Week 10: FINAL PROJECT IDEA + SKETCHES
Updated: Dec 3, 2020
My Struggle
Throughout this entire thesis project I have struggled with deciding what a good project idea would be for this thesis. After some discussion with my class I realized I was missing the aspect of finding a way to reach my audience in a fun and playful way. Previous ideas such as making an online forum in the form of a retro game, creating downloadable content to transform a modern game, and changing design elements from popular YouTube gamers brands for national video games day were not making the cut. I have only 5 weeks left to complete this project and need a design that can reach all gamers who are interested in the retro gaming community.
Solution
Looking back at my proposal, my title "Life of a Retro Gamer" was pointed out by my Professor. Since I am trying to spread more awareness about the retro gaming community to younger gamers who do not share the same experience or knowledge as them, an idea that was suggested is to create a comic book that represents a single day in the life of a retro gamer. What was suggested is that since in my Red Dead Retro idea I was planning to take images from a modern game and transform them to look retro, I could use real images of a day through the eyes of a retro gamer and somehow convert the images to look like 16bit retro games. To further enhance this idea, I could create a comic book that uses the nostalgic atmosphere of 16bit retro games and create a visual story designed to represent the community.
I felt this could be going somewhere. During my previous research I noticed gaming and comics tend to go well with each other. What if the story line of this comic book was a new retro gamer finding their way into the community? One who has just missed that era and wants to experience the games of the past. What is their day like? What makes them want to learn more? What about the community do they want to learn? How do they learn about the lives of the retro gamers? How do they go about this in a single day? What better way to answer these questions than to use my own experience!
Sketches
These are my first sketches for this project idea. I was playing around with ways to create an interesting comic book layout.