Ly, C. (2020). āAsk Me Anythingā Vaporwave Zine. Here it is, one week late, the result of my blood, sweat and tears. My Vaporwave zine. I ran into problem after problem trying to put this together but at long last, itās done and Iām relatively happy with how it turned out. Of course, I canāt help but compare myself to my peers - their work was amazing and this doesnāt even come close to being as good as the work of some others. Nonetheless I did my best and Iām just glad itās over. This zine was fun to do but oh boy was it stressful. I started out planning to do a video. Iād compiled all my assets and spent weeks watching tutorials trying to figure out how people did some of the intricate glitch effects on their photos. I even learnt how to code so I could create aĀ āvoiceā for my character - he was supposed to speak in Animalese (like Animal Crossing characters). But after weeks of experimenting, frustration and Adobe After Effects crashes, it just wasnāt going to work out.Ā Luckily, the knowledge Iād learnt from the tutorials was easily transferable to Photoshop, which is where I did the bulk of the zine.Ā For the intendedĀ ļ½ļ½ ļ½ļ½ļ½ļ½ ļ½ļ½ļ½, there were some rules that I set for myself in order to successfully emulate the feeling and message that vaporwave usually delivers. I didnāt limit my colour palette, but I ensured that blues and purples were the main colour scheme throughout. To emulate the mocking of consumerism, I ironically included many well known consumer brands, including the likes of Coca Cola, Nintendo and Fiji water. Itās also in vaporwaves name to work under aliases and not give credit to people, so I redacted all real-life name mentions throughout the zine.Ā As the zine progressed the pages would get less and less serious before ending on the error screen-like bibliography. If anyone bothers to translate the Japanese, it also get more and more crude in the later pages.Ā All in all, I just wish I planned to do a still zine from the beginning. Given that a video format might have been cool, it was way too ambitious of a goal given the limited time frame and my non-existent video editing skills in After Effects. However, Iām glad that I did spend the time to learn the basics as I now have really solid foundation for when Iām ready to finally properly learn how to use the program. This semester has been a fun exercise in creativity and the zine was the perfect way to end everything off!Ā
















