This was an interesting project to work on, not so much for the actual work I did but the content was amazing.
“NEOMAD is a comic series created with the communtity of Roebourne, WA as a part of Big hART’s Yijala Yala Project. It’s a futuristic fantasy based on real places, real people and the world’s oldest continuing culture.
Set over three episodes, NEOMAD follows the story of the Love Punks, a group of techno savvy young heroes from the Pilbara who speed through a digitised desert full of spy bots, magic crystals, fallen rocket boosters and mysterious petroglyphs. Initially released as an interactive iPad app, the series is now also available in book form.”
To read more about the comic you can read more here – /www.neomadcomic.com
The comic is available on iPad on iTunes
It also has a facebook page – /www.facebook.com/neomadcomic
The iPad app was put together by Lukasz Karluk – twitter.com/julapy – using openFrameworks. He also created a plugin that could take Flash content into openFrameworks which is how this was created.
The client asked for a desktop version for PC and Mac be made so I came in to do this. I was able to take the original Flash files and use the timeline animation .swf files to create AIR apps with captive runtime. The trickiest part of the project was that the episode of the comic was spread across 3 files and I had to join them so progressing forwards and backward though the comic was seamless.
I used Robotlegs to give the project structure and thought to give Robotlegs 2 a go for the first time. After a few head-scratching moments I was soon back in the groove of Robotlegs like nothing had changed. I’m sure there are probably some new features I have not utilised, but the project did not require anything out of the ordinary.
Here are components I created for the app.
The timeline at the bottom of the screen could be dragged to anywhere in the comic, it would also display a thumbnail preview of where it would start if you released it.
The about page was a drag-able page that had all the info and links to more information about the comic.
The episode page showed the available episodes – this version of the comic only has the first episode and the others show links to where you can find them.
Help page to let people know how to use the comic if they are a bit lost.
Sometimes when working on a project the content can get a bit tiresome, but I found myself enjoying the story many times over!
Here is a video about the comic also – check it out!
NEOMAD : WE MADE THIS COMIC from Yijala Yala Project on Vimeo.
