Luke Trotter Zine Project
What is a Zine? Short for magazine or fanzine, it is a small-circulation, self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, in the past, reproduced via photocopier. A fanzine (blend of fan and magazine) is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest.
You will be creating, printing and handcrafting your own 8 - 12 page zine. The theme of the project is entirely up to you! You will be responsible for collecting content, creating illustrations, designs and/or photoshop collages to include in your zine.
You will be creating, printing and handcrafting your own 8 - 12 page zine. The theme of the project is entirely up to you! You will be responsible for collecting content, creating illustrations, designs and/or photoshop collages to include in your zine.
I first wrote down all the basic ideas I had. Then, I expanded on the ideas I liked most, and came up with basic details and an outline for each. From those, I chose my zine theme: the advancement of video game graphics.
I made some rough sketches of what I was thinking each page would look like. I tried to keep the designs similar, to minimize confusion on where advancements were made.
To start my project, I needed to find 3d assets. These assets would ultimately limit the type of scene I would create. Creating my own 3d assets would have taken too long, so I went to CGTrader and Sketchfab to find some that others put up for free. I first found the scenery I wanted. From there, I found smaller objects that might add to the finished product. Finally, I found characters I could put into my scene.
I loaded my assets into Blender, a free 3d modeling software, and got to work. I started with the higher resolution renders because they would take longer, and didn't want to rush them. First, I got positioned and scaled to my liking. Then, I applied the textures and changed fixed any color issues. Finally, I lit my scene with a light source, and configured the camera viewport.
After I finished my 3d renders, I started formatting my Illustrator artboards. I had to equally split up the artboards in a way that would allow eight separate pieces to fit. I had to reformat a few times because of miscalculations.
After that, I started working on my 2d designs. I used some pixel art apps on my ipad to create them. I was able to color each pixel individually, but I usually increased the width of the pencil tool to work faster. For the third 2d art piece, I worked in Illustrator because of the clean and simple shapes I could create.
This is the first test Zine I made. I discovered that the art wasn't exactly aligned on each side of the paper, so I made adjustments on the way I cut the final products. I also did not use a folding tool and instead folded it with my hands. This made it fairly thicker than the final products.
This is the final product. I'm fairly happy with the way it turned out. I think I could've spent a little more time on my 2d art pieces, but otherwise everything turned out like I hoped.
