Blending Mediums — Comics and Video Games

Over the course of the semester, we have studied the importance of comics as a medium and how that translates further into the genre. Comics have had a massive influence on popular culture, and a prime example of this is video games. Another example of a unique medium for storytelling, video games find their quality and standout amongst other media due to player interaction being necessary to experience them. Video games can have multiple endings, or multiple routes to the same ending, and this revolves around player choice and how they interact in the game. Players are given an immense amount of freedom that only has to exist within the bounds of the game and its rules. It is this quality that makes video games a unique and creative medium, and also one that helps bring comic book characters to life.

“Spider-Man” released on the PlayStation 4 in September 2018, telling us the story of an older, more experienced Peter Parker. Aside from a story that gives players another amazing Spider-Man performance, a feature of the game is collecting various suits that Spider-Man has worn in other iterations. One of these suits, the “Vintage Comic Suit”, applies a comic book style filter over Spider-Man and combining this with the game’s photo mode gave me the inspiration for this project.

I wanted to try and combine two mediums — using video games to create comic book style panels using filters and other in-game features. The goal of this project is to show off the capabilities of modern technology and comic book stories and original characters. These pictures are my attempt at fusing mediums!

Using McCloud’s views on comics and art in “Understanding Comics”, it is quite clear that comics and video games exist in a similar space of not always being considered art. However, if we are to trust McCloud, we can determine that anything and everything can be considered art. McCloud also discusses how comic book panels can convey an action through multiple and single panels, so that was the primary element I wanted to capture with these pictures.