Festival of Stars Fanzine

The last zine that I was involved in this year was the zine called "Festival of Stars". The zine is based on the video game series "Persona". Throughout my time at university, I have also included references to this game throughout my work because the video game is one of my main inspirations due to its unique art style and being my favourite video game. Furthermore, I also included it within my work, especially the Blizzard Book I created for the typography module in my first year of university.

The premise of the persona series is that it follows a group of high school students set in different settings around modern Japan. Each story takes place over the year, during which characters will attend school, celebrate holidays, and confront conflicts with the help of their personas. My favourite would be the latest edition of the series "Persona 5" in modern-day Tokyo, which follows the high school student known by the pseudonym "Joker" who transfers to a new school after being falsely accused of assault and put on probation. There are many reasons why this is my favourite video game in general, but the main pointers would be the art style, characters, and the soundtrack. For this zine, I was appointed for the role of digital merchandise artist, and I was to create a Laptop/PC wallpaper of one of the games within the series.

For my final idea for the digital wallpaper, I decided to base the concept on "Lo-fi Girl" (a music company that has a 24/7 YouTube stream called "lo-fi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to". It is called that as whilst the Lo-fi music is being played, there is an animation almost Studio Ghibli style of a girl studying/ relaxing. In Persona 5, because you play as Joker, who is a high school student who, of course, has to study for his exams, I decided to create a Lo-fi version of Joker of him studying in the café where he also lives (long story rather not spoil that too). This was one of my best ideas, as I love listening to this stream, especially when I'm writing (I am listening to the stream as I am writing this post). Many people take inspiration from Lo-fi Girl to create their own versions due to it being an online phenomenon, and I wanted to pay homage to both media.

Even though my wallpaper design for this zine was my favourite, it was the bane of my existence. I had a tough time drawing Joker, especially as I didn't know how to draw him in his position, especially his back and arm. Before colouring in, I had two different versions of the linework because I hated how both of them looked initially. Still, it wasn't until I started refining and colouring in the illustration it began to come together. Again, this was a super challenging process for me as an artist because it was such a complicated piece. I had to consider many different elements when creating the illustration and ensuring it all made sense and looked correct. Still, it ended up paying off (despite wanting to give up at certain points), and like I previously mentioned, this drawing, in particular, has become one of my favourite pieces of work that I have ever done.

When animating the wallpaper, I didn't really encounter any difficulties. Still, I did receive feedback from Andrew that Joker appeared too static compared to other parts of the wallpaper (the cat Morgana for example). To further develop the animation side of the wallpaper, I went back and altered the animation to make him blink in-between frames to make him feel more alive within the wallpaper. I also noticed minor errors in the clock animation as it jolted back an hour between two frames, so I fixed that also.