Social Media Note

We recently had a lecture within which, we were encouraged to be following at least 100 accounts on Twitter. After this, we checked our follower count to find it far below this. Since then, Katy and I have been through and followed a lot of new accounts to bring us up to 108, which is a lot healthier!

Social Media Posts - 26/2

Today a posted a response to the interactions I got with my post two weeks back. It was very important for me to keep my audience's focus, and I felt a good way to do this was making them feel that they had input in the product I'm creating. So, I posted art of the memes they had requested in my posts two weeks back!

Lettering Lesson

Lettering is absolutely crucial to the flow of a comic or speech-based book. We've had numerous lectures on this in the past to ensure that our books read well and look professional.

Here are some of the tasks done today to work on lettering...

Firstly, we were given a basic prompt and told to illustrate and letter short strips on that prompt in word, picture and duo specific ways. This was tricky, particularly the word specific method, but I feel it really opened my eyes to new ways of showing narrative.

We were then given a short script and told to plot it out in speech bubbles. Here are some examples of my quick work from that...

Social Media Posts - 19/2

I found this week that we'd never explained our individual colour usage in the logo, so felt I could do this on my day this week. I noticed in retrospect that I was missing hashtags in these posts. I edited the Instagram post to add some, but tweets cannot be edited once posted. I debated deleting and reposting, but as it was already being interacted with I decided against it.

Presentation to Lecturer and Kevin Gunstone

Today we presented our ideas to a lecturer who has sold at MCM, and comic writer, Kevin Gunstone. Above is the presentation that I produced for myself and my group (other members' sections were added after). There are details in the first four slides of the origins of the group ideas.

I tried really hard to find a balance between too much writing on the slides and not enough, as I wanted my part of the presentation to look as professional and engaging as possible (as it is a skill I'll need to utilise in my potential future career of teaching). I also kept this in mind in how I presented verbally. I tried to ensure that I was making the idea seem as interesting as possible, and that I communicated all important points.

Although he had very little to say about my personal work, Gunstone was extremely critical and borderline rude to other members of the group. This really demonstrates that, while some constructive criticism can be really useful (as our lecturer, Beci's, was), it's sometimes okay to overlook some criticism that's not overly useful to you or upsets you.

Social Media Posts - 12/2

Something I personally think is a really important part of Social Media usage is getting your audience involved in your posts. This has always been important, as your account will be more memorable to those who interact with it, but it's become pretty much crucial now. This is because of the new algorithms used by some sites/apps to choose what their users see. Your account's posts are more likely to be put at the top of followers/like-rs home pages if more people have interacted with them.

Because of this, I decided to create a post that stimulated conversation in the comments sections. I then retweeted the tweet, and shared the Instagram post in the stories of my personal Instagram accounts to potentially reach around 1,500 more viewers and get them involved too!

Screen Printing

Today we screen printed some bags with our group logo on. This not only gave us experience of a new technique, but also got us some cool merchandise! Katy, Meg and I spent a long time cutting out the stencil for the printing, and that kind of puts me off doing more. I would be interested in doing it with the proper photosensitive stencil.

Panel Perspective Task

As well as location perspective, we also looked into the perspective of panels where people are interacting. This can completely alter the tone of the panel and connote an entirely different relationship between characters. Here are some examples of a task where I was provided with 'boring' panels and asked to shake up the perspective...

    

Perspective Task

Perspective is important when doing any type of art. It can help your reader/viewer feeling far more invested in the work, and just looks more satisfying and professional.

This is a task I worked on to give me more experience with perspective, as a lot of my work is quite two-dimensional, due to my very design-based style...

Cover Design Lesson

Today we had a lecture on book cover design, as this is obviously an integral part of selling a book - people do judge books by their covers. We were given a book title and a brief description and told to create a book cover for it.

Above are our initial ideas. I suggested the 'evolution of man' poses with a kid at the front and people from history behind (to look like they were chasing him). Katy then took that and our ideas about iconic historical figures and made the cover below!

Social Media Posts - 5/2

My social media post today introduced Milton as a character to our followers. I thought this was important, as I want our followers to get to know him and get used to seeing him. I added a little bio here to make him more relatable!

Useful Links

Throughout my project, I'm going to have to use a lot of research to educate my choices. Because of this, I felt it was important to create a post where a could keep a list of useful links to refer back to throughout the production of my book.

"Millennial Shopping Trends" - blog.marketing.rakuten.com/affiliate/9-must-know-millennial-shopping-trends-of-2017
"Millennial Infographic" - goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/millennials
"Making Millennials Spend More" - https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/consumer-business/deloitte-uk-young-luxury-shopper-2017.pdf
"Millennials on Millennials" - http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2017/millennials-on-millennials-a-look-at-viewing-behavior-distraction-social-media-stars.html

"3 Mistakes Made at Conventions" - http://chrisoatley.com/sabotage-sale-artists-alley/
"Must Read for Comic Con Sellers" - https://io9.gizmodo.com/if-you-plan-on-selling-anything-at-a-comic-convention-1681191946
"Spending at Fandom Events" - https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/spending-at-fandom-events-ds00/
"Convention Survey Stats" - http://comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/convention-survey-zine-2014.pdf
"An Artist's Guide to Comic Con" - http://www.benkrefta.com/blog/artists-guide-to-exhibiting-at-comic-conventions/

BuzzFeed Student Life Hacks - https://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/important-life-hacks-every-college-student-should-know?utm_term=.tmmABwqxLm#.mvnw5REYq9
Student Hut Life Hacks - https://www.studenthut.com/articles/20-amazing-student-life-hacks
Cosmo Student Life Hacks - https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/worklife/campus/g3712/best-life-hacks-student/
Study Life Hacks - https://youtu.be/0BsPtX1kzI4

Copyright Laws for Memes -
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/copyrighted-memes-prove-you-cant-laugh-away-thelaw-2pjn39993
https://www.copytrack.com/meme-copyright/
https://thelawtog.com/memes-violate-copyright-law/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/08/how-copyright-is-killing-your-favorite-memes/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.fe33c9e7f6c7
https://www.quora.com/Are-internet-memes-subject-to-copyright-and-trademark-laws-For-instance-if-a-company-wanted-to-release-a-line-of-Bed-Intruder-or-Dramatic-Chipmunk-toys-would-it-be-legal-without-attaining-consent-from-the-memes-themselves
https://www.emedialaw.com/do-you-even-meme-bro-the-law-of-internet-memes/
https://www.quora.com/If-you-copy-a-drawing-or-picture-off-the-internet-by-redrawing-drawing-it-out-is-it-considered-as-a-copyright-infringement
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-parody-and-a-satire

Linktr.ee

As a cosplayer, I'm very used to using Linktree to connect all of my social media together. I thought this would be a really clever idea for tying all of our social media platforms to each other tidily. I felt it was an especially good idea, as we've had a brilliant response to our Instagram posts, but less so with Twitter an Facebook. But due to the fact you can only link on Instagram by using one URL in your profile, it felt like we'd have to choose. By using Linktree, we could link all of our accounts, as well as each member's personal, to every account!

Note: We had a tutorial with Gareth about websites alongside social media, to tie all of our personal and group accounts together. As I'd done quite a lot of work for the social media accounts, I left this up to the rest of the group. They decided that the Linktree would suffice, as it covers the same basis.

These images show how our Linktree looks on both mobile and desktop.