Comic Heads Meeting

Just letting everyone know that there is a ComicHeads meeting in the MCAD comic studio this sunday at 1pm. We'll be hosting an MCAD finals support group complete with emergenC and food.

Come by and get some feedback on your work and hang out with the rest of us.

Technical aspects

I spent part of this week rewiring a wii sensor bar so that it could be powered from a common household outlet.

I started off trying to build my own with the help of this website but I was not able to get ahold of powerful enough infrared led's and my sensor range was only about two feet.

So I found this website instead and that worked very well. I now have a wii sensor bar that I'm going to attach to a pair of googles but I don't have to lug around the entire wii to get it to work with my interactive comic program.

here are a couple of pictures of the final product.

You can see, all of the products except of course the sensor bar itself are parts from radio shack and the total project cost me about $28 dollars. But that's because I bought the variable voltage adapter when all I needed was a 7.5v adapter.

It won't win any beauty contests but it gets the job done and its one step closer to my super interactive comic.

Continuing work on my senior project

I've almost got all the programing worked out and I'm looking forward to the completion of a successful project.

To see a bit of sample code in action click here.

This file is controlled by mouse movement and doesn't have the scaling aspect as I assume most of you have not taken the time to set up a wii remote on your desktop.

When the project is finished I'll upload some videos of the whole thing in action as well as all my code and instructions on how to set it all up for yourself. Trust me. Its easier than it sounds and its a ton of fun. Who wouldn't want to control their computer by waving a little rectangular block around?

Update to Comic Heads

A few days ago I wrote an article for the Comic Heads blog discussing tools and resources for online networking.
You can check it out here.

Progress has been made!
I've been working non stop for the last week, leaving behind sleep and perhaps sanity.
I'll update now with links to all the major drawings for each panel I've put on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ailea_/sets/72157604534409626/

I'm in process of programing the Wii Remote to work with Flash using the tools from http://wiiflash.bytearray.org/ and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/.

Side projects have also begun for after graduation productivity. I've been reviewing an old screen play that Christina Beard and I will be attempting to cooperate on to turn into a short animation film. I've also started making plans to restart Twin Cities Babylon.

Sketches 2

The first step is to get all the drawings done for all the panels. The planning has been the most difficult part. I started off with thumbnails of the four panels as if they were in a normal comic, to get an idea of the story as a whole.

To plan out the entire "panel" takes me a whole page. Some of its really sketchy but the point is to plan out how all the elements work together and start thinking about how things are going to move and overlap, or not.

The plan is to have it readable in as many different ways as possible. Its so hard! I've had to wrack my brain to think about storytelling in such a different way. As you'll see in the thumbnails there are still some blank spots that's I'm still not quite sure what to do with. I'm hoping time and continual work will fix the kinks.

A lot of these drawings are still in the sketchy blue line stage, next week you can expect an update with all the finished drawings.

The Man Who Sits On The Tide is definitely my favorite character to draw. Just check out the cool tattoos!

Sketches 1

Wow.
It has been a crazy couple of weeks, let me tell you.
I've got a schedule now. Between now and December 1st I have all my time scheduled out and all my due dates penciled in. If everything goes according to plan I should have my project ready for exhibition by November 18th and I can start putting up the show December 1st.

The Graduation Exhibition Opening will be December 12th and I would like to invite everyone who can to come join me for some fun! I'm really excited.

Planning, its a good thing.

Today... well I suppose yesterday at this point, was the first day of the 2008 MCBA Fall Con at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Its a good show, lots of creators and a comfortable community. It was great with the exception of the fact that I lacked books to hand out and sell. So no money or contacts for Ali.
Now here I sit, 2am looking down at the pile of beautiful printed comic books.
Only to realize that I have no stapler.
Life is a cruel mistress.