The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Allstate, what’s in your wallet? Erm, I mean bag…

Sunday Sketch #6

Laptop: I carry this one around incase I get bored and want to watch youtube in my classes… In all seriousness, however, my laptop is probably my most important tool I keep in my bag. I use it everyday to do schoolwork, homework, etc. Without this, I would really struggle to get through my day.

Notebook: My notebook is full of messy notes and messier doodles. The contents of my notebook represent what I’ve learned so far at Emory. Without it, I would have a really hard time studying for my bio tests…

Pens/Pencils: For someone who has really messy handwriting, it seems like I have a lot of writing utensils. Although I don’t use my pen/pencil as much as I used to in high school, I still like to carry them around as it makes me feel prepared.

Cough Drops: You never know when you’re going to need a cough drop. That’s my whole reasoning.

Chapstick: Nobody likes chapped lips. Just take a tube of it wherever you go.

Water Bottle: “Hydrate or Die-drate”, that’s something my swim coach always used to tell me. I always make sure I carry around my water bottle now as drinking water is effective at washing out toxins and other bad things in your body. Plus, nothing tastes better than a cold, crisp sip of water!

Snacks: Keeping up those calories! I always try to make sure I carry around snacks because I know that I lose concentration when I’m hungry

Phone Charger: Probably my most important item… I always keep a spare phone charger in my bag because it seems that my phone always dies at the worst times, so, keeping a phone charger is a simple solution to combat that!

When looking at the contents of my bag, I really do think that it reflects who I am as a person. I try not to carry anything that’s unnecessary, mostly because it would just make my bag heavier. When creating the actual image, I decided to separate the picture of the bag from the contents because when I originally laid out the bag next to contents of the bag, the image became very messy. The most challenging part of this assignment was laying out my stuff in a way that looked aesthetically pleasing.

Speeding

Sunday Sketch #5

One of the biggest choices I made while creating this comic was to not use dialogue. I chose to do this because as I was brainstorming I found it vey hard to tell such a short story and use dialogue. I began to think about the saying, “A picture speaks 1000 words”. This made me start thinking about how I could tell a story with just images. I knew I wanted to use a sign for the first panel because it was an easy way to communicate what setting the scene is taking place. Once I knew I was using a speed limit sign the rest of my idea followed.

This Sunday Sketch was a little different from anything we’ve done so far because in the past we’ve just created a single picture. Now, however, we have to combine 3 different pictures to create a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Personally, I prefer this because it forced me to think about both what I was drawing and how it would fit into something bigger, in this case the comic.

Tracing Reflection

The act of tracing a comic for this assignment was a really good brainstorming technique for me. Before tracing the panels, I had a theme in my head that I wanted to write about, however I didn’t have any specific details in mind that I could talk about. As I traced the different panels, it gave me time to think about what I was going to write about. By the time I had finished annotating, I felt confident that I could refer to certain details from the page to support the theme I wanted to talk about. Actually writing the essay was probably one of the easier tasks of this assignment. I had never written inductively before but I believe it was an easier process because I didn’t have to worry about an extra intro or conclusion paragraph. The one comic technique that I really took away from reading these comics was that position of the characters in the panel. Height differences matter, facial expressions matter, it’s as if you’re watching a movie and you have to look out for certain small details that give clues to how the characters interact. Overall, I feel as if my knowledge of graphic novels has expanded and I am better equipped with reading techniques the next time I read a graphic novel. 

https://nixstudent.wordpress.com/what-did-i-do-wrong/

Time For Water

(Sunday Sketch #4)

Creating this photo was a lot more straight forward than I had previously thought it would be. I expected it to be very hard to edit 2 different photos together, but the hardest part of the project was actually finding two things to combine in one photo. Originally, I wanted to take a picture of a building and have something lean up against it, such as a ladder or person. As I was walking around, however, I came across a clock tower and thought that it had a lot more potential to be used in my photo. I sat down for a while and brainstormed what I could use the clock tower for, when I realized it kind of looked like a faucet coming out of the ground. So, I edited the clock tower into a faucet.

I think that this image conveys creativity and demonstrates that everyday things that you see can be used to create something totally different.

Sunday Sketch #3

I thought that drawing out my notes using the method of visual note taking was very interesting and unfamiliar. Normally when I take notes I just scribble down information and review it later. Doing this exercise, however, forced me to go over all the information I recorded in class and choose the most important parts to rewrite. I feel like this actually helped me retain the information more because: 1. I had to review the information to do this Sunday sketch and 2. I rewrote it which made me remember the information even more than I had before. https://eng181f19.davidmorgen.org/assignments/sketches/sketch-3-visual-note-taking/

Sunday Sketch #2

Who knew fruit could be this much fun?

Although I love to draw and doodle, I know I’m not the best artist. However, this doesn’t stop me from letting my creative side from putting pencil to paper, or brush to canvas.

In this sketch, I decided to use a banana as a slide, and drew some stick figures around it to show how the slide worked. This idea came to me very unexpectedly, as I was trying to figure out what I was going to use as an object to draw around. I had been looking through the examples posted on the website for some inspiration, when all of a sudden I saw my banana across the room that I had saved from lunch. I remember thinking to myself that I really liked the idea of using something that has organic curves in it, as you can use those curves for so many different things.

Originally, I wanted to use the banana as a gun, and have a hand holding it. That idea faded when I remembered Banksy had already done that, and his version would definitely be better than mine. I then thought of using the banana as the smile for a face, but thought doing that was kind of the easy way out of this project. Eventually, I came back to the organic curves of the banana and the idea of the slide popped into my head!

Literacy Narrative pt. 1 Reflection

My process for writing this narrative consisted of me drawing out a time line on a piece of paper and marking it with important dates that had to do with reading and/or writing. I just started putting down as many memories as I could remember without thinking about what they were or how all the memories fit together. When I stepped back and looked at the timeline, I realized that there was a clear pattern of my experience reading. I found it surprising that as a kid I read so much, and all of a sudden, I didn’t read books at all. I hadn’t even realized that I had done that because I was always so distracted using my phone. I think the most interesting sentence in my essay is: “As time went on I slowly spent more and more time using my phone and less time reading, which led to less motivation to write.” I believe that this sentence highlights how my love for reading slowly deteriorated as I spent more time using technology. This sentence is also very relatable for many other teens as I feel as if my experience is shared among many of my peers. 

Literacy Narrative:

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/page/nixstudent.wordpress.com/29

Sunday Sketch #1

I chose to make my avatar an image of me standing alone on Earth for two reasons. First, I’m an only child and I’ve had to learn to do a lot of things myself. I never had an older brother to teach me how to throw a football, or a little sister to play dress-up with. The image of me standing alone represents how I’ve learned to conquer my own world. In the picture, it may seem as if I’m lonely, as the only thing around me are stars and the vast universe. In reality, me standing alone is my way of showing that I’m perfectly content with learning and exploring my surroundings with nothing but my own thoughts.

The second reason I chose to use this picture as my avatar is my greatest fear is space. To me, space represents the unknown, and in this picture I’m surrounded by nothing but the unknown. This, however, doesn’t bother me because I believe that the only way that I can grow as a person is by surrounding myself with my fears. By doing this, I will eventually learn to overcome them. Sure, I may be scared in the beginning, but eventually I’ll become accustomed to my surroundings and I’ll be able to move on past what was once holding me back. This will allow me to continue to grow and prove to me that getting out of my comfort zone can have positive outcomes.

Images used: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1440&bih=706&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=NLN1Xe2rG-2P5wLozr1o&q=earth+in+space&oq=earth+&gs_l=img.1.0.0i67l4j0l3j0i67j0l2.19651.20337..21414…0.0..0.57.295.6……0….1..gws-wiz-img.sMH3Y3SCXgE#imgrc=ouzI-rmreH-qwM: Images used:

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