Fanzine

Brief

Fanzine Ideas

Each thing could be based in an inventory system or journal from a game from elden ring or another game from developer.

Classified file or mission logs for each thing. Break the fourth wall.

Auteur Presentation

For mine and Xander's presentation on auteurs within the gaming industry, we went over some specific video game producers that were commonly known as very influential auteurs within this industry.

Subcultures

Subcultures are specifically defined groups that people consider themselves to be a part of. People within these subcultures usually connect with each other, either in real life or online, and this will quite commonly become a key part of their identity. These are usually known as separate groups within cultures, but that doesn't mean they aren't popular, since a lot of subcultures are very well known, and people are mostly a part of them due to having something as their hobby. For example, I could be considered part of the gaming subculture because I do a lot of gaming, and I also now want to get a job within the field of game development. There are other subcultures, though, that may not seem quite the same and are more like a way of life. For example, bodybuilding and gothic subcultures affect the way you look, whether that be in clothing or body. There are also more rebellious and illegal subcultures, such as graffiti artists and hackers, which are often frowned upon by the majority of society.  There are also some others that have split into their own subcultures, like skinheads. While this was mostly known for a certain style of R&B and Reggae music, some members branched off to form far-right neo Nazi groupings, forever affecting the real skinhead subculture.

Some types of subcultures:

Hippies, Hipsters, Punks, Emos, Goths, Skaters, Environmentalists, Vapers, Cosplayers, Graffiti Artists, Surfers, Hackers, Skinheads, Gamers, Bodybuilders.

Semiotics

Semiotics is how everything represents something, as in how we interpret the world. Signs and symbols symbolise lots of different things that mean different things to everyone. In films, games or basically anything, objects and the atmosphere heavily influence how you see scenes. For example, in a Western environment, you'd subconsciously expect a cowboy wearing a fedora hat and boots, with a holster on their belt, in some plain leather clothing. You don't expect to see any bright, vivid colours, since buildings and objects are all quite plain, boring colours. Most of the time, you'd think of everything being set in a sandy and rocky desert, with tumbleweed scattered across the landscape. This is semiotic coding and decoding, which is how we interpret the world around us (decoding), which has been put together. Game developers, film developers and more recreate these environments (coding) to help us understand their story in more depth by adding these common features that help us subconsciously understand the game/film/etc without them actually telling us. Building on this, you have the denotations and connotations of things. For example, the fedora's literal image is that it's a hat (denotation). However, we commonly associate them with cowboys as well as masculinity and wisdom.

Zine Ideas

At first, I had no idea what kind of zine I wanted to create. The first thing I did was go looking around some websites, searching for zines and finding ones I liked. After a bit, I asked ChatGPT for some ideas about what I should do, and it gave me good suggestions, but one stuck out in particular. What I will be doing is a zine about reptiles and why they're good pets. I already know a decent amount and personally think they're great, but they aren't very well known, so I want to spread a bit of awareness.

One of the first zines I found that really stood out to me was this one about living with insomnia. The main reason I thought this was really good was how it not only sort of shows all the signs of what it's about, but the pictures link up well, especially when you open it up and you get one big picture sort of representing it. I also think the black and white art style works with this zine really well, by not distracting you with colour. Lastly, I think it's a great way to spread awareness about these things by including cartoon-like drawings, simple but clear art and nicely packed information because most of the time, people won't want to go and read an essay about something, especially since it's easier to gather information visually. This zine can be linked to my theme due to how it goes into great detail about something visually, which greatly helps to inform the person viewing/reading it.

The next thing was sort of a zine, and it is about life with dogs. Now, obviously, I won't be doing something quite like this in terms of design due to it being very basic, but it's the idea that I may use. Similar to the one above, it goes into some detail about certain parts of having them, and in this case, is meant to be in a positive light. I think something like this, but for certain reptiles, would be great, because people need to hear the positives about keeping something so they'll know why they're worth it and unique.

The next piece of work I thought was good to get inspiration from was this very large zine that could probably be classed more as an information booklet. It had quite a few pages of information about a variety of reptiles, which I definitely won't be including, such as alligators, since I will be doing mine more about the ones anyone can keep with relative ease. I think the main aspect that I'll be taking away from this zine is the information and how it's laid out. For our zines, we have a significantly smaller number of pages available, so I won't be able to add quite as much, and the art style isn't what I'm going for. This is partly because I don't know how to make something like this, but I also don't think it's quite what I want. I want some nice and simple designs, just like the insomnia zine, not incredibly realistic and ridiculously colourful. I could look into creating this glitch effect and including neon colours, but I don't think it'll fit the style I'm going for, so I'll focus on the detail included as inspiration.

After I finished looking at that one, I thought I'd have a look at the slightly less broad categories and look for the specific reptiles I may want to include. Unfortunately, there wasn't any for lizards, but there were a good few for snakes, and these two images from two separate designers encapsulate what kind of art style I think is best for my zine. For the Monotono zine, I liked a lot, as you'll see further down, but I really liked the style of the snake on this page. Additionally, although it's a bit of an oddity, this zine includes some interesting stories that I assume are from people who have had either dreams or real-life events. This one, for example, is a story of how kids have a cobra in a basket. Although I wouldn't want to include sad/disturbing stories in my zine, which could discourage people, I could instead include some funny stories in mine. But back to the snake design, I think it's very cool, and might be the sort of style I go for.

Moreover, there's the other zine I found that had these pages on some particular snakes. Again, it's about some of the most dangerous, which I probably won't do, but I think the overall design of the pages looks great. The snake designs are again unique, but I probably wouldn't use these colours. I also like the short and straight-to-the-point fact paragraph, which is most probably something I would include.

This is another page from the same zine as above, and it includes another design of a snake that I think is also really cool. Again, a story is told which relates to the image, and I imagine the snakes are designed like this because they're either a distant memory or a dream, so they're a bit fuzzy due to this. The 8-bit design looks great for this snake, and I also like the really simple and basic human character design, which I could use if I were to draw a human, but I'm pretty bad at drawing most things, so I'll try to keep away from a person.

Lastly, I liked these two images. The first is of Minecraft and although it's not of the theme I want, I like how everything is laid out. Two pages are made to look like one by seamlessly connecting them, and the information text is put in some nice empty space. Although I think my text will probably be shorter, I still like the idea.

The other is another page from the Monotono zine that I liked. This time, it's of a cat and a snake with a new story to go along with it. Although I probably won't use a cat, it's, again, a nice artstyle that I may try to replicate. Although similar to the first, this time it uses less detail and just some simple pointillism to design the snake. Overall, I will try to combine all the designs of snakes that I liked into one that is a style I can somewhat replicate with other reptiles.

Artists & Artwork to Inspire

Diving a bit deeper into the styles that I would consider to be the main one I base my zine design off of, I thought the pop art style best suited what I wanted. Not only does the artwork tell you a lot from looking at it, it also is quite simple in my opinion, which would be easier for me to draw since I am not a good artist. Additionally, I like the flat colours with minimal shading and shadows, which makes the images look a bit more 2D, and requires you to interpret the 3D space a bit more. For this project, I don't think the comic-like captions are needed, but I will be having text, so I can take inspiration from the placement.

As for trying to hone in on one of the more specific styles for the animals, these three best represent what I want them to look like. Keeping with the Lichtenstein style, there are quite basic shapes and designs, but they give off a really powerful image. Although I'm leaning more toward the Monotono style for animals, I like the idea behind the snake design from Black Milk. For one, the whole colour is just black for the outline, as well as red. Since red is often perceived as bad or dangerous, this could be linked to how colours influence people's perceptions of something in a different light. I could try and use this in my work, but use a colour that makes people think they're friendly and a cool pet. Additionally, I like the subtle scales on the background. It may be a bit difficult to do across other pages since most reptiles have either scales or some other form of skin that may be more difficult to draw in a simple way, or too similar to that of a snake.

With regards to how the pages are laid out, these three that I found are more what I'm thinking of doing. For starters, I like how the information and images are laid out on the first image. It's short, simple, and just the right readable size without being too in-your-face. It also links to the basic sort of designs from Lichtenstein's work, where there aren't lots of background details, just what you need to see. The second was the Ultraviolet reptile zine, which I can take a lot of inspiration from due to being based on what I'm doing. Both pages in this have a nice scene that spreads across two pages, which I will always say looks nice. Although I'm leaning more towards having multiple smaller animals instead of just one big one, it's still an idea, and as you can see from the Love and Snakes zine, it does kind of do that with the King Cobra image. Now, I'm obviously not going to be doing any realistic drawings or using images for my zine, but I do like the use of bright, vibrant colours to grab your attention to the parts of the image that are meant to stand out. However, on the second image I've attached from them, the background is all very colourful, but the snake is dark, which again grabs your attention. I will try to do something similar since it looks great, but it may be a bit difficult with the style I'm planning on doing. What I'm thinking is that in Lichtenstein's art, he uses a very flat and minimal background to stop you from getting fixated on something that isn't the main target. With mine, I could do something very similar, either by having a solid colour like the first two images below, having a plain background, or something more textured.

Fanzine Creation

To begin creating my fanzine, I decided to use the Ultraviolet front cover as inspiration, with the title, page numbers, and rough contents, as well as an image to make it a bit more interesting. For now, I've started out with a basic name that is going to just be "Reptiles". I've also added the page numbers and what the contents of them will be. After thinking about what I could do for the front cover for a while, I decided that a snake on the front with its tongue being the T in repTiles could be a cool design choice. After making it a real thing, it looks a bit odd, since now the T looks like a Y, but either way, I'm sticking with it. The other annoying thing is that I cannot change the name, which isn't the end of the world; I'm happy not to have to think about that too much, but it's still a bit of a frustrating problem.

Initially, I began by making my own snake image by using tools inside Photoshop. However, the shape looked a bit... suspicious, you could say. So I gave up on it after everyone who was looking at it told me that, and I decided to look around for a random cartoon snake design online for the base. I found this cool design and decided to use it. This is where my design process for this fanzine began. To start, I made a few different layers, made sure the main background colour was black and made any of the patterns on the snake different shades of grey. Although I liked this design, I decided to change it up a bit, since it wasn't matching what I had originally researched and what I wanted the designs to look like. Because of this, I thought I would try to create my own design that would have the same idea as the MONOTONO snake designs. Now, there are a few ways I could've gone about this, but since I wanted to make it unique, I wanted to find a way to make the QR-Code-like design myself without using an image from online. In the end, I found a way to make randomly sized squares and to draw them all over the place with a custom brush. The result isn't the best, and I definitely don't like the designs too much, but at least it makes it all a lot more unique to me, and I'll later find a way of making this look better with every other design I do.

The next part of the design process was going to be making the animal images and placing everything on the pages. To begin, I decided I should stick to using real images, since it would be significantly quicker and easier than custom-making each animal. Therefore, I first picked up a snake image I found online and cut it out.

I then made a colour overlay of a similar colour, added an outline, as well as a drop shadow. This gave me a really nice silhouette; however, I wanted more. The shadow in particular really brought the image together, but the plain, one coloured fill colour was too bland, and I needed more features to allow whoever was reading this to be able to better identify each animal.

To give each animal more ways to identify them, I added a specific type of mask on another layer of one of the original layers by holding Alt on my keyboard and clicking the layer mask button so that the whole image would get hidden, and my brush would act as a way to reveal the hidden image behind. I then decreased one of the sliders called density from 100% to about 80% which made the image slightly less transparent anyway. After adjusting my brush properties a bit, I then painted lots of randomised squares all over the snake's body, and decided that keeping the layer as a whole slightly visible looked excellent. The last couple of changes I decided to make were to suck the colour out of the image, making it black and white, and I then messed around with the brightness and contrast a bit until I was happy with the outcome.

Lastly, I decided I would make the eye too, since it looks kind of weird without it, and for me, that's one great way to tell what kind of snake you're looking at. I made it by simply copying the eye from the original image with the ellipse shape tool, as well as the details in this instance, with a brush. I then put it below the masked layer so it got a few more small details to make it fit in a bit better, and boom, I was done. I think overall, this design looks awesome, and after doing it once or twice more, I would very quickly be able to make a design of an animal similar to this. Additionally, the eye really brings everything together, and this, as well as having to paint in every square, makes me feel that I'm not being super lazy by just using pictures I find online. Not only that, but I do have to do a bit of cutting out work, since the object selection tool isn't the most accurate.

After I finished the corn snake design, I then also went on to make two other good snakes for people who want to get into reptiles. Additionally, I also made a small wall of text that gives the reader some valuable information about each animal, already giving them some insights into some of the care they require and some useful notes.

For the other snakes, I did the same process as the corn snake creation, except I changed the colours a bit and made different eyes. I was considering using the same eye, but after playing around with them for a bit, it was clear that they needed their own to be properly identifiable. I really like both of the eye designs; however, the hognose's is probably my favourite, since it just looks so good. On the other hand, the sand boa has a really unique eye, and I think that looks great too. For now, I'm liking the information layout so far, but I may change this later.

After finishing the snakes, I moved on to the lizards. The three to choose from for these pages were a lot easier, since the snakes were a little difficult due to the number of snakes that I could've listed. However, I strongly believe that these three lizards are the undisputed best starter lizards you can get. The designs were, again, all done the same, and I think they look really good. The bearded dragon is probably my least favourite just because the eye is quite small and boring, as well as the scales being a very similar colour, so it just looks very plain. Nevertheless, they all look pretty cool.

The last pages of details were the miscellaneous animals if the above wasn't quite what someone was looking for. For starters, I had to include a tortoise, and although the horsefield is basically the same, Hermann's is more commonly stocked, at least in my personal experiences. As well as this, I had to include some kind of frog. For this, it was mostly between two types, the whites tree frog that I chose, and a horned/pacman frog. These are both the best by far for eating, hardiness, and just overall simplicity. But, again, in my experience, whites are a bit better overall. Lastly, I had to include some kind of arthropod. This was a really tough choice, because people's interests can sway massively from a spider or scorpion, to a millipede or mantis. In the end, I chose a kind of tarantula because they are usually more commonly bought if people are interested in this sector, and usually have a bit more going for them. Mantis live for hardly any time, millipedes are very delicate and have a weird diet, and scorpions are just, eh. The spider was between a curly hair (because this is commonly known to be one of the best for temperament and care), as well as a jumping spider. However, I went for the curly hair because it's slightly less known, and if someone wants to get into proper big spiders and tarantulas, this is a better starting point, especially if you aren't too afraid.

Final Fanzine & Evaluation

After finishing the snake for the front and back cover, it was time to finish the whole thing by adding something else to the back. In the end, I decided to write a few brief sentences about getting and looking after reptiles, and made some new designs. These designs were of some of the live food that most of the animals would require to eat, which I thought was a nice touch. Moreover, I added the Tri-Mar logos to the front cover, which looks pretty good.

Overall, I think this project has gone pretty well, and I'm pleased with the outcome I've produced. It didn't fully meet the plan that I originally put together, but that doesn't quite matter, since those were just ideas that influenced what I made.

After a bit of reconsidering, however, I made a few small changes. For starters, the text on the back came across a bit harsh towards people, definitely not because I hold a grudge for people that don't look after animals properly. I altered it a bit, and overall, I think it's good. I also changed the stroke colour (outline) of the text, so everything could be seen a bit easier and it blends in with the background nicely, as well as the shop reptile colours.

Overall, the outcome of this project was quite positive in my opinion. I feel like it's quite informative, which is what I was going for, and it closely relates to me and my interests. Not only that, but I think it looks pretty good. In the end, I was able to make multiple designs relatively quickly, and they closely resemble what the animal is. Additionally, the eyes that I made for them were well-detailed, and are very similar to their real eyes. With regards to the rainbow boa that spreads across the front and back cover, although I didn't make a specific eye for it, I did play around with some layers to make it a little more obvious where the eyes actually are. Not only that, but I really like the rainbow iridescence colouring that I blended into the mostly black and white design, so it really shows the person looking at it how awesome they can look. However, although most of this project went well and I'm happy with the final result, there were a couple of things that could've gone better. Firstly, the pages overall feel like something is missing. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it does relate to some of my researched fanzines, but I still feel like I missed out on adding something, maybe like some kind of environment or textured background, to not make it feel so flat. On top of that, although it does somewhat resemble my researched fanzines and I could argue that I just put my own style onto their work, I do feel that the animal designs could have been better and/or resembled what the others looked like a bit more. From my research, I feel it was quite clear that my favourite designs were from MONOTONO, as well as Love and Snakes, but I don't feel that I quite implemented their designs as I originally intended. Now, I feel this was mostly due to the time limitations, but I'm also not explicitly an artist, so this would've taken a lot longer. The most annoying thing for me, though, was probably how I didn't find out how to get an animal design like the ones seen in MONOTONO. I really liked the 8-bit, QR code design, but I just couldn't think of an easy way to remake them. Now that I've finished this, I can think of a somewhat easy way, but the time has passed, and I think my inspired design is good enough.

It's a bit difficult for me to say what I would do if I were to publish this somehow, because I think it's pretty much ready for that, and I may be using it at my workplace. Either way, there are a few things that I should change or have changed before, so it's at its best. Firstly, the text. I'm not necessarily talking about the content, since that is fine due to the amount of research that I have done to find out the bare minimum care requirements each animal should be provided. If anything, it's how it's displayed. Even now, before I properly use it, I will probably edit it if it's really needed, but the tiny text for the facts for each animal is really difficult to see from these images. I'm hoping that when it's printed out, everything becomes clearer, but if not, I'll just have to adjust the stroke of each of the texts. The other thing would have to be the animal images. They look alright, but for some of them, it's really quite difficult to tell what you are looking at. Obviously, this is mostly to give you a rough idea and an example of what the animal looks like, but I still feel that it could be better. I'd have to somehow make it significantly clearer, probably by making a more minimalist design like the MONOTONO snakes. But, if I couldn't change anything, I think it's still good enough to use, since at least the main purpose is there, just the details and design that could have done with a bit of tweaking.

If I were to completely redo this whole project, however, what would I do differently? Well, for starters, I would do a bit more research into how I'm going to design the animals, and actually have a plan set out before I start actually making them. I think if I had given myself a bit of time to experiment with some ideas, like how the animals would look, how I'd be laying out the pages, etc., it may have been a bit smoother sailing. Additionally, I could've probably added even more care information, like what food they eat, how often and common kinds of illnesses that they get, but I was quite limited for space, and so I just went with what I felt was the most important initial information. Lastly, I would have definitely thought of some background designs to include. As I already said, the background is very flat, which I suppose is good to keep the reader from getting distracted, but a fanzine is partly about expressing your emotions and interests, which I could've done a bit more with even more designs. For example, I could've maybe included some ideas for what their enclosures should look like, or just some natural-looking areas for inspiration. Of course, that links into the person doing their own research, but it still encourages them to think about it early on.

In conclusion, I am relatively pleased with how this project went. I think I paced myself quite well throughout, and the final designs look like a great adaptation of some of the researched fanzines I found made by other people. Obviously, there were some things I would've preferred to have done differently, but overall, it looks pretty good. I think it is a great beginner's guide to anyone who is looking to start looking after reptiles, but doesn't quite know what they want to start with.

TWC
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