Catching Krazy - Your Daily Dose of Insight on all things Geeky

This blog provides an analysis of the different ways webcomics use the unique affordances of digital media. There are some hand-drawn comics, but most of the blog looks at already existing comics and the different ways they tell stories. I chose this topic because I have a deep love for comics of all forms, and webcomics are something I've been reading and looking at for years. Each webcomic is unique in its form of updating, presentation, and storytelling. They draw on the four affordances of digital media: Procedural, i.e. things that take advantage of the processing power of the computer to comprehend specific, executable instructions (for example, a webcomic with a queue updating automatically to the site); Participatory, i.e. allowing the reader to interact with or influence the story in some way (for example, choose-your-own-adventure style comics that influence the narrative through suggested commands); Spatial, i.e. taking advantage of the digital medium through maps, images, etc. to create a digital world (for example, webcomics that use the "infinite canvas" of the web to make comics of non-traditional size); and Encyclopedic, i.e. the extensive amount of information and combination of media the web is capable of (for example, the existence of webcomic archives, or combining flash animation/video with traditional still images of comics). This has been a continual process of editing and researching to find new topics to talk about. The difficulty of speaking to how webcomics use digital media instead of solely talking about webcomics, is that eventually I'll run out of material. As the blog continues I may eventually need to change the topic so I can keep writing.

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