Video-game characters in a comic strip were not unheard of, but the remarkable thing about Anez’s comic was that rather than using drawings of the characters, he used the actual video-game character art — “sprites” in programming jargon — along with some simple backgrounds and word balloons. The effect re-created the feel of the game with a minimum of artistic effort. —Lore Sjöberg
—You, Too, Can Be a Comics Whiz (Wired)
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Sorry for the lack of clarity! My daughter lost interest in “Cinderella” just as I was starting to type that, and I guess my thought was too ill formed!
Ah-ha! Now that makes more sense. For a second, I thought you were taking a shot at me, which would seem strange from a mentor.
Right… my point is that I chose IF as a subject area because I already had the literary skills (and because, out of all the things I was already doing, it was one thing that my English colleagues at UWEC seems best able to understand). I had no idea at the time that the field of game studies would develop into a robust separate field… the same will probably happen with other forms of new media. The cross-disciplinary possibilities are exciting, aren’t they?
Now hold on! We both know that my skills are not lacking. I realize that my contribution to IF or video game studies will not be as significant as my work in comics, which is a field that I find myself on the cutting edge of from an early age, and I should not pass that up.
Despite that, some of the best academic advice I received is when you told me to find a narrow field and become an expert in it.
It’s true that the skills one needs to study IF overlap significantly with the skills one needs to study literature…
Dennis,
While I wait for the video game companies to shut down these online comics on copyright, these are hilarious to read!
Web comics remains a topic that is up in the air within academic circles. Scott McCloud suggests in his book, Reinventing Comics, that online is the way to go for the comics industry’s future.
Meanwhile, some people believe that the video game industry is a direct rival to traditional comic books because they hold more appeal with kids and teenagers. Everyone seems to have a theory about what the “magic bullet” to regain young audiences’ readership is, but I doubt video games will conquer comics.
Although I have an academic interest in both comics and video games, I find it difficult to successfully study games, perhaps because it differs from IF games that we looked at in your classes at UW-Eau Claire.