Factual Evaluation

1. Fanzine Evaluation
Alexander Sullivan-Cree

2. Research
• Throughout the research stage of the project I thought that the Initial Ideas was probably
the strongest aspect as I feel compared to the rest of research it was more detailed and
fleshed out with a range of ideas. The 3 ideas I came up with were: 1970’s Punk Rock,
Conspiracies and Final Fantasy. Even though I am passionate about all of these ideas I
chose to do the final piece on Final Fantasy which is a video game franchise I am deeply
passionate about and know a lot about. I thought this would be the best subject for my
fanzine as it allows me to get the knowledge I know about the series to a wider audience
and I also thought it would be more fun to write about something I care about.
• I believe that the existing products section of research was okay but a little
underdeveloped. However, the existing products allowed me to see what's already out
there for the viewers to read and what aspects of each fanzine works well and is
appealing to the reader. I tried to chose fanzine which were similar in topic to the ones I
intended to write however it was almost impossible to find similar ones with the only one
I could find being a punk rock fanzine on the website issue. This forced me to pick ones
that looked good and creative rather than ones I hoped would give me inspiration on.
This was probably a weakness that couldn't be avoided however the ones I did write still
gave me an insight to popular aspects to fanzines.
• A weakness in my research I would have to say would be the summary as I struggled to
write a powerful and effective answer to the question “Summarise what you learnt about
fanzines” as I previously said it was difficult to find related fanzines with the topics I
intended to write about. I was able to give an answer however this is defiantly the
weakest point of the research. If I had more time I would go back and give a more
detailed answer.

3. planning
• Planning for probably one of my strongest parts throughout this project as I already knew all
the information I would be putting into my fanzine, all I had to do was create a layout and
choose a colour scheme and font. For the font, I had to choose three different ones. One for
the fanzine title, one for the subtitles and finally one for the text throughout the fanzine
making up the bulk of the pages. For the colour scheme, I decided to stick with the colour
scheme of Final Fantasy V which is my favorite game from the franchise. I also modeled the
fanzines front cover after that games box art.
• During the planning stage of the project I went through a variety of pagination changes.
Originally I wanted to write about more than one Final Fantasy game however I decided that
the best course of action would be to stick to a single game from the franchise allowing me to
easily segment the information into single character sheets rather that scattered around the
fanzine. Another reason for doing this was because it would allow the reader to more easily
follow the story of the game and the fanzine itself.
• However, the biggest problem when it came to planning was again the amount of times I
changed my pagination as it messed up everything else such as the information I’d gathered for
the different articles and I had to change the design of the article pages throughout the fanzine
until I had the correct amount of pages as well as a pleasing design. If I were able to go back
and change something about planning I would’ve been to pick one Final Fantasy game from the
beginning instead of switching towards the end of planning. More work could have defiantly
been done of the mood board and fonts but the main problem again I would say need to we
the amount of written information of the PowerPoint.

4. Time management
For this project, I believe that I used my time mostly effectively and wisely. Thanks to the research and
planning that I did prior to production and choosing a subject topic that I actually had an interest and
prior knowledge, I believe that this helped a lot and persuaded me to work harder. There were a few
setbacks like having to restart my entire fanzine because of corrupted and having some mental and
physical health issues however, the product I finished with was a lot better than I could’ve hoped for with
a lot of useful information for anyone unaware or ill formed about the final fantasy franchise. The use of a
production schedule was also extremely handy and helpful. This tool allowed me easy set targets to
achieve throughout the week without complicating things. During the first week, my main objectives
were to create the page layouts for all 16 pages, draw the illustrations for the pages which involve
illustrations and scan those illustrations into Adobe illustrator. I believe that I successfully managed to do
this and that goes for the following 2 weeks of productions. If I were to have more time, I probably
would’ve spent that creative more pages and trying to make it look more professional. The look I ended
up with was more of a notebook book style kind of book which it was I intended however looking back I
would’ve preferred to do a more smart and stylish looking fanzine instead.

5. Technical Qualities
• Between these two fanzines, there seems to be a lot more differences than similarities
but this isn’t necessarily a bad or good thing. I think this is mostly because mine is a lot
more simplistic and mediocre and less professional than the ‘Hyper Play RPG’ fanzine.
Furthermore, ‘Hyper Play RPG’ was a professional fanzine as people could and did
actually buy them. This allows the producer of the fanzine to hire a person specifically
for the writing and another specifically for the design and editing which minimalises the
risk of spelling errors as well as giving it a more professional writing styles as well as
design style
• One of the only few similarity I can see is the fact that they’ve included a video game full
art front cover. For my front cover I used the Final Fantasy V box art, where as Hyper
Play has used Earthbound (Mother 2) fan art as their front cover.
• The other similarity I can see between the two fanzines is the few words of Japanese in
the top right corner of the front cover. This is typical in a lot of magazines such as NEO
and other video game and Japanese related magazines. I included mine however as all
Final Fantasy game box art has the name of the game In Japanese either below or above
it so I wanted to stick to that design.
• For differences there are a lot compared between the two, for one the Hyper play
magazine is a more generalised fanzine focused on more than just one game and series
however, my fanzine is specifically for the Final Fantasy Franchise. Furthermore, the
professional one is only for Nintendo based RPG’s unlike mine which is for all platforms
that the games are on.
Personal Existing
• Another difference between the two are
the masthead as Hyper Play RGP is laid out
a lot more professional and more like a
magazine which a sub heading above the
masthead. On the existing product there
also happens to be issues numbers with
this issue being #4. This is a feature that my
fanzine doesn’t include which is wish now
that I included somewhere.
• My fanzine however includes a Japanese
signature stamp which I decided to add so
other know that it belongs to me, kind of
like the penguin on Penguin Books
publishing.

6. Aesthetic Qualities
Aesthetically I think my work is okay, however I would’ve
improved it a lot looking back at it now. I was trying to achieve a
somewhat notebook look with things looking like posted notes
and looking like it written on lined paper. I think I achieved this
look and I am somewhat happy with the way it looks but
comparing it to a lot of other fanzines I think I would stick to a
more professional look next time which something inline with
the Hyper Play magazine which I compared on the slide above. If
I were to redo this project or something similar down the line I
would defiantly use this is experience on what I need to change
and what I need to keep the same. For the things I would
change, It would have to be the image and text layout as it looks
very cramped and hard to understand which piece of text
belongs to which piece article especially on the interview on
which I interviewed Nobuo Uematsu which composed the music
for Final Fantasy. If I were to do this again I would also change
the amount of original artwork I would include in my fanzine as I
didn’t include much of my own work but used images I could
find online, I don’t think this was a good idea as it makes the
magazine look rushed and again less professional however as
the look I was going for was a notebook/scrapbook I can see
how that would make sense in that style.
Another thing I would change Aesthetically would be the front
cover as it doesn’t look like a fanzine/magazine front cover at all.
Very little design work was done of the front cover as the text
was the only thing to be changed from Final Fantasy to Final
Fanzine. All the other aspects of the front cover were done be
using images found online and stretched to sit an a5 landscape
sheet. The Square and SNES logo were also done this way as well
as the main feature image. The signature stamp in the bottom
right was also done by myself however this wasn’t done to the
best of my ability and personally I think it shows as it seems
rushed. Compared to a professional fanzine mine is far behind
on looks however the writing in the fanzine I believe I did fairly
well on as it manages to get a lot through to the reader with an
easy language to read and segmented notes to keep track of.