Evaluation for my Fanzine

1. EVALUATION
Charlie Atkin

2. Research
For my research I tried to look at some fanzines that would give me an idea on how a
fanzine is laid-out as well as the type of content that is typically put into a fanzine as this is
content that I am new too and had never heard of a fanzine. For my fanzine I went onto
Issuu to look at some fanzines that have been uploaded by users and possibly have a
similar theme/content to what I want to make. For my research I looked at a concept style
fanzine (Trainspotting), a fanzine about classic comics (Alter Ego) and a fanzine about
classic videogames (Kilobyte). One of the main things I looked at was the use of colour
scheme and layout in the fanzines as the content can be a lot more different from
magazines but some of the common themes transfer from traditional magazines to
fanzines. One example of this is the Trainspotting fanzine which has a great use of colour
scheme as the front page uses yellow and then the artist/creator uses the same yellow
throughout all of the pages in the magazine, this helps to link all of the pages together.
When looking at some of my fanzines I was researching I realised that only one of the
fanzines had a style to what I would want to use similarly and this was Kilobyte as it had
certain pictures that were tilted to an angle with them going into where a text box would be
and the text wrapping around the image so that I don’t have an image with text on top or an
image on top of my text, wrapping my text around the main image allows me to show off
the main image as well as maximize the usable space on the page. I think that this
technique is very effective and worked well in my fanzine as one of the main parts of my
fanzine is the artwork as there are no titles as such to tell readers what the content of page
is but there is the artwork which matches the album so people know what page is about
what.

3. Research Continued
One main thing I had to take into consideration for my fanzine is the context of the fanzine
as for me, I am a modern listener so I have all of this access to the music that I want and I
can listen to whatever I want but for a big portion of my target audience they will have
grown up in the 70’s or 80’s and they won’t have had as ready access to the music, for one
in the modern society there is more of an accepting view on rock and metal whereas when
my target audience were growing up there was a less accepting view on this music so the
music might have been harder to come by or listen to at all but in modern times this
content is widely available to anyone with connection to the internet. I also needed to
understand that the music wasn't as accepted by people in the 70’s or 80’s but growing up I
had parents who listened to it themselves so they were very accepting of the music that I
listen to, like rock and metal and this might have been very different for some people. The
artwork that I have put in my fanzine is the album artwork for the album that I am reviewing.
I have had to make all of the artwork myself as I can’t use any copyrighted images in my
fanzine so making my own version of these is the best work around, plus I can add my own
parts to the artwork and stylize it my own way. One specific example of this is the artwork
for …And Justice For All, in the original artwork the art is a painting by brothers Roger and
Stephen Gorman so there is a lot of texture in the image as well as shadows and highlights
that I couldn’t mimic very well so I use marble as a texture on the entire picture, I was going
to apply a filter to the image but I think that the raw marble works very well. I also used
plain concrete in the background and for this one I added a filter over top to make it look
more like the cracked concrete background on the original artwork. The only thing about
the fanzine that might be daunting to a reader who isn’t into the genre of music they might
get confused on the topic of double page spreads.

4. Research Continued
After doing my research I went from wanting to do a magazine on the art of
classics in areas such as music, film, cars and artwork, to wanting to make a
more specific product and make a fanzine that would be based around classic
and hard rock with issues being specific to one band. For the issue I was going to
make I decided to pick Metallica as they are an amazing band in which I have a lot
of interest in and love to talk about so getting to go a fanzine based all around
them and I can be as biased as I want. So in the end after all my initial ideas I
didn't go with any of my initial ideas but I took inspiration from my first Initial
Ideas as I do like looking at classic stuff and music is one of the biggest things in
my life as I am always listening to music and this fanzine let me talk about the
passion I have for the music I listen to. I think that the research helped me to
discover the key parts of a fanzine that I need to have in my fanzine as well as the
conventions of a fanzine as this is new territory for me as I have only ever seen
the traditional media and that being magazines were everything is skewed by the
media to fit their narrative but fanzine are about the writers passion for the topic
they are talking about. I think that the topic I have picked is good as I will have a
fairly narrow target audience and I know people who fit within that target
audience so I can ask their opinion on elements of the fanzine if I am struggling.

5. Idea Development
When it came to idea development I decided to go to Google to look at and search
for images that were the first thing that came to mind when I thought about
Metallica or hard rock/metal as a genre. After doing my research I had an idea on
what/how I wanted to make my fanzine so I planned out a rough draft of the layout
of my fanzine in paper with a rough layout for some of the pages and an order in
mind. The main thing that I wanted to convey about the fanzine is the fact that
this issue is based on Metallica and that it won’t always be based around
Metallica and that there will be other bands each time, but I also wanted to
incorporate the style of the Metallica logo into the masthead of the fanzine. After
learning about Adobe Colour I inputted each image into the website where it
allowed me to pick out a colour scheme from different elements of each album to
give me a base colour scheme to each album that I could then use to make my
own images. I also started to collect information that is known about the band or
that is recognisable about the band such as Guitarist’s Kirk and James’ guitars
and some of the backstory about them. I also started to look at images and
posters for Metallica and looked at the fonts and colour schemes that the images
use. I then looked on sites like Dafont for fonts that fit the style of the product
that I want to make, so I started to look at fonts that had a more edgy, and rough
look to them as a lot of the fonts used around metal and rock are very rough
looking and this font style would work with my fanzine.

6. Idea Development Continued
When it came to making the masthead for my fanzine I knew that I would want the
actual name of the fanzine in the style of Metallica, so I looked at methods of
making a Metallica inspired word, this lead me to looking at Metallica fonts but
the issue was that all of the fonts where just the letters that spelt Metallica were
stylized and the rest of the font was just normal. So to overcome this I look at
other things that I could do, when searching I found a Metallica font generator
that would theme any words in the Metallica style, so I inputted the title of the
fanzine into the generator and it created that was similar to what I wanted to
create but the K on the end of Hard Rock didn’t look the best and I didn't think
that it fit on the title I took the image into Photoshop and then I looked at the
Metallica logo. The self made logo had similar aspects to the original but the k
really stood out so I copied the end of the H and flipped and trimmed down the
end to add onto the k and then I removed the top. Another thing that I looked at
during my Idea Development was posters that the band used at specific shows
when they were on tour, these art pieces were all made my different artists but
you can from the ones on the website that they all pull and use similar themes
and colour pallets, in a majority of the posters there is the use of orange, reds
and yellows, with black being the base colour a majority of the time. But there are
some outliers that use a lighter grey background or they use a purply blue or a
light blue, I think that the artists did this to help link it to the arena that the band
were playing in as both posters that use blue are in places that have a colder
climate, whereas some of the others have a warmer climate in general.

7. Idea Development Continued
One thing that I noticed is that a lot of the posters like to use skulls and this
means that even though the posters are used in different cities and
sometimes countries they all have a link and theme that goes along with
them, some of the artists use the theme of skulls along with something that
might remind people of the place that the poster is advertising.
After doing all of my mood boards and getting ideas to put into my fanzine I
started to look at Pagination and elements that I could put onto my fanzine.
One thing that I wanted to use would be a sticker on the cover that would
allow me to portray to people who aren’t my primary target audience what the
fanzine issue would be about. I also think that this added to the fanzine cover
as stickers are also added to magazines to add a handmade look to the
magazine that appeals to people. The sticker look can also add addition
information with the information sticking out and not blending in with the
background.

8. Idea Development Continued
After looking at some of the details for my front cover I started to look at the
order of the inside of my fanzine and what pages would go where inside. So
as I was reviewing my favourite albums from Metallica’s discography, I
decided on the albums, Ride the Lightning, Master Of Puppets, And Justice
For All, The Black Album, Through The Never and Hardwired to Self-Destruct.
These are all of the albums that I personally enjoy and this is why I enjoyed
the fanzine project as it allowed me to talk about the parts that I enjoyed and I
didn't have to talk about the albums that I didn’t enjoy as much. So I started to
plan out the order of my fanzine according to the year of release of the album
and this lead to my fanzine being according to year with the earlier albums at
the beginning of the fanzine and the later albums being at the end with my
double page spread for my interview being at the very end of the fanzine.
Then at the end of my Idea Development I started to look at my production
schedule for the duration of my fanzine.

9. Copy
For my copy document I started by writing up some questions that I thought I
could ask some Metallica fans and this could give readers an insight into
what other Metallica fans are fans of in particular and what their favourite
parts of the band are, so I wrote up some questions and I put a post up on a
Facebook group for the Rock/Metal festival called Download asking help on
the community to see if they would help with an interview. I got around 4
responses and I replied to the people and sent them my questions. After
getting all of my responses I copied them and inputted them into a document
and kept an individual copy of each interview so that I had them separate.
Then for the other half of the copy I spent it researching and listening to the
albums that I wanted to review, I started by listening through every that I
picked so I had a baseline for the albums. I then started to write up about the
albums whilst listening to the albums from the beginning.

10. Production
After finishing all of my documentation I started on production of my fanzine. I
decided that for my fanzine pages that I wanted the artwork as the backdrops and
after doing some tests of a minimalist style of artwork or a more true to life
version I decided on a more true to life version of the album artwork as it think
that it looked better than the minimalist version that I made. When it came to
making the album artwork I would have a Photoshop window open next to the
official album artwork. I had planned on drawing elements of artwork but as I
wanted a more real to life version, the pixelated brush that I usually use to draw
gave a more none realistic look to the drawings so I decided to use brushes for
elements of the artwork such as the clouds and lightning from the Ride The
Lightning. But for some of the more complex pieces of artwork I had to draw the
pieces to get them just right, but then I would combine these with other elements
to help portray the characteristics of the artwork. This is evident on the artwork
pieces like And Justice For All where I had to draw Lady Justice and then I
layered an image of white marble underneath the drawing. But for other pieces of
artwork such as Master of Puppets where I didn’t have to draw elements I made
them with shapes and images that I compiled and edited. I created the crosses in
the image by overlaying a layer over the actual artwork and then making it
transparent I also used some brushes on the eraser to give the grass a more
natural look.

11. Production
One of the pieces of artwork that I had a difficult time with was Hardwired to
Self-Destruct as for the original artwork on the album the band had a
professional photographer and a projector facing themselves projecting the
images onto their face. I could have achieved a similar effect but it would
have taken a lot of time to co-ordinate all of the parts of the photobooth and
the projector. Instead I tried to achieve the same effect within Photoshop, I
began by looking for images that had similar faces to what the band were
pulling in the official artwork. I then cut these images out of their images and
began to position the images onto the background and make the images go
together. I then began to layer them one over another and began to blend the
images together. I then began to overlay a rainbow effect to make the colours
work on the faces of the people. After working through all of the artworks I
began to make my document for my fanzine. I added all the pages into the
InDesign document and made sure that the document was long enough. I
then placed all of the pages into the document, this meant that if I updated the
Photoshop files the effects would take place in the InDesign document.

12. Production
After putting the artwork into the InDesign document I began to layout the
text for the fanzine. For most of the pieces of artwork I wanted my text to wrap
around elements of the images such as the lightning in Ride The Lightning.
For some of these I had to use spaces to layout the text around the lightning
but for others I got a layer with the element that I wanted the text to go around
and began to wrap the text around the image. I feel like throughout the
production part of the fanzine that I pushed myself as when I have made
things before I usually drawn the image but creating them with brushes and
other images was more of a challenge especially when I had to make sure that
the image looked enough like it’s original counterpart. I feel like overall the
project went fairly well, I could have spent some more time on the production
of my fanzine instead of the research and writing up time, apart from that I
think that the project went really well and I am happy with the final product of
the project.