I recently received a delivery of the print version of #TheMysteryOfTheWhirlyGig#comic I made for @BarnsleyMuseums during the lockdown summer of 2020 – a project that started out as a digital #interactivecomic to help those families who wished to still participate with the Elsecar Museum activities during lockdown and now continues as part of a full activity/educational pack sent out to similar families, so cheers to Sarah Taylor (thanks also to @HotMetalPress for a great print job) #comics#museums#education#elsecar
#CCSubtitles to the following video are available on YouTube.
The comic in both its internet experience and print versions includes not only the original ten part, 30+ page comics narrative, but also features puzzles and board game style interactive elements in which the reader/players can decide the routes the protagonists take as they move around in time and around the old site on which the Elsecar Heritage Centre us based. There are also “how to…” pages that look at making comics, board games, and how to make the principle object in the story in card, craft and making being an element that features heavily in the story for some of the characters. There was also the use of QR codes which where integrated into images of the technology the protagonists where using, but still allowed the reader to use a QR code reader to add an extra dimension including further historical information, read-along videos with staff, reenactment videos with actors in historical dress and even a “how to cook period food video”.
All in all, a challenging but great little comics project to work on.
The images above where some of the early character tests for the project, from which our protagonists where selected by a panel of young museum goers. One of the villains at the bottom even got to appear as cutout figures as part of an “Easter egg” hunt of sorts around the heritage centre itself.
…and this was the gang they selected and so our main protagonists.
Here you can see one of the devices I used to help convey Harry (a BSL, British Sign Language user)’s use of sign language. i.e a graphic of two hands making the sign for “sign language” attached to the “speech” balloon, the tail of which always points in his case, to his hands rather than his mouth.
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