Contextual – Portrayal of Gender in a Piece of Media

The piece of media I have chosen to discuss is Worm, a web serial by J.C.McCrae.

Worm was designed as a deconstruction of superhero tropes, and attempts to scientifically back those tropes within the context of its world. It ran from 2011 to 2013, with chapter updates twice a week, and totalled out at 1.6 million words at its end.

One of the tropes Worm aims to deconstruct is the idea of an origin story. This is expressed through the concept of trigger events, traumatic events in a person’s life which make them susceptible to the force that creates superpowers in the story. This in particular is pertinent to the subject of this piece, because the story at several points takes a note of the statistics of trigger events. McCrae suggests that, the world over, women would be more likely to experience a trigger event, as they experience a statistically higher amount of trauma in less socially developed parts of the world.

As a result of this the story features a significantly higher number of female characters who are central to the plot than most, including its main protagonist.

At the very beginning, Worm reads as not much more than a largely inoffensive high school drama story, mixed in with maybe the possibility of a power fantasy plot. But as McCrae finds his footing with the writing, the story accelerates away from this setting, even making a concentrated effort to distance itself from it, and our protagonist becomes more interesting and perhaps less sympathetic.

Taylor Hebert is a bullied teenager who one day finds herself with the ability to control bugs. There are so many ways this can be done wrong. But by moving away from the high school setting the character is given a much better chance to shine on her own merits and be unique and separate from perhaps any character in all of fiction.

When we open the story Taylor is just as optimistic and naive as perhaps any protagonist in a world as big as this one, aspiring to join the heroes and put away criminals, but she decides at some point that the red tape surrounding the heroes is impossible to work with and so she jumps into bed with the villains instead. What we see next is the actions of a brutal pragmatist described through the eyes of that same naive optimist. The early story has tricked us into believing that Taylor Hebert is better than all the other villains because we still haven’t made the connection between the sympathetic character and the one who kills and maims to maintain territory and serve the greater good.

I think you could argue that this portrayal and this character dissonance has everything to do with gender. It’s designed to trick people enamoured with the ‘geek girl’ stereotype, and who perhaps fall in love with a character without knowing anything of the underlying personality. Which isn’t to say that Taylor Hebert is a strictly unlikable character. Her intentions throughout the whole story remain pure, even if her actions grow increasingly brutal and barbaric. Through the whole story she thrives on escalation and conflict, leading all the way up to a climax where her pragmatism and sacrifice makes her responsible for a nightmare of Lovecraftian proportions.

They could have made Taylor Hebert a good person, and they could have made her a bad person. Either would have been trying too hard. The Taylor Hebert we end up with is just a person. Like anyone else.

Contextual – Presentation

Visual Communication – Book Cover

I’d say I’m pleased with how this came out. Some parts are slightly off centre, but I’m happy with the final product.

The eye itself was made with the pen tool, and the iris and pupil with ellipses. The ray of light was made by filling in part of a separate layer with the lasso. The font used for the author is Bodoni 72 Smallcaps, and the title was added as an image from my original ink test sheet and cut down to fit.

I played briefly with the idea of cutting out the paper around the title letters, but decided it would be too difficult to do effectively. Besides which I quite like the effect the paper gave. I wanted to preserve the scratchy brushing along the lettering somehow, and this seemed like the simplest way to do it.

Digital Animation – Signature Move

This is the sprite I’m using, made in a photoshop document of 64×64 pixels using the pencil tool. The animation is going to show the gun firing along with a short walk cycle.

The gun cocks back.

The muzzle starts to flare.

The muzzle flashes, and the spent shell is expelled from the chamber.

The bullet fires with a line of smoke.

Recoil blows the arm back, and the shell falls.

And falls.

And falls.

And falls.

And falls.

And falls.

And hits the ground.

One frame of rest.

First step forward – the legs cross over.

One frame of rest with the front and back legs inverted.

And another step forward to bring it back to the starting position.

The timeline.

 

All in all I’d say I’m happy with how this came out. The firing animation came out exceptionally well, though I would say that the walk cycle feels off. It’s something I’d like to come back to when I have a stronger grasp of anatomy in animation.

Graphic Design – Logo

The original name – Vertice – didn’t survive into further development, but it did give me the seven pointed star design that I would continue using in further iterations.

This was my first prototype, where I was just figuring out how I could draw the star and what style I wanted. I ended up with a sort of uneven mosaic, which I decided to go with through all further iterations. The greyed out area was initially a test of the sponge tool, but it led to something which I would eventually incorporate into my final design.

I tried two more designs – one in monochrome and one in black – this time using more shapes to add some depth to the star. I would have continued forward with iterations in this vein, but I discovered that I would have to limit my use of shading in the final vector, so I dropped it.

This is the prototype for what would become my final design. I thought that the greyed out area of the original prototype would look like a comet if I angled it downwards, bringing more to the cosmic motif of the star. I played with the idea of making a company name (specifically ending with an ‘X’) to emblazon along the trail of the comet. Ultimately, I decided it would take up more time than I had, and I dropped it. Though if I had the chance to go back to this design, I would add something in.

This is the first iteration of the final design. I made all the shapes aside from the comet and the trail transparent with a white outline.

I thickened the outline around the shapes to make them bolder and more present compared to the comet.

Visual Communication – Art Mediums

Pastels

This probably is my least favourite of the possible choices. As a style I don’t think the bright colours lend themselves hugely well to the spy genre, and mixing the colours just makes them look murky and greasy.

Graphites

Graphites do hold one advantage over pencils in that their thickness allows for 3D style lettering, which is demonstrated in a few places here. Otherwise they are just essentially thicker pencils so far as I can tell.

Ink

I found ink by far the most interesting of the methods used, particularly when a brush was added to the mix, allowing for a scratchy smudged texture which I think I definitely could do something with.

Time Management Plan

Charity T-shirt

Week 1 – Launch of brief/research

Week 2 – Initial ideas

Week 3 – Development of ideas

Week 4  – Testing and experimentation

Week 5 – Production

Week 6 – Final production/evaluation

Book Cover

Week 1 – Launch of brief/research – Book cover examples analysed

Week 2 – Initial ideas – Mixed media experimentation – ink/graphite/collage

Week 3 – Development of ideas – Mixed media experimentation – stitching

Week 4  – Testing and experimentation – 10x ideas

Week 5 – Production – Development

Week 6 – Final production/evaluation – Photoshop

Visual Communication – Brief Analysis

Book cover

-Spy/thriller novel

-5000 print run

-£7.50 each

-Full colour

-UK bookshops

-Online – Amazon

-Audience 18+

-Male/female

-Size A5 (portrait)

-Pete Jones

Graphic Design – Brief Analysis

Charity T-shirt

-Loose, representative, aimed towards young people

-Subject = Male cancer

-Awareness campaign

-Product = T-shirt

-Less than 3 colours

-Print run approx. 200

-Deadline December 10th (week of)

Digital Animation – Using Adobe Animate

In learning to use Adobe Animate, we used these five basic sprites:

Sprites in Adobe Animate first and foremost have to be saved as PNGs, as that’s the only file format that preserves a transparent background. A JPG, for instance, would port sprites onto Animate with a white rectangle around them, because JPGs interpret transparency as white.

The background sprite was designed specifically with the dimensions of a PSP screen. If you were making a PC game, where monitors can be any number of sizes, you’d have to be able to scale the background to several different resolutions.

The walk sprites are in four different positions, of walking forward, crossing the legs over, walking forward again, and crossing the legs over again, simulating and representing movement in the fewest possible amount of frames.

The sprites are turned into walk cycles by turning them into a symbol. Once you have all four sprites in a symbol, the walking animation will be automatic rather than something you have to specifically place every keyframe. It also drastically reduces the file size.

Once you have your symbol, create two layers; the background on the bottom layer and the symbol on the top. In the timeline for the top layer, create a keyframe, lasting several seconds. Then create another keyframe and, within it, move your symbol to the other side of the screen. Then, within the two keyframes, create a classic tween, which will move the sprite from the starting point of the first keyframe across to the finishing point of the second, as it goes through its walk cycle.