear fists once the knife breaks. He hears someone outside his window and he goes to confront them, he finds someone with their back turned messing with his wires, he grabs the broken blade and tries to kill the stranger, only to find it is the electrician he called so long ago. The police arrive on the scene and drag him away, while he is screaming about how this was some conspiracy to drive him insane.
The last scene is of the salesman at the computer shop sending a letter that is later revived by a man in jail.
The story is suppose to be like a dark web creepy pasta mixed with a twilight zone-esque cautionary tale of self destruction.
I decided to remove any supernatural element to add to the paranoia and the realism.

It is a classic story about a misunderstanding and make the paranoia a real factor in the character's downward spiral.

Not much else to state. I am working hard and trying not to collapse or get sick when my progress is dependant on me working at full capacity each day. oh well