D20 ZINE JAM

WHAT IS THIS?

Inspired by game jams, where people are challenged to make a game within a short period, a zine jam is a fun challenge to make a zine in a short period of time—in this case, a month!Remember, almost anything can be a zine. Zines can be a solo work or with as many people as you like, and doesn’t have to be restricted to art or writing (cosplay photos, embroidery photos, music albums, mini big bangs, etc.) If you’ve been looking for motivation to challenge yourself with a creative hobby, this is your chance!

SO HOW DO I JOIN?

1. It's recommended you join our Discord server! This is the hub where projects will be organised, and while zines can have separate discord servers/groupchats, this will be the way to meet fellow mods and contributors!
2. Have a zine idea? Feel free to let us know the deets: What’s the theme? What kind of media are you accepting? Are you doing it solo, or as a team? If you don't have a zine idea, you can simply join an existing project!
3. Get creating! It’s never too late to join the jam, so even if you miss the initial buzz, there are bound to be projects to join or do! There's no formal sign-up, all you need to qualify is to…
4. Submit the zine to our itch.io page before the deadline, August 1st.
5. At the end of the period, zines will be revealed, and displayed on our itch.io page in a gallery for anyone to look at!

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RULES

1. The zine must be Dimension 20 related. Any season is up for grabs!
2. The zine must be submitted to our itch.io page before the deadline of August 1st to be part of the zine jam reveal, and you MUST approve your participation in the itch co-op bundle.
3. No NSFW (Nudity, Heavy Gore, Explicitly Sexual) content will be allowed; there are minors in the community and it's too difficult to moderate.
4. No hate speech or bigotry will be allowed.
5. All art/media submitted must be your own or used with permission from the artist.
6. Do not post full zines before the zinejam reveal date.
Apart from that, zines can be whatever you want them to be!Have fun!

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FAQ

What is a zine? What kind of zines can I submit?A zine is an unofficial publication of creative works, centered around a specific theme. Traditionally, a zine is a booklet that usually follows a particular theme or topic, made by one person or a small group. They can be as short or long as you like, and can be any size or format (though to qualify for this event they should be distributed digitally)! They can be multimedia, and include fanart, fanfiction, photos, essays, personal journals, games, animation, music, etc. (You are also free to turn your digital zine into a physical zine after the event, but make sure you’ve taken that into consideration before starting.)Want to run a Mice & Murder Cluedo zine? A Fantasy High OCs zine? A Crown of Candy cosplay photo zine? Just 20 pages of Riz Gukgak doodles? That's perfect!I've never made a zine before, where do I start?Start with an idea, and decide the format: do you want to go solo or work with other creators? What kind of works are you accepting? What size limit/format do you want them to be in?If you're opening up the zine for contributors, it's recommended that the zine be free for anyone to join throughout the whole month period, and that you set a deadline 3-4 days before the final zine jam due date so you have time to format!The mods are all experienced event contributors and organisers, and they’re here to help if you want to learn about zine-making—designing graphics, formatting the pdf, scheduling things, etc. There are plenty of resources (and friendly people) in the Discord server!What if I can't finish on time?That's okay! You're allowed to drop out (though please do so with consideration for your team if you're doing a collab), or you can submit an unfinished zine. You can then update the zine after the deadline with late submissions if you wish (or leave them unfinished). Zines that you started previous to this event can also be submitted.Do you know any good programs to format PDFs?Adobe InDesign is the most well-known formatting program, but we're aware that many (most) people cannot afford it, so here are some alternatives beyond *cough* being a pirate *cough*. Affinity Publisher is a great one-time-payment program alternative, while the open-source app Scribus is a great free program (we recommend this tutorial for getting started). Canva is also a well-known alternative, and it comes with design templates as well! The Electronic Zine Maker (slight eyestrain warning) is a great free option made by an indie developer made with foldable paper zines in mind, but it's also very useful for formatting zines to be embedded digitally on the itch.io website when combined with these tutorials. This website is another alternative! Your native document program (Preview, Word, Pages, etc.) can also be used to format zines, though may take a bit more wrangling.Who's running this?Sam, Emma, and August are experienced zine modders and contributors, and you may know them as mods for a bunch of Dimension 20 zines and projects like the Calorum Cookbook, CALZINE, DECALOGUE, and D20 Exchange. You can find Sam on Twitter here, Emma here, and August here.

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