Images and Original Content

Images and Original Content

In this blog I am going to be discussing how I went about taking photos for the images I plan to use in my magazine's table of contents and the different article titles I will be using and how it relates to the video game magazine genre.

Photos and Edits

I only took a few photos that I want to use for the table of contents. This is because I only plan to use three total pictures in the table of contents. In my Table of Contents Research and Drafts post I said that I will most likely be using my first sketch as the basis for my table of contents. The three photos have corresponding articles which are the main article, the consoles article, and the winner/gamer article (working titles). 

Photo #1

For the first photo I wanted to do the winner/gamer article. For this photo I used an image of myself. The first thing I did was remove the background because an image of the subject standing in front of a door is not very in line with the conventions of gaming magazines.

Next, I attempted to add a background. If you remember my post Cover Photo you will know how much I have struggled with this before. Again, I struggled with finding an appropriate background for the image.

After fiddling with the backgrounds, I realized that I should adjust the size of the image so that it would not show up in Canva as the background but still not making it noticeable that only half of my arm was present.

I tried again with the backgrounds and tried looking for a pattern background this time instead of a gradient and found one that I really liked and thought fit in with the digital nature of video games.

I wasn't entirely liking the red and the different shades of red, but I felt like it would work in the meantime. Then, because I wanted the end product to be a picture of me and the word "Winner," I began trying different fonts that I felt would fit the video game magazine genre. In the end I went with a font in Canva called Norwester which is a sans-serif font which I felt reflected the technological aspect of gaming magazines.

After I did this, I felt like the text did not make the image dynamic enough. So, I used Canva's effects to give the text a shadow and I increased the size of the text to make it even more exciting.

This made the image look much better, but I realized that in this image I am not even smiling. This greatly diminished any of the energetic energy I was trying to get into the image, so I retook the photo, and applied the same effects I did before.

After I dealt with that issue, I decided to tackle the issue of the background once again to figure out which pattern and color might work best.

In the end, I decided on a blue-green color for the background which I felt had a little bit of the intelligence of blue but also had some inherent quality to it that I could not describe that I felt worked really well. I also changed the pattern of the background so that it was still the hexagons which I felt like were very intelligent but had less variation in the shades, so it was not too distracting. This the completely edited version of the photo which will be going into the table of contents.

I plan to put this image under the main image in the middle of the page in accordance with the sketch I planned out in my post Table of Contents Research and Drafts. This image will be connected to an article about a video game tournament winner

Photo #2

For my second image I wanted to edit the image I would use for the main image of the table of contents. I originally planned to use an image I had already taken for the cover photo but the potential photos I had in mind did not meet my specifications, so I decided to take new photos and used the opportunity to add some variety. In this case, because the image was going to be related to the cover photo, I used one of the same toys I used as the subject for this photo, but I changed the background I used.

I added the Eldar Photogenic filter in Canva to get some much needed vibrance to the image’s colors. This makes the image pop much more which is very in line with the conventions of gaming magazines. For this image I am not trying to capture as much of the nostalgic energy I wanted in the cover image, so this is the final edit for this image. 
I plan to place this image in the middle of the page as the main image of the table of contents. This image will be connected to the article about how playing versus games can bring out our inner child.

Photo #3

For my third image, I used a picture I had previously taken for the cover image. This image is of two video game controllers against a gray to black gradient. In my post Cover Photo, I detailed the arduous process of editing this photo and now I plan to make some final adjustments, because as I stated in the post I still felt like after all of the editing I did it was not good enough to be the cover photo.

I started off with increasing the size of the two controllers so that they take up more space and are clearly the focus of the image.

I decided that the controllers were too close together, so I put some space between them. I did this by duplicating the image, removing the background on both images and adding a new background in then cropping out the controller in one photo then cropping out the other controller in the other photo. I felt like with this space between the two controllers the division between them could be clearly expressed without it being too explicit, so this is the final edit for this image.

I plan to place this image under the main image and next to the image of the winner which are both adjacent to their respective articles. This image's article is about comparing and contrasting two controllers often used for playing fighting games.

Article and Section Titles

Section Titles

I plan to have four total sections that the articles will be divided into, and each section will have a distinct title. I chose to use some wordplay when creating the titles that are related to the genre of fighting video games. My first section is called "Frame Advantage". This title uses a term that is common in fighting games which refers to when one player uses a move that is faster than their opponent. I chose this title because I want this section to be the "first looks and early access" articles for the magazine. These sorts of articles are a staple in gaming magazines. My second section is "Reviews," this section is very self-explanatory, each article will focus on the different aspects of a game and then give the game a rating. The point of this section is to inform the audience and is a common practice in the gaming magazine genre. The next section will be called "Rushdown" which is a commonly used term in fighting games but in this case, I am using it as a play on words of rundown which is a word for a summary of information. I plan to have this section contain articles related to the various happenings within the fighting game community. The fourth section will be called "Assessment". For this section I plan to have articles that give the writers opinions on things in the fighting game community as well as just miscellaneous fighting game-related things. The final section is the Features section which will not be explicitly named but it will encompass the important articles of the issue that get their own images in the table of contents.

Article Titles

For the articles I will be pulling from the coverlines I have previously made which you can see in my post, Digital Mockups. 

For the "Frame Advantage" section I plan to use the article titles as follows: 

12 The Return of Bloody Roar

13Tekken X Street Fighter Finally Back 

15 Them's Fightin' Herds 2

18 The Next Edition of Rivals of Aether. 

For the "Frame Advantage" section I wanted to have the articles feature the titles of the games and a little bit of text so that it could be easily recognizable. 

The "Reviews" section will contain the following article titles: 

21 Guilty Gear Rhexis 

22 Street Fighter 6 

25 King of Fighters 16 

27 Street Fighter Alpha 3: Revitalized 

28 Smash Bros. Absolute 

30 Injustice 3 

32 BlazBlue: Overheld 

34 Samurai Shodown 5. 

For the reviews I wanted to keep the titles simple and just list them as the game titles themselves so as to not distract a reader looking for a specific review.

For the "Rushdown" section the articles are as follows:

37 Tokido's Tournament Win with Juri?!

38 The Mortal Kombat 13 Controversy

40 Marvel VS Capcom 12 Not what Fans Expected

41 Tough Love Arena Gets a PS4 Port

43 Dead or Alive Implements Rollback

46 Fantasy Strike; The Best Game for Newbies?

I wanted the "Rushdown" section to be a lot more laidback in terms of language used, so I did not make it as robotic and focus more on attention grabbing titles, like using questions and exclamation marks.

The "Assessment" section will have the following articles:

49 Bad Netcode; Player, System, or Game?

51 Interview with the New Director of Skullgirls

54 Is it Time for an Art of Fighting Reboot?

55 The Problem with Arena Games

57 An Argument for Zoning

61 Ranked Matches; the Bane of Every Casual

64 Why Anime Games are so Different from Traditional Games

Similar to the "Rushdown" section I wanted the "Assessment" section to use more laidback language. In this case, I wanted the language to be more relaxed because the articles of this section are supposed to be more of opinion pieces and the personal feelings of the writers, so I wanted the titles to reflect that by using things like question marks.

For the "Features" section the article titles are as follows:

6 How Versus Games Bring Out the Child in Us

8 Controller VS Fightstick; Which is Best?

11 Wednesday Night Fights Most Recent Victor

I wanted the "Features" section to be more of a mixed bag when it came to the language used but mostly falling into the more formal range. In the title of the main article, I used the word "Us" which is the first instance of me using first person which I wanted to do to help establish a more personal connection to the audience through this article. The article "Controller VS Fightstick; Which is Best?" is the article I plan to be my two-page spread. This is because the article is one article that I have done a lot of thinking about, and I feel it will be easy to take pictures for the two-page spread.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that all of my images and article titles connect to the conventions of gaming magazines very well. I feel that the images are still subject to change but for now they are very good where they are at. The titles of the articles are great, and I think strongly connect the conventions of video game magazines but in the future, I may add even more titles to fill up more of the page which is a common practice in gaming magazines. I think that the final product for the table of contents will turn out great.