The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

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.

At first I put way too much thought into this project. I wanted to make something truly artistic and deep and profound. Then I realized I was spending too much time thinking about it so I forced myself to start drawing and make it up from there. Here is my first, and quite frankly frightening, idea:

For some reason this comic cracked me up. I couldn’t stop laughing. But for another, somehow unclear, reason I didn’t feel it was the right comic for this assignment. So then I settled for the strawberry idea. The main struggle I had was coming up with a quick three beat narrative that told a story. I think this is why I went first to a basic three line joke, and then later allowed the last beat of the comic to not include any words and stand alone as “just” an image. This assignment made me think rhythmically with my storytelling, which was a new experience for my written work. I am constantly thinking about rhythm when it comes to editing film, but usually that can stand separate from the story itself. Here, I was pleasantly challenged to merge the two to craft this stupid joke.

ASSIGNMENT PROMPT

When I was crafting my comic I wanted to do something that was visually humorous, but also a philosophy that everyone should follow. Therefore, I chose the image of a dog chasing after a ball and another 3D image of a dog looking away to show someone being afraid or ignoring an opportunity that was presented to them. The challenge I faced in this assignment was trying to find a topic to base my comic off of. This is different from other writings that I’ve done because this time was forced to make one image tell a story in 3 scenes.

Sunday Sketch Assignment: https://eng181f19.davidmorgen.org/assignments/sketches/sketch-5-triptych/

This was by far the most challenging Sunday Sketch this semester. I knew I wanted to go in a comedic direction with this assignment. I saw the strip from “Nancy” heading the Sunday Sketch assignment page and immediately thought creating a funny triptych would be the most natural direction for me to go. I read comics like “Nancy” with my dad all the time growing up. Sunday paper comics are nostalgic to me, so I thought writing a triptych with those type of comics as inspiration would be easy. I was wrong. It’s been longer since I’ve sat with my dad after church to read the funnies than it has since I’ve spent hours scrolling through “relatable” Twitter pictures. That being said, while creating this comic, I felt strongly compelled to craft it like a meme. The impulse to create a meme and not a comic led to my decision to use from life photographs – reaction pictures.

The narrative I chose was inspired by an ongoing joke I have with my cousin. It’s a little pessimistic, but it’s real. The joke’s got some attitude; it’s politically charged, but it’s something that should be talked about like it’s a reality and not a ambiguous forecast.

At the start of this weeks Sunday Sketch had me thinking for a long time. I really did not have a clue what I would use as a photo or what message I would convey. But I just took a second and scrolled through my camera roll and really looked to see what I could make out of some of them. Then I found this picture and it is both me in my element and me surrounded by those I love. To give more context to the photo itself, it was taken inside the dressing room for my high schools dance team which we were all a part of. The people in the photo are the other girls on the team who were in my particular grade. The night this was taken was Grammys night, a night where seniors perform as some celebrity and their background dancers can either be other seniors or underclassmen (which is where we stepped in). Since graduating I see that I really took moments like this for granted and pictures like this hit very close now.

The word choice I decided to use for this describes Renaissance High Schools Dance Workshop for the years I was on it. We all came from different backgrounds, different schools, different places within the state, but our bond was so close that none of that mattered and when we were together it was home. Before coming to the school and joining the team I would have never met any of these young women. Now it feels like I have known them my entire life. They bring nothing but joy into my life which is also represented in the image. We all came together with one purpose, dance. We developed one additional family for all of us and those to come.