Hello. My name is Hardie J. Tucker. You can call me hardiejt. I live in Ulladulla on the south coast of NSW, Australia. I am currently completing my doctorate in design.

The focus of my study is a 30 year project that began as a screenplay for a low budget horror film: Family Slaughter (Pigott and Tucker). This morphed into a single issue back and white comic (Pigott, Gurney, Pound, Mort). After all these years I am now engaged in the task of turning this comic into a motion comic, a form of hybrid media that remediates the comic panels with color, texture, motion, cinematics, animation, voice, sound effects and music. I am undertaking this project with the help of 2 collaborators: John Laidler (sound artist) and Tim Pigott (screen writer and comic designer). I have also been lucky to have some friends donate their time and voices for the characters in this show.

Here is an episode: Episode 18 - Dien Bien Phu

As you can imagine, preparing a motion comic is a very slow process of unpacking and reconstructing each panel, before animating it and recording and adding your sound. It helps to have a script. I am not an illustrator, and no new illustrations were drawn. When you start tearing a panel apart you realize you only have bits of bodies, holes in the background and partial objects. Reconstructing the panels with all the separations and layers is the first step before you can animate. To do this I made use of textures and photographic resources, blended with the illustrations. For example, episode 18 above was substantially based upon the remediation of one double page from the comic:

This reconstructed double forms the basis for an intensive cinematic exploration of the surface of the page. I hope this gives you a basic introduction to what I am trying to achieve with this project. Ultimately I hope to compile all the episodes into a feature length motion graphics horror narrative. I have inspired by other pioerring motion comics including The Watchmen, Afterworld, NAWLS and Godkiller: Walk Among Us

So that is my short introduction. There are many things I would like to discuss in more detail in upcoming blogs. There is a lot to the backstory. I am also very keen for feedback and discussion on issues of hybrid media, motion comics, horror and design. I am looking forward to engaging the Steemit community.