Hypercomics.net
Because regular comics just aren't fast enough.
You are here: Home ∼ Paradigm Flux (2000)

Paradigm Flux (2000)

Published by NEAL VON FLUE on January 25, 2023 | Leave a response

Paradigm Flux was my first foray into interactive comics online. Written by Steve Casares with the idea of interactivity in mind, the story was a sci-fi adventure/espionage story with branching narrative threads. In his 2001 paper “An examination of webcomics using McLuhan’s four laws of media” comic scholar Daniel merlin Goodbrey wrote:

Creators Steve Casares and Neal Von Flue take advantage of the opportunities offered by the hypercomic medium in their work-in-progress science fiction series, Paradigm Flux. Image maps are used to create hotspots within certain panels that can be clicked to open up new panels and sequences of panels in other windows. The reader can either choose to follow each page in numerical sequence, tracking the flow of panels from one page to the next, or they can opt to explore their own path through the story. If taking the latter route, any one particular page can act as a starting point from which they then progress through the narrative by a gradual process of enquiry into the images contained in each panel.

There was very little interactivity potential on webpages at the time, so the work relied heavily on hyperlinks and imagemaps to open new windows that contained other parts of the story. The webpage itself was the comic frame, as images were displayed in sequence in tables. As the reader progressed though the narrative vertically, we built in “horizontal” branches of story that would pop up in new windows.

While the storytelling and format were at the edge of digital capability, the artwork was traditional pencil work scanned in and lightly processed, a very early example of my interest in bridging the gap between traditional art and the growing digital world. This would inform the character of Frank Delbruck in The Jerk, and a couple decades worth of work after that.

Paradigm Flux ran for 16 installments. Here are a few examples of the art, upscaled from the recovered 500px wide original files.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged 2000, 2001, Dreams, Frank Delbruck, Metapanel, Vertical

You must log in to post a comment.

← Previous
Hypercomics.net began years ago in the golden age of webcomic creation. Back then, in the primordial bubbling ooze of the internet, the site was dedicated to formalism and experimentation in a digital environment. It has been a portfolio, a collective showcase, and a group blog, all dedicated to raising the awareness of online storytelling and multiple-path narration. This recent incarnation finds hypercomics.net working as a repository for the work of it’s founder, Neal Von Flue.

Tags

Infinite Canvas 2000 2002 2005 Metapanel Flash 2001 Dreams Horizontal Directions Politics Storylooping Frank Delbruck 2015 Vertical Webstrips 2003 Reviews Storytelling Backwards Underhunt 2004 Synesthesia Drive-In Halcyon Years

Other links:

Neal Von Flue.com
This Sorry Spacesuit Newsletter

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 Hypercomics.net.

Powered by WordPress and Live Wire.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.