Saturday 3 December 2016

TERNZ 2015 & HERDSA 2016

A belated update on two education based conferences I attended as part of professional development and ongoing research interests, in this case where teaching practice and curriculum design intersect with industry experience. These events are useful for providing insight and inspiration for new approaches to learning and teaching, especially because coming from industry into tertiary teaching presents challenges as well as solutions. 

Poster of Project-Based Integrated Learning approach.


 The first conference, TERNZ, was held at AUT in Auckland in November 2015. TERNZ focuses on “teaching and learning research in higher and tertiary education that is open to academics from all disciplines. The theme of every TERNZ conference is learning in higher education: our learning, our students' learning, our colleagues' learning.” The session at TERNZ were practical, very hands on and interactive in this regard. My colleague Nick Konings and I co-presented both a presentation and poster based on his work in designing the curriculum for a new Bachelor of Animation, and bringing together Project Based Learning and Integrated Learning under a term he coined: Project Based Integrated Learning (PBIL). Nick focused on the approach and I presented case studies of student work arising from this methodology. 


Poster of 'Making by Doing' approach to curriculum design.

The second conference, HERDSA, was held at Fremantle, Australia, with the theme for the conference being The Shape of Higher Education. Once again, myself and Nick appeared there co-presenting a presentation, and I presented a poster (co-designed with my colleague Lena Yaroshenko). This time the topic concerned a methodology of curriculum design employed by a number of staff in the animation faculty, in which lecturers work on projects in a similar fashion to students, as a means of testing the efficacy of the programmes being designed – which I referred to as Making by Doing. HERDSA was an interesting experience, since many of the topics that were raised by various institutions are things relevant and already being approached inside the philosophy and curriculum we were developing. The abstract can be viewed here.

Saturday 25 June 2016

Electricomics!

This post has been a long time coming.... Last year, on the 14th of October 2015, I attended The Comic Electric: A Digital Comics Symposium, which was held at The University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

Outside the University of Hertfordshire (c) Zak Waipara 2015


The Electricomics platform project was driven by renowned comic writers Leah (the Thrill Electric) and Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea), The Electricomics project was launched in May 2014, with funding from the UK's Digital R&D Fund for the Arts.

As the project neared the conclusion of its research and development stage, The Comic Electric symposium was held, led by Leah Moore and Daniel M. Goodbrey, to share findings, and expand discussion and debate around the field of digital comics research.  Leah's own digital comic project Sway is really quite impressive in taking advantage of the iPad's ability to detect the motion of the device and use it as a narrative component! Can't wait to see what else she might come up with...

Participants, including myself, presented papers across a wide range of topics that relate to comics scholarship and digital media. I presented my own research paper Otea: Transmission and Transmedia, based on my Masters research into transmedia comics and cultural transmission. Otea is a comic project for kids I have been working on for a while. Here's a nice concise summary of the talk itself, as reported by one of the attendees.

Leah Moore's post on Alan Moore's Facebook page


The Symposium was highly enjoyable and extremely informative. I won't attempt to cover the entirety of the proceedings but will mention briefly a few notable speakers.

My fellow panellists, Liz Dowthwaite and Vitor Blotta, covered Web Comic Communities and Comics as Journalism in Brazil, respectively. Liz's blog can be found here – she very kindly mentions my project. Her own topic is also her PhD research.

Matt Finch's presentation covered the possibilities offered by participatory style comic workshops working with different groups around the world, including time spent in Aotearoa NZ. It was great to see the contribution from a Christchurch librarian as well, never thought I would travel all that way to see te reo Maori comics in the UK...

Matt covered the Symposium on Twitter, with links to my slideshow.

Craig Smith, whose work on Motion Comics I quoted in my thesis, was the final speaker of the day and focused on Motion comics, including the Madefire platform pioneered by Dave Gibbons (of Watchmen fame). I chatted to Dave very briefly - it was cool to meet him in person.

I also had the chance to chat in person with Craig Smith on the 30 minute train ride back to London.

I went back to Hertfordshire Uni the next day to chat with Daniel M. Goodbrey (senior lecturer in Narrative and Interaction Design at the School of Creative Arts), to meet staff and talk about their teaching programmes, and to compare notes on our course back in NZ. Some of Daniel's interactive comic projects can be seen here –  he is really showing what can be done with the form.

It was seriously cool to fly to the UK and be part of a ground-breaking experience.



Monday 25 January 2016

Comics, Libraries and Games

This is a post covering a range of events in the latter half of 2015 with which I was involved, including lots of collaborations with Auckland City Libraries for their comic book month. (My involvement came about through my association with Animation College.)

First out of the gate was a 'miniature ComicCon', dubbed LibraryCon, which took place on Sunday 6 September 2015 at Panmure Community Hall. LibraryCon featured cosplay, indie comics, pop culture crafts, and interestingly a group of budding game developers, including some reps from IGDANZ or the NZ chapter of the International Game Developers Association.


Zak, Dora and Jerwin © Zak Waipara

The focus for our group was to exhibit staff and student comic artwork, and included sketches for the public from Animation College students from lecturer Thaw Naing's Drawing Club (known as ACDC). Following on from this event, some of the comic work went up on display in the Central Library for the month of September.


Thaw sketching at the booth. © ZW

I was then invited to participate in The Panel (a comics discussion panel), chaired by Neil Curtis of Auckland University. This was a broad ranging discussion about diversity in the NZ comic 'scene'. This took place on 16 September 2015 in the Whare Wananga, Level 2, Central Library. It was a chance to hear about a new comic project - Three Words, an anthology featuring 60 female comic artists, that came about in response to a lack of representation of women in curated comic events.

Michel Mulipola, who had all the best lines, coined the phrase 'mansploring' to explain this inability to locate women comic creators! Thanks to the staff at Central Library, especially Courtney Ross, for organising all of the above.

Three Words postcard and a book gift from the Library. © ZW

Finally, I facilitated a Manga/Comic drawing workshop for children and teens at Mt Roskill Library, on Saturday 19th September. The real stars were the Bachelor of Animation students – Teahi, Joanne, Taylor and Michelle, who ran segments on specialised topics and provided their own customised resources.


Joanne, Zak, Michelle, Taylor and Teahi. © Mt Roskill Library

This was a good opportunity for our students to plan a lesson and practice presenting their ideas and communicating some drawing principles clearly – which helps their own learning as well.
Many thanks to Marion and Po Yee of Mt Roskill Library for hosting this event.

It's great that Auckland City Libraries celebrate Comic Book Month every year, and always come up with new ways to engage readers and budding writers and illustrators.

Examples of student Manga art and drawing principles. © ZW

Games Event

AUT #NZGDC15 – NZ Game Developers Conference, September 2015 

Then I attended my first conference devoted to games, and was really interested to see the diverse ranges of topics, in particular Serious Gaming (games for social change). Terry Fleming from Auckland University presented her version, COMETS (Collaboration on Maximising the impact of E-Therapy & Serious gaming), realised by Maru Nihoniho of Metia Interactive (who I would eventually meet in person at a Maori Digital Cluster Hui in December). This is a fascinating project looking at serious games for mental health and healing – well worth a look. Keep up with the project on Facebook:

The following day I participated in a Unity 101 Workshop at the Conference – it was amazing to see how quickly something resembling a game level could be built.

 © Zak Waipara