creations – The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Baked Goods

October 20, 2019 Dean Student Posts

I am proud of this tale of one enraged customer, but I must admit that coming up with an idea for this quadriptych was a bit more challenging than my triptych. I think this pertains to how easily a triptych can set up a pattern-based subversion of expectations, and the quadriptych’s extra panel would mess up such a joke’s “flow.” Because of this four-panel-box requirement, I had to think a bit outside the box.

After much aimless contemplation, I finally decided on homonym miscommunication as the basis of my comic. Finding the images was not too challenging, but having to slowly zoom in just enough to reveal the “Now Serving Mousse” sign by the third panel presented a bit of difficulty, yet I prevailed after numerous screenshot-crop failures.

To differentiate between the two voices in the comic, I decided to use a bold, all-caps font and sharp-angled speech bubbles for the angry moose and a scratchy scrawl and rounded bubble for the waiter. I had the moose face outwards at the end to give a sense of closure to his movement (as opposed to facing into the comic), and I allowed for the “Mousse” part of the sign to peek out from under his antlers in case readers miss it in the third panel.

All in all, I’m happy with how my comic turned out and look forward to creating more.

Sources:

https://radiopaedia.org/cases/speech-bubble-signhttp://www.downloadclipart.net/browse/17188/speech-bubble-clipart https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighton/94966306/ https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/icon-klein-isoliert-front-cafe-4423853/

Sunny Side Up!

September 30, 2019 Dean Student Posts

Before I discovered the sunny symmetry between our solar system and a pan-fried breakfast, I was planning on combining the pictures of a sun and a basketball. Thankfully, I did not.

Images from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fried_egg,_sunny_side_up.jpg & https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sun_by_the_Atmospheric_Imaging_Assembly_of_NASA%27s_Solar_Dynamics_Observatory_-_20100819.jpg. Combined using PicsArt.

If you’re somewhat familiar with my past online creations (might I introduce you to Pitfalls of Punning and Eggs and Existentialism?), you probably think I have a weird obsession with eggs at this point, but truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of the taste. Waffles and pancakes are far superior in my eyes, but it can’t be denied that eggs have a peculiarly appealing aesthetic value.

Both the sun and the sunny-side-up are yellow(ish) spheres, sources of life’s vitality, and can burn you if you’re not carefully, so they seemed slightly more appropriate to pair than the sun and a basketball. The abrupt contrast between the empty void of space and crispy-warm egg whites creates a humorous disorientation that I rather enjoy. I originally had the sun shrunken down to be nested in the pan, but I had to adapt because of the picture’s square edges; as such, we are now looking at one hefty cosmic breakfast.

Yet I wanted to give you all the opportunity to vicariously hold the world in your hands (or the sun in your pan), so I made a rather unorthodox combophoto that I think you’ll enjoy. Next time you sit yourself down to some scrambles, I hope you contemplate the power you now possess: the ability to cradle the crux of the universe in All-Clads and Calphalons.