Author: Isabel

For this assignment I wanted to create a fluid panel, so I started by searching my camera role for a series of concurrent photos. Once I found a series of photos that I thought would be humorous, I edited them together, only repeating the segment I wanted the audience to focus in on. When it came to adding text, I knew what I wanted the last frame’s caption to be, so I worked backwards to then fill in the first two. I found it difficult to decide what information should be written out and what could be left for the audience to gather from the actual images because I didn’t want to be redundant. The style of my Triptych is very much reminiscent of a meme, probably because most of the captioned images like this that I’ve seen have been memes so emulating a meme came naturally. I intentionally chose the “impact” font, which is popular in many memes, thus keeping with the theme. This assignment was unique in that it felt more like creating a comic than any of the other assignments because the three panels created a storyline. The short length of the comic was helpful because it demonstrated a simplified version of creating a comic, since we just focused on one short scene.

Click here to read the assignment prompt.

When choosing the topic for my visual note taking assignment I considered what classes have the most complicated material for me to understand. I chose my Latin 370 class because we are reading Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations and sometimes I struggle to grasp all the arguments he is making and all the rhetorical techniques he is utilizing. By including all the historical, political and social context on one page, I was better able to understand the tactics Cicero was using in his speech to the Roman Senate. Since I have an exam coming up this week on this topic, I found this exercise to be a great way to review and remember the greater context of the speech to help me better analyze and translate the individual portions later. Before today I had never studied for latin in a visual medium and I was surprised by how relieving if felt to get everything down on one page that had been floating around in my head. It felt as though I no longer had to worry about remember every thought I had had because now I had them written down and depicted so I would always have a reference to look to.

You can find the description of this assignment here.

When choosing what object to use for my multi media piece I took the time to notice the everyday objects in my life and look for ones with interesting shapes that I could harness for my project. When I was getting ready one morning I noticed the unique silhouette of my hairbrush and its handle’s similarity to the neck of a guitar. I decided I would use the hairbrush for my image but make it less conspicuous by facing the plastic needles downward on the page, thus drawing more attention to the outline it created. Since the hairbrush is bright pink, I decided to stick with a neon color palette to tie the piece together better. Since part of the guitar was blocked by the horizontal plastic bars of the brush, I chose a neon yellow for the hole in my guitar in hopes that it would shine through better. I added some bold lightning jolts in order to help animate the piece and help the viewer envision its radiating sound. For my title, I did a play on the rock band “Kings of Leon”, which fit my piece both for its neon colors and its musical focus.

Find the Sk2 prompt here:

Sketch 2: Sunday Sketches

When creating my avatar, I was inspired by my affinity for being sick, which I infused into my version of the popular comic archetype the superhero, thus merging my identity with the courses content. 

Since I was a kid I’ve always been the kid who missed a lot of school colds and in recent years I’ve faced major setbacks because of whooping cough, pneumonia, and low blood pressure. Because of how these physical challenges have forced me to persevere and grow, I have come to see illness as part of my identity. By making my superhero’s power her illness, I like to think I’m viewing the negatives in my life in a positive light by focusing on how they have shaped me into a stronger person. I tried to capture this vision of empowerment by positioning the tissue box in the girl’s outstretched arm as if it is a trophy. When I inserted my name at the bottom of the girl’s feet, I found I echoed the same feeling of strength as it reminds me of the podium an olympic medalist stands on.

I included the grey clouds in the background to illustrate my ongoing struggle with depression, which isn’t always present in my life, but certainly looms in the back of my head, or here, in the image’s background. 

I found this project very challenging because I have limited experience with photoshop, so it took a long time for me to navigate around the program and learn to execute the desired actions properly. A specific difficulty I encountered was that after spending a few hours making my avatar image, I saved it to discover the resolution was too low, and I didn’t know why it had become so low or how to fix it. When designing my avatar, I was weary of focusing too much on negative qualities that defined me, so I hope my design has a good balance that represents all sides of me.

Image Sources:

https://flamingtext.com/Name-Logos/Isabel

http://clipart-library.com/women-superhero-cliparts.html

http://pluspng.com/png-tissue-4704.html

https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/surgical-mask.html

http://www.sclance.com/clipart/grey-clouds-clipart/view-page-1.htm