Play as narration: ‘Composition No1’ and ‘Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’ .

In reviews of Chris Ware’s Building Stories, critics regularly draw attention to the board-game like design of the comic’s box and elements of the text within. Yet while many have noted the similarities between Building Stories and the visual/physical design of board games such as Monopoly, and Ware himself has cited ‘French "Jeux Reunis" game sets from the late 19th and the early 20th century’ as one of the inspirations for the work’s design concept, few go as far as to suggest that Building Stories actually is a game. In this paper, Simon Grennan and Ian Hague will consider the ways in which Building Stories’ narrative structure mirrors those conventionally found in games. Drawing upon works published by Bethesda Softworks, such as Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and the Elder Scrolls series, as well as comics including Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile and Actus Tragicus’ Actus Box: 5 Graphic Novellas, and literary works such as Marc Saporta’s Composition No.1 and B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Grennan and Hague will interrogate some of the formal and discursive relationships that open possibilities for revised interpretations of the differences between play and narrative, such as the productive structuring of choice, sources of narrative voice, the presence of untold plots, the impact of types of accumulated and excluded actions upon plot, and the narratological implications of subverting the social habits by which games, comics and literature are defined. Utilising Seymour Chatman’s 1978 theorisation of narrative as a ‘double time’ structure, being the time of the plot plus the time of the text, they will suggest that both games and comics promote specific discourse activities over others as conditions of comprehension, whilst sharing formal structures that are utilised in each register to underwrite the disctinctions between them. Hence, it is as possible to choose to read the cells of comic in any order as it is to choose one course of actions over another in a game. Grennan and Hague will analyse the degrees of similarity and difference between these options in their particular contexts, relative to an experience of a plot, in order to problematise the relationship between discourse and plot at the heart of Chatman’s theory

It's a book! It's a game! It's 'Building Stories'! Play, Plot and Narration in Graphic Narrative.

In reviews of Chris Ware’s Building Stories, critics regularly draw attention to the board-game like design of the comic’s box and elements of the text within. Yet while many have noted the similarities between Building Stories and the visual/physical design of board games such as Monopoly, and Ware himself has cited ‘French "Jeux Reunis" game sets from the late 19th and the early 20th century’ as one of the inspirations for the work’s design concept, few go as far as to suggest that Building Stories actually is a game. In this paper, Simon Grennan and Ian Hague will consider the ways in which Building Stories’ narrative structure mirrors those conventionally found in games. Drawing upon works published by Bethesda Softworks, such as Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and the Elder Scrolls series, as well as comics including Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile and Actus Tragicus’ Actus Box: 5 Graphic Novellas, and literary works such as Marc Saporta’s Composition No.1 and B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Grennan and Hague will interrogate some of the formal and discursive relationships between play and narrative, such as the productive structuring of choice, the impact of types of accumulated and excluded actions upon plot and the narratological implications of subverting the social habits by which games, comics and literature are defined. Utilising Seymour Chatman’s 1978 theorisation of narrative as a ‘double time’ structure, being the time of the plot plus the time of the text, they will suggest that both games and comics promote specific discourse activities over others as conditions of comprehension, whilst sharing formal structures that are utilised in each register to underwrite the distinctions between them. Hence, it is as possible to choose to read the cells of comic in any order as it is to choose one course of actions over another in a game. Grennan and Hague will analyse the degrees of similarity and difference between these options in their particular contexts, relative to an experience of a plot, in order to problematise the relationship between discourse and plot at the heart of Chatman’s theory

Medium, Knowledge, Structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comics.

A conference paper presented at ACME Research Group Conference, University of Liege

Beyond the Visual – The Roles of the Senses in Contemporary Comics

We tend to think of comics as a visual medium, a means by which stories are told using a sequential arrangement of images and (sometimes) words. In recent years, however, it has become increasingly apparent that this conception of the medium is not as valid as it arguably once was. Comic artists are moving to take advantage of new technologies such as the internet to produce comics that are not only visual in nature, but incorporate elements that stimulate the other senses as well. Over the course of this article, I discuss examples of such works, and think about the ways in which creators are working with a diverse array of materials and technologies to develop comics that are still primarily visual, but not exclusively so. Additionally, I outline some of the possibilities and implications of the use of the non-visual senses in comics. I consider each of the non-visual senses in turn, and look at a range of examples of the ways in which creators have taken up the challenge of incorporating sounds, textures, smells and even tastes into their comics to create what are truly multisensory reading experiences. My article does not focus on a particular comic, but rather it takes in a selection of works from various areas, including Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer radio cartoons and the recently launched UK small press anthology Solipsistic Pop

Social Sciences/Comics: A Commentary on Sociologica's Exploration of Comics

The writings collected in issue 15(1) of Sociologica take diverse approaches to the relationships between social sciences and comics. This commentary identifies several of the themes that bring these pieces together and make some suggestions for how the ideas and approaches sketched out in these pieces might be developed further in the future. The commentary explores how the ideas set forth in the articles overlap with concerns found in the field of Comics Studies and what the lessons learned by Comics Studies might have to offer to the field of social sciences

Medium, knowledge, structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comics.

Journal article.Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012) is a box containing fourteen items that can be read in any order, and for this reason it appears to offer its readers a great deal of choice over the narrative structure of the work. This paper contrasts Building Stories with the video games Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to demonstrate that that although Building Stories does offer choices, these choices are not ultimately meaningful because while the reader can decide the order of presentation, they cannot decide the order of events as they can in the games, and in other examples such as Marc Saporta’s novel Composition No.1. The article draws upon the work of Seymour Chatman, Gonzalo Fresca and Espen Aarseth in analysing narratives in games and texts, and concludes by considering the implications of choice in narrative

Design framework for multifunctional additive manufacturing: coupled optimization strategy for structures with embedded functional systems

The driver for this research is the development of multi-material additive manufacturing processes that provide the potential for multi-functional parts to be manufactured in a single operation. In order to exploit the potential benefits of this emergent technology, new design, analysis and optimization methods are needed. This paper presents a method that enables in the optimization of a multifunctional part by coupling both the system and structural design aspects. This is achieved by incorporating the effects of a system, comprised of a number of connected functional components, on the structural response of a part within a structural topology optimization procedure. The potential of the proposed method is demonstrated by performing a coupled optimization on a cantilever plate with integrated components and circuitry. The results demonstrate that the method is capable of designing an optimized multifunctional part in which both the structural and system requirements are considered

Investigation of the effect of relative humidity on polymers by depth sensing indentation

Stereolithography (SL) resins absorb varying amounts of moisture dependent on the relative humidities, which can significantly affect the mechanical properties. In this work, the influence of relative humidity (RH) on the mechanical behaviour of an SL resin is investigated using depth sensing indentation (DSI). The samples were conditioned by two methods. In the first method, samples were pre-conditioned at 33.5, 53.8, 75.3 and 84.5% RH using saturated salt solutions. These preconditioned samples were tested at 33.5% RH, using a humidity control unit (HCU) to control RH in the DSI system. In the second method, samples were conditioned and tested at 33.5, 53.8, 75.3 and 84.5% RH by regulating humidity in the DSI system using the HCU. Temperature was kept constant at 22.5 C for the conditioning and DSI testing. It was seen that hardness and modulus decreased with increasing RH and conditioning time but recovered significantly when tested after drying. This study demonstrates that RH needs to be taken into account during the DSI testing of polymers

Implications on design of rapid manufacturing

During the last few decades, designers have been educated to develop designs with restricted geometry so that parts can be made easily. The revolutionary aspect of rapid manufacturing will be that geometry will no longer be a limiting factor. The introduction of rapid manufacturing will have a number of effects on design. It will be possible to have re-entrant shapes without complicating manufacturing, no draft angles, variable wall thickness, no split lines and fewer parts, leading to easier assembly and lower stock. The individual designer's method of working will change with the introduction of rapid manufacturing and also there will be changes to the overall design process

Modelling the effect of moisture on the depth sensing indentation response of a stereolithography polymer

Stereolithography (SL) resins are highly hygroscopic and their mechanical properties are significantly affected by the level of moisture in the environment. In addition, the load response of these materials is highly time dependent, hence, an appropriate rate dependent constitutive model is required to characterise their mechanical behaviour. In this work, the time dependent mechanical behaviour of an SL resin is investigated under varying humidity conditions using depth sensing indentation (DSI) tests. In the experimental study, a DSI system fitted with a humidity control unit was used to explore the influence of moisture on the mechanical properties of a SL resin. Samples were tested with 33.5%, 53.8%, 75.3%, 84.5% relative humidity (RH) inside the chamber while the temperature was kept constant at 22.5 C. It was seen that hardness and modulus decreased with increasing absorbed moisture in the resin. Material parameters obtained through bulk tests were used to develop a coupled stress-diffusion finite element model incorporating rate dependent material behaviour. It is proposed that this model can be used in predicting the effect of the environment on the performance of SL manufactured components