MAKING OF THE COMIC ZINE

Many greater or smaller publications have “making-of –material”. You know, stuff where the developers of a movie, a CD or a video game tell about their views about how things are done and what kind of feelings they have had during the production. Unfortunately, we aren’t filming a document about our work during this comic production because that would need much more time and effort than we have at hand. Anyway, I decided to write about the making of the zine in this blog post so that you could get some kind of a picture of how we carry out this comic project.

When you create a publication, you need people as well as tools to implement it. Therefore once a week we have had meetings where we have discussed, for instance, what the comic should  be all about, how to create  the content, where do we get the money for the project, how to  promote the project and so on. There are about 10 people on this course and we have formed groups, and each group has its own field of responsibility in the project. We have a production team, a technical team and a PR-team.

This project utilizes different hardware and software as well. Computers and smart phones play an important role since they have the applications needed in the communication between our groups, in sharing material and in creating the comics.  We use, for example, Facebook and WhatsApp for our inner communication and Instagram  (go check it out!), as well as this blog to promote our publication to the audiences. Photoshop, in turn, works well in the editing of the comic material. We share our schedules, plans and flyer scripts, for instance, in Google Drive. So, much can be done at home, but we also use the computers at the university
campus. It is, therefore, possible to draw and write both at home and at the university.

I wonder what it would have been like to create this kind of comic zine 20 years ago. Back then you couldn’t ask in WhatsApp who would distribute the fresh flyers around the town, nor give feedback on each other's drawing material. Digitalization has made everything so much faster. Of course, we have some traditional project working methods, too, like some draw parts of their comics with a pencil. And, like I said at the beginning, we have these meetings at our university campus where we go through what's next. Traditional speaking is a great way to give feedback, to ask for help or to give suggestions. There is also much humor in our discussions, which strengthens the atmosphere.

Part of our team members working intensively.

So far everything has gone pretty well. We finished the project on the flyers which were visible at the Nippori-event. Now we are busy designing our comics. There’s also going to be a poster in the future. The comic zine will be released at the end of November. Stay tuned!

-Jere Kesti-Helia, PR-team

We'll see you at Nippori!

Hey guys!

We've been really busy doing our comics! We're all excited to have this kind of opportunity to be able to tell people who are unfamiliar with the study of gaming and gaming culture, even though it is done in a somewhat unconventional way.

I'm happy to tell you that we are going to be at Nippori, which is a manga-themed event at Pori. The event has been organised since 2010 with cosplay competitions, workshops, and much more.

You can find more info about Nippori on their blog or Facebook.

So if you are going to attend or you happen to be in the neighbourhood, come visit and say hello to us!


Oh and I'd like you all to meet our mascot, the Academic Fly. Isn't it handsome?

BEYOND!



- Severi Härö, PR Team

Press start

I’ve alway been mesmerized by comics and videogames. During my free time, it has been completely natural to get stuck in front of a tv and fall deep into escapism while hitting the enemies and jumping over obstacles with a push of a button… At least while I haven’t been glued to comic books. And it’s not like I’m only reminiscing times when I was a kid! After all, sometimes a small procrastination with a comic book can’t be bad, right?

I guess this is pretty familiar to some people. Games and comics are something that come to mind when we think of entertainment and our leisure times. You’d think the life of an academic would be the complete opposite; serious business with lectures, thesis work and studying. However, games have been the subject of academic studies more than once, and in our upcoming publication, we will bring together the academic viewpoint, games and comics.

Beyond game culture - an academic representation of game studies in a comic book. In other words, we are creating articles in a comic form, that are based on actual research studies about games and gaming culture. The project participants are students from the University of Turku, and the project is mainly a part of its digital culture studies. With our project, we hope to popularize some of the themes that our university research project deals with and bring informing and entertaining articles to the readers.

While our project is only at its beginning point, I think I can already see the scenery behind the boss level… I hope you will also enjoy our academic adventure!

-     Anna Heinonen, Editor-in-chief