The Making Of… Creating Media Content

After a flurry of activity, and a mini heat wave, things at Hooked On Patterns have settled down.

During the quiet time, I began working on the all new Gonk crochet patterns soon to be released. I thought it would be interesting to provide a peek behind the curtain at the creative and development process for this project.

With every crochet pattern release we consider whether supporting media would be beneficial. It is normally this blog, or A Gonk’s Journey, where more thought is put into creating additional media content. It’s always fun to work out where the Gonk will go next and then implement the idea.

Unlike 2016, when every month saw a new Gonk outfit, comic strip and story, this year new outfits are released as time permits and on special occasions. So far we have released 1 Pack, the Transport Museum Gonks, and 2 special occasion patterns (Valentine’s Cupid Gonk and the Easter Bunny Gonk). The current WIP is for the second Gonk Pack of 2017.

CREATING WEBSITE CONTENT

‘Website Content’ or ‘Media Content’ does reasonably define the end goal, but both phrases are horrible labels for creativity.  Ultimately, you need to be able to engage with the creative process for the ‘Content’ to be any good. The goal is to have a colourful, engaging, presentation for the website. Thankfully, the Gonk was a blank canvas to begin with. He could have gone anywhere and done anything. The idea was to keep him that way. To set him apart in a world of acceptable fantasy.
All boundaries to future creative development were effectively removed with the creation of Adam Gonk, the Actor.

FINDING A CREATIVE THEME AND MAKING IMAGES

The first thing to do is decide on a theme -to settle on the idea that will group the new Pack together. Any addition to the Gonk has to be in keeping with the fun fairy-tale story telling of the original A Gonk’s Journey.

There is an unofficial check list for any theme/idea:
1. It can not breach anyone’s copyright. This just means that it will be an original unique story with images made to order.
2. It has to be interesting and/or fun to us, and therefore (hopefully), interesting and/or fun to you.
3. It has to be something new. Something that we haven’t already done.

We had a great idea for the new Gonk Pack. With all 4 outfits chosen the work began on creating the crochet patterns, but that’s the easy part.

We needed to develop a story to go along with it, to bring this chapter of Adam Gonk’s adventures to life. The ‘story’ is the imaginary world Mr Gonk will find himself in. The ‘Splash Image’, the main image for the Pack, is created based upon this imaginary world.

Normally we create secondary/supporting images. On this occasion we created 7 CGI images. Alongside these, we will have photos of the Gonk in the new outfits. These are generally higher resolution, so that you can see the detail of the crochet.

The idea is to have fun with the concept and to produce images that would work on the website, while also being suitable for different social media platforms.

WRITING THE STORY AND ADMINISTRATION

The story (the narrative / body of text) has normally already been worked out at the beginning. The story may be written before, during or after the process of crochet pattern designing or image creation. For this project, the story was written last – yesterday in fact.

Once the entire project is complete, the administration begins. Releasing a crochet pattern, and associated media, can be lengthy. As with any creative process, it is exciting to see how people respond to the work.

First we update this website, including (in this case) the creation of 3 website pages:
1. A page for the new Pack.
2. A blog page which will contain the images and carry the narrative.
3. A page containing the free crochet pattern from the Pack.

The crochet pattern is then uploaded to our distributors (dependant on if the pattern suits the external platform). In this case, with the new Gonk outfits, 1 of the 4 crochet patterns will be free. The free pattern will be available to view on this website, and the downloadable PDF Pack with all 4 outfit patterns will be available for purchase here, but it will also be available at Raverly and Etsy.

Finally, we tell the world as best we can, that there are new Gonk outfit crochet patterns available. This is where you can help! 😉 We keep 1 pattern free so that everybody can enjoy the release without cost, and we charge a small fee for the entire Pack, just £1.50.

I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes peek. If you did, please use the share buttons – thank you!

©​ Copyright L.Ryan, Hooked On Patterns.com