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Above is a graphic I put together for a project started by Fellow Knight Jigar Mehta on the Egyptian protests, #18daysinegypt, so-called because it’s all about encouraging citizen journalists to come forward with their footage of the recent developments in Cairo. The key lies in the footage being geo-tagged to create an explorable archive for viewers to find their own way through the dates and places that led to Mubarak’s resignation. More news and updates below.
I have finally succumbed to the lure of After Effects, Final Cut and Flash for my visual storytelling needs of late. Not that I’ve turned my back on my drawing board (or the more accommodating sketchbook – additions to which are up on flickr). More like I’m finally able to start experimenting with different ways of presenting the visual stories that up until now have been pencilled, inked, scanned and printed (or published online). Turns out After Effects is more intuitive than I thought, though the avalanche of sub-field arrows reminds me of the first time I got plonked in front of Photoshop CS2 at Penguin many moons ago. So I’m finally on track to combining video, audio slideshows and interactive comics from one story into an online rich-media maelstrom. The question is, what is the best way to hack them altogether? Is it Flash, or will that be the online publishing equivalent of Quark in a few year’s time? By now, loyal reader, you’ll have no doubt closely watched the Pulse and Seda videos that I’ve posted (scroll down in the News section below if not), and will be anxiously awaiting the latest offering, which should be wrapped up by Weds. It centres on two Bhutanese refugees who have been resettled in Oakland, and their contrasting experiences at different ends of the age spectrum.
With the help of the indomitable Christopher Lin, I’ve also managed to put out a new version of my interactive comics reader prototype, now featuring a vertical as well as horizontal scroll, and pop-up windows from linked panels. It went down very well at our Knightly outing to Google last week, where I presented it to teams from Google News and Youtube. Fellow fellows Hugo Soskin and Di Pinheiro are putting together a video of the talks (also given by Cafe Babel founder-now OWNI partner Adriano Farano and Investigative Journalist Evelyn Larrubia), so I’ll post a link when it’s up. The excellent comics journalism resource Cartoon Movement have also expressed an interest in an interactive narrative visualization (like a data viz, but with visual stories as opposed to infographics, though I suppose the panels technically constitute information graphics) I’m putting together of the Nisour Square shooting of 2007, so expect that down the pipeline soon. To keep you sated until then, check out this video from a talk I gave to the MA journalism students at Stanford last month on comics journalism, my path into it, process, and all that good stuff.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. It’s been too long. Well, plenty of reasons for that. First and foremost is the fact that I’ve been wading through the list of Knight Fellowship projects instead of blogging about them. Good news is I can share some of the progress – as ever, I’m always interested in what you, dear readers, think about it.
Multimedia has been the main focus this semester, fuelled by my focus on the excellent Multimedia Production class I’m taking at the Comms dept. Our small production team (comprised of 4 Knights) has now 3 films under its belt, the first of which was an interview with another Fellow, Seda Muradyan. Hugo has since posted his solo-produced piece on another fellow Fellow, Jenka Soderberg, but fear not! Our latest oeuvre isn’t fellow-related, it’s with the creators of the Pulse news app – 2 Stanford alums who created a best-selling RSS feed reader for mobile devices that even got a shout out from the grand poobah of all things tech, Steve Jobs. You can view all of our multimedia efforts at the Knight Garage blog here.
Another day, another tier from my graphic novel, Hardhats. This here is a direct quote from H Rap Brown, drawn in stylistic homage to Emory Douglas, the Black Panther artist in residence. Click here to read the previous tier.
