BCM114: Digital Artifact – Making

About My DA (Once again)

So if you’ve never been here, my Digital Artifact is an Instagram Account and WordPress Blog (FINALLY!) based around cyberpunk themes and telling a story of an artificial world. The visuals focus around highly edited images with a sci-fi/cyberpunk feel to them and feature both people and landscapes.

My Making Process

My making process started off extremely slow with me not having a lot of time to edit photos or to write up blog posts. Fortunately now because both of these things are up and running, it is going much more smoothly in terms of content being produced. I had some doubts that I would ever actually make it to posting anything on the blog side of The Somnus Project, but I eventually got around to it so I can now begin creating longer segments of information regarding the world I am creating.

You can find my first post on the blog here

Upload Schedule

I am currently working on putting an upload schedule in place as part of using the feedback from my ideation process. Time is something that I really struggle with however I think having an upload schedule would make it astronomically easy to keep engagement up with both my accounts.

Creating My Photographs

Cameras

I am still only using my phone and my camera (Fujifilm X-E1) to take photos, however I am occasionally using old photos backed up on my computer and other peoples artworks (editing and giving credit to the original artist). Using other peoples artworks is not only a way of reaching more people who are a fan of their work but also a way that I can save time as often it doesn’t take me long to edit an image.

Programs

I use quite a few apps in order to edit my photos to fit the theme of The Somnus Project. I do not necessarily use all of these on the same picture:

• Polarr – For the primary editing of all my images. I use this to adjust colours, light, shadows, contrast, hues and sometimes to add effects to the lights already existing in the photos as they were taken. It allows me to edit every aspect of the photos and to add gradients, radial effects and overlays.

• Meitu – This application is mainly for the use of selfies should I take them, however I do occasionally use this application for the filters and effects that you can lay over photos

• Facetune 2 – Serves as an application where I can fine tune different elements of photos, especially in adding more shadow or light to a persons face

• RAD VHS – For the videos behind my story posts relating to radio broadcasts I use RAD VHS. It’s helpful for giving a slightly glitched look without me having to pay for anything.

• Werble – Werble is really cool for creating moving pictures, or gifs I guess. I usually upload them as a video on Instagram. This gives me variety.

These applications all help take the first picture to the second picture to help it fit within the world of The Somnus Project. Shout out to my friend Toby for helping me with these photos.

Inspiration and Learning

Part of my project is learning how to edit photos without overdoing it, but still keeping in mind the style of the account. I look to other photographers to do this, in particular demas and noealzii who both put up tutorials on how they edit their photos, and friends who are photographers.

A Comparison Between When I First Started and One of My Most Recent Posts

Blog

Now that the blog is up I have started making posts based on files and the characters within Somnus.

Using this blog allows me to inform my followers more about the world I am creating and to add more depth to it. I have not yet seen any sort of feedback regarding the blog on whether it has helped me reach more people or if my followers from Instagram have used the link to go to my blog. At the moment it is difficult to tell where my followers originally see my content.

The Future

In the future I would like to start using Reddit as a way of further promoting my content. I have also thought about creating some form of physical promotion material such as fliers or stickers. I would like to create a series of extremely short videos which add to the lives of the characters. Maybe in the distant future, given enough people like my content I could end up selling prints of some of my photos. I have also been given the suggestion of making a virtual reality game; while this is an amazing idea, I don’t have the skills for it, nor the money to make it happen, so alas it remains a dream.

IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY

You can find The Somnus Project here at https://thesomnusproject.wordpress.com/ and here at the_somnus_project on Instagram

BCM114: Digital Artifact – Prototyping

Prototyping is the process of using feedback loops to create new and better content. First of all if you want to know what my Digital Artifact is as just a recap, or maybe you’re new here: it is an Instagram account which focuses on creating a fictional world through photographs and a story. I often upload from the perspective of a character of my own design and making and go out on adventures taking photos in order to produce content.

Insights

The first stage in my prototyping journey was to turn on my Insights. Seriously these things are useful. I can see when the best time to upload is and how many accounts my account reaches letting me know if I need to post more. They also let me know the specific days which are the best in terms of people seeing my content.

I started using these briefly, uploading at the times that were the most popular times that my followers were active. This resulted in my likes going up and increasing the amount of people following me.

Aesthetic

It can be seen by looking at the start of The Somnus Project to the most recent posts that my photography skills and editing skills have gotten much better, however the aesthetic has also changed very slightly.

I had begun originally using this as a cross between cyberpunk and vaporwave (the vaporwave went away about 5 posts in) however found that I liked the cyberpunk aesthetic more and stuck with it. The theme originally had pixelated images and some with fringing (causing them to look glitched), and while I still do that in order to conceal place names and the faces of people I don’t know, I don’t use it as much any more.

The colours have also slightly changed. Rather than everything being over saturated pinks purples and occasionally dark blues, it now features strategically places bursts of other colours such as orange, yellow and cyan in order to grab more attention and to contrast the main theme of purple, magenta and dark blue. I figured this also had an effect in almost making certain things look like they are glowing.

Places

One thing in particular that I found really interesting prototyping my idea was that I have much more fun when including other people, and going other places. It not only adds to the story, making it easier to create more but it makes it more authentic. If my character has to travel somewhere to do something, then naturally it makes sense for me to plan a photo shoot somewhere away from where I regularly take photos. This helps to create more content as well and gives me an excuse to play at arcades in Sydney and spend too much money on food.

Several places I quickly found out suit my aesthetic extremely well are arcades and china town, as well as any place that has a neon sign. Gotta get that glow.

Music

I added to the world by using snippets of music in Instagram’s story feature. Not only does this allow me to fully utilise all of Instagram’s features it also allows me to expand the world which I am creating by adding in music I think would fit and also to explain the state of the world through “radio broadcasts”. While this doesn’t really effect my reach or follower count I still do it anyway because it acts as a filler of sorts and it really doesn’t take that long.

Other Sources of Photos

Something that I said I wouldn’t do but ended up doing anyway was using other peoples photos. While everything that is specifically a photo is taken by me, I did use a painting, edit and glitch it, then upload it giving credit to the original image. This resulted in many more likes, almost double the likes that one of my normal photos would get. This is something I intend to do more in the future.

BCM114: Digital Artifact – Ideating

And So the Process to Bring to Light My Cyberpunk World Has Begun.

First a little introduction to my Digital Artifact. I’m going to be using an already existing account on Instagram (@the_somnus_project) based around cyberpunk aesthetics.

This account, paired with a blog will tell a fictional story of a character known as Xerus, an agent for a large company, Somnus. I’m not gonna tell you where the story is going to go, that would be cheating; you’re going to have to follow it to find out. Its purpose is for entertainment, and to perhaps at some points reflect the real world in order to make a comment on the not-so-great-things that happen today.

How Did I Come Up With This DA Idea?

This idea came to me while I was still doing BCM112 when I watched a lecture on transmedia storytelling. I thought it was interesting how different platforms could be used in unison to create a world that could almost exist. I was inspired by this concept and so “The Somnus Project” was born.

Transmedia storytelling, for those who don’t know, refers to the dispersing of information across different platforms and different delivery channels to create one larger work by piecing everything together. An example of this would be “The Walking Dead“, a franchise started by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.

The Walking Dead universe started as comic books and then became a popular tv series comprising of 9 seasons and counting, a webseries, a spin off called “Fear the Walking Dead” (they are hinting at yet another spin off as well), a video game series created by Telltale and several other board games and card games. Each of these mediums has helped to create the world of The Walking Dead as the fans know it.

If you want to find out more about Transmedia Storytelling you can have a look at Henry Jenkins explanation of it or at the ways it can be used for successful marketing and the elements that make up Transmedia Storytelling.

Why Did I Choose This For My DA?

I had a problem with choosing the idea for my DA because I was torn on whether I should continue my previous DA or start a new one. I wrote out the pros and cons of continuing vs starting again which can be seen below.

In looking at these pros and cons it was easy to see that The Somnus Project was going to be easier in terms of #FIST and #FEFO as it takes me roughly 30 minutes to take and edit a photo on my phone and on Instagram it’s fairly easy to tell which photos are successful and which are not. It would also be easy to do because it is something I enjoy. Even though this early comparison table appears to have more cons and less pros under The Somnus Project, it was ultimately the conversation with my tutor and various friends that persuaded me to use The Somnus Project as my DA.

Finding An Audience

As seen in the table above finding an audience for something like the Somnus Project on Instagram specifically was something I was worried about. I didn’t know if it existed (a quick search of #cyberpunk proved me very wrong).

I have been advised to use platforms such as Reddit and Youtube to increase my reach. One of those is entirely doable (Youtube), however Reddit is something I am unfamiliar with but willing to learn to use.

Why Instagram?

Instagram is a platform I am incredibly familiar with and it focuses on visual presentation which I thought was extremely useful to the way I wanted to show The Somnus Project. It gives me a chance to interact with others in the same sort of environment by messaging to improve my way of editing and ask questions.

The app is also something I can access anywhere and at any time (provided I have internet connection.

Why a Blog?

the blog gives me the ability to further embellish the world by giving more information in the form of longer posts. The blog will also allow me to introduce more characters to the world and explain certain parts of it. This will be done on WordPress (although tumblr was considered) because I know how to use it.

Tl;dr

• The Somnus Project is a fictional story over multiple platforms
• I took inspiration from Transmedia Storytelling
• It works in terms of #FIST and #FEFO
• It’s going to be on Instagram and a WordPress Blog
• It focuses on a Cyberpunk aesthetic.