Design I Like: Homestuck

Homestuck is an ongoing webcomic created by Andrew Hussie on April 13, 2009 that makes fantastic use of art, text, and web design.  It features both hand-drawn and photo-manipulated static images, as well as animated gifs, flash animations, and musical elements.  These are accompanied by text reminiscent of text-based adventure games, such as > Enter name. and > Examine room.  This is meant to give the reader the feeling of advancing through a game rather than simply reading a story.  

Dialogue between characters is facilitated through separate text windows designed to appear as instant-message conversations, furthering the game-like aspect.  The comic itself is drawn in a several different styles: a highly iconic sprite-based style for most of the game-like interactions, a more realistically proportioned style for action and key narrative moments, and a loose scribbly style for some moments of humor.  The different art styles reinforce the nature of the events taking place, whether they are serious, humorous, informative, etc. 

The iconic artwork also makes the numerous characters easy to identify and differentiate.  Each character has a unique silhouette and features, as well as both a symbol and color they associate with.  In addition, the characters each have their own distinctive typing quirk and type in their own associated color (examples: ALL CAPS, no caps or punctuation, L33T SP43K, aLtErNaTiNg CaPs, iNVERTED cASE, etc.), which makes determining who is saying what during dialogue exceedingly easy and intuitive. 

Apart from the artwork and text, the comic makes fantastic use of layout design, using the website itself to enhance the narrative.  While the panels and text commands are presented front and center, the dialogue is collapsible and hidden behind a spoiler tag style button.  This differentiates the dialogue from the main text of the comic and adds to the interactivity between the reader and the comic.  Over the course of the comic, several walkaround style flash-based games have been embedded into the narrative, allowing the reader to take direct control of a character and move them around and have them interact with a virtual environment.  These flashes take the video-game motif of the comic to a literal level. 

During a segment of the comic that lasted several months, the website layout was used to an even greater extent with the inclusion of the banner space.  A second set of narrative events was depicted in this space simultaneously with the rest of the comic.  This allowed for three different narratives to take place on a single page of the comic: one in the main comic space, one in the dialog box, and one in the header. Soon after making this change, the author began making use of HTML’s alt attribute to add additional text to the comic which could be viewed by hovering the cursor over the header.  By taking advantage of the flexibility of web design, Homestuck expands its narrative space in new and unique ways for the benefit of the reader.

Stamp Art Assignment

Mr. Horrible Warped Baby Bird Potato Head

Toynbee Tile Copycat

I've passed within a few meters of this particular tile on my way to class every day for the past 3 years.  This is the first time I've ever walked over and read the thing. Since I recognized it as a Toynbee (or a copycat) when I originally spotted it,  I could make an educated guess at what it said anyway, so I never really felt the need to get a closer look.

Cold

This extremely blurry photo was taken during a class trip in my senior year of high school.  That's me on the right, looking like complete stranger who was just passing by and decided to stop and chat, without noticing a picture was being taken.  I'm drawn to this picture because it highlights an aspect of my experience growing up as a teenager.  It depicts visually something I always felt internally during that time, the sense of being apart from everyone else.  Standing on the outside and looking in.  More so than any other picture taken of me, this one shows something of myself and my past in it.                                                                  

Designation: Mind Bubble Permutation Thing 01

Artist Statement

Games are what fuel me.  Not just playing games though, that isn’t even close to being enough.  What I need is to get inside of games, to see how their gears fit together, what makes them tick.   I need to feel out the imperfections, find what’s broken and understand why.  But it’s not enough.  I must look for innovation, new ways in which games can be used as both forms of expression and tools to effect change in the world.  I need to find ways to incorporate and combine varied disciplines such as mathematics, science, philosophy, and art, in order to better solve problems on both the local and global levels.  Games can be entertaining, but they can also be so much more.  They can provide simulations to prepare soldiers for the stresses they will encounter on the battlefield.  They can be used to solve the native structures of proteins in viruses to aid in medical research for curing diseases such as AIDS.  They can provide a comforting distraction from potentially traumatizing experiences during treatment to children in hospitals.  They can inform and educate about all kinds of subjects, from how the oil industry and multinational corporations run themselves to the daily lives of villagers in war-torn countries.  I envision games as a powerful tool for entertainment, enlightenment, and enrichment.  By integrating my insatiable thirst for intellectual fulfillment with a deep and profound passion for social justice, I hope to create games that serve as critical platform for changing the world.