Website Development

The graphic novel will be online. We decided from the begining that the artwork displayed on the website would take up most of the screen. To achieve this I used CSS to scale the images to the full size of the window. To change from page to page in the story I used Jquery.  I used the anything slider Jquery plugin to create a slider that could contain any type of html/flash/images so on. http://css-tricks.com/anythingslider-jquery-plugin/ this allows the user to view each page full screen and change to the next page using the keyboard arrows or the arrows on screen.

In the introduction page the logo appears in the sky with clouds the move when the mouse is moved creating a motion parrallax. This was created using Jquery.

As part of the website an extra hidden infographic which can only be seen if the user finds all the hidden objects throughout the story. This was done using variables and click counters.

The infographic shows LRA activity since the date of the last day in the story, the 20/1/2012. The infographic involves a custom twitter feed that collects all tweets from @CrisisTracker only since the 20/1/2012. This was difficult to do as twitter only allows you to retrieve 20 most recent tweets. An array, Jquery and looping through each batch of tweets, getting the id of the last one and getting the next batch using that id and displaying all tweets since the id.

The lracrisistracker.com became a useful resource for getting information and numbers of abductions and more. A visual representation of the number of abductions since the 20/1/2012 and since 2009 is also included in the infographic using Umapper and self made visuals.

photoshop stock brushes

In creating background imagery where soldiers were present these photoshop brushes came in really useful thanks to BacklashCBD on deviant art. http://backlashcbd.deviantart.com/art/Soldier-Brushes-27312152

Character creation

For the past two weeks i have been creating, drawing and colouring all the characters for Small Soldiers. I have created them in photoshop using a graphics tablet. Each body part is on a seprate layer for animation ability.

* All the below images are copyrighted *

The main characters:

Kato

Kato when young

Kato's Sister

Bale

Other School boy's

Other School girl's

Julien

Amari

Olive

Security Forces

Weapons

Twitter Feed

I created a Twitter Feed for our Missing Children Link in the story. I wanted to see how it would be done and if it would work. I created it using Twitter's search widget, that you can customize with your own search query's. It can be incorporated into any website we create, our blog and social media accounts.

heres the link https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets

Here is a screenshot of what I made:

Small Soldiers link to Home

The link

We realized that it is difficult to get the audience to empathize with a topic that is happening far away in Africa and that people may distance themselves from it. We have been coming up with ways of linking the project to home. Missing Children is our chosen link. When a child goes missing in Ireland or the western world there is huge coverage of it, but in CAR, south sudan and DR of congo where the LRA abduct children on a weekly basis, nothing or little is known about it.

How to incorporate the link into our story

- Fictitional story based on what would normally happen if a child went missing in Ireland

- Twitter feed on the topic of #missing, #child etc.

- Fictitional social media account with the story of the missing person being covered by it

"Kony 2012" gone viral

Since march the 5th a film made by the organization Invisible Children has gotton nearly 50 million views on You Tube. This film "Kony 2012" aims at raising awareness worldwide and stopping Joseph Kony the leader of the LRA, a rebel group in Africa by the end of this year. The film want's to do this by making Kony famous, giving him celebrity status and making him a household name which in turn will force governments, mainly America to capture him. The film certainly has achieved it's virality but also has put the organization under scrutiny. People argue that what they state in the film is untrue and that stopping Kony will not stop the LRA.

Although it is bringing the situation to light and using social media's power to do so, The video has been viewed nearly 50 million times on youtube in 4 days, #Kony2012, #Kony, #Uganda, #LRA have become worldwide trends on Twitter, the campaign has been the talk of newstations/papers/articles since.

Here is the film..

What Kony 2012 does right:

- Uses social media to gain a worldwide audience fast

- Created an immersive film

- Involves people in the campaign, by allowing them to sign up for the pledge, get an action kit and so on.

- Using and making Kony a celebrity to make him known and aid in his capture.

- Used huge worldwide celebrities and politicians to back the campaign, spread the word and get their fans involved for example Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Bono, George Clooney.

- Using creative, artistic methods and peoples talents throughout the campaign

- Being Inspired and doing what they believe is right, the founders went to Uganda found a story and were shocked and promised friends they made their that they would help. They also were inspired by the arab spring and how Facebook fueled it.

- Hard work, The organization have been preparing for this campaign for years.

What Kony 2012 does wrong:

- Not intirely true statements. The LRA are not in Uganda anymore, they are in CAR, DR of Congo and South Sudan.

- Catching Kony does not mean an end to the LRA, poverty and inequality are major problems at the root of the conflict.

- Aimed mainly at an American audience

- Putting American 'advisors' on the ground in Uganda. The LRA are not in Uganda, the people may not want them there and they may have alternate motives such as oil and being near somalia.

- An aim of the film overlooked was getting america to join the International Criminal Court

- Local people are just as scared of their army as they are of the LRA.

How this effects our project and what we could take from it:

- Have correct and accurate information

- The power of social media and it's advantages and disadvantages

- Catching Kony may not be the solution

- Kony 2012 is mainly targeted at an american audience and getting the american government or army to stop Kony, we can raise awareness in Ireland and Europe and maybe see what European governments can do.

- America should join the International Criminal Court

- Kony 2012's creative methods and using peoples talents was sucessful

- Getting existing celebrities and politicians to back the campaign

- immersive and engaging content

- user/audience involvement

Links, references and more information:

http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

http://www.warchild.org.uk/news/kony-2012-our-response

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news

http://www.channel4.com/news/kony-2012

Twitter: #Kony2012, #Uganda , #LRA, #Kony, #stopKony, #invisiblechildren

Possible ways of telling the story using the web(part two)

Html5 scrolling page

example one:

http://www.starvedforattention.org/

The story appears as you scroll down the page, media such as video is also included.

example two:

http://www.head2heart.us/

This page scrolls across to tell the story when arrows within the image are clicked.

Html5 comic style

http://www.bifter.co.uk/issue/12/

This is a website that displays a comic book like a comic book. With next and previous buttons, with attractive style and visuals made with HTML5.

Html5 interactive website

ROME "3 dreams of black"

http://www.ro.me/

Like with the wilderness downtown this is an interactive music video that was directed by chris milk.

Explanation below.