The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Tag: sk4

Bunch O’ Balloons

Student Posts

By Ja’Mya Yancey

Bunch O’ Balloons by Ja’Mya Yancey
Credit: Image1, Image2

This weeks Sunday Sketch idea was very interesting. I did not find it hard coming up with an idea for this assignment but I did find it hard finding images to go together that would look acceptable. My first idea was to create a banana car since the first image I saw during my search was a yellow car. But I really did not like the finished product of the collages I would make. The next image i saw when I looked some up through Flickr was a bunch of green balloons and at the same time I was eating green grapes and that made me think of this idea. Once I created my finished product I was happy with what i saw even though its not as perfect as I would like it to be.

Not only did I like how it looked but I enjoyed interpreting it and what I found that it does interpret. My image represents the high costs that comes with eating healthy and how to prices are always on the rise. Balloons rise, money is green, so the balloons represent the cost and how it is always rising and the grapes represent the healthy living factor.

Vase? Rose? Vase Rose?

Student Posts

Vase RoseThis is an easy assignment in the way that there are so many things you can combine together. On the other hand, this is not easy at all since most of the obvious ideas have been exploited by others. There was no methodology I employed to come up with this idea. I just sat in front of my desk, served myself with some yogurt, and let my thought flow. I had thought about the window, earphone, ceiling fan, and dragonfly before a pink rose came into my mind – there was absolutely no connection between them. The closest thing to a rose was probably the strawberry in my yogurt. And then I thought, “A rose. A rose in a vase. What about a vase in a rose?”

I had some experience with Photoshop so did not encounter many troubles to realize my idea. Although the modification was not just cropping and putting them together, the backgrounds of the original photos were simple, making it convenient for me to edit.

In the hindsight, it is counter-intuition that makes this photo interesting, as my intuition led me to the vase when I saw the rose. The way that my brain usually works helps me eliminate “abnormal” and thus “useless” information, in which creative and interesting ideas may hide.

 

Assignment Link:

Sketch 4: Combophoto

Source Links:

https://www.ikea.cn/cn/en/catalog/products/20309786/

Controlling the Force: A Golfer’s Patience

Student Posts

This was originally a photo of me teeing off at a golf course with my Dad. I picked this photo because I recently bought my plane tickets back home for fall break and am excited to see my Dad. I’ve been thinking about him a lot and appreciating his style of parenting. This photo was taken in Florida- we travel there every two years to visit my Grandparents. I picked the light saber to go along with the picture because I thought my form looked like I was slicing someone’s stomach open. My Dad is also a huge Star Wars fan and I wanted to create something that I could send to him. I picked a purple light saber because my favorite Jedi, Mace Windu, uses one.

This Photoshop job was relatively harder than the previous one. I used a different software this time to create the image- Pixlr. It took me an extremely long time to get acclimated to the program. I used the lasso tool a lot, but sometimes I could not copy specific parts to paste onto blank space. That is why the desert area by the tip of the light saber looks like a different shade; I just used the pencil tool. I think my photo conveys that if I were to live in the Star Wars universe, I could be a solid Jedi. In my opinion, my form is impeccable and will be practicing just in case I do find out how to transport into a different universe. I also think that this conveys how similar sword fighting is to golf! They both use similar swings, and although sword fighting has a larger variety of strokes, this one stroke looks very similar.

Here is a link to the stock photo I got of the light saber.

Here is a link to the original assignment.

Silenced by the Pen

Student Posts
bird, pen

My fourth Sunday Sketch has proven to be my most difficult. Not only did I struggle to come up with a creative idea, but my computer itself decided it doesn’t like this assignment and therefore has crashed three separate times, each time making me start from scratch. If I had to choose one word to describe my experience in creating this sketch and post, it would be “frustrating”. First, finding CC-licensed images is a constricting experience that leads to pages and pages of creepy, dimly lit images. Secondly, once I had an idea of what I wanted to do, none of the available images fit my idea of noodle soup and blonde hair. In my search, I came across a random picture of a bird with a weird looking beak, and that is what inspired my creepy collage. Funny enough, I think the word to describe the image I created would also be “frustrating”. The bird is silenced without its beak, but the pen is a common indicator of speech. Looking at the image makes me feel trapped like I am the bird trying to speak in a language I don’t know.

Diving into Tea Time

Student Posts

This weeks Sunday Sketch was one of the most difficult ones I’ve done so far. I spent days looking at images on Flickr trying to find two that could possible be pieced together. When I saw the picture of the diver I knew I could turn it into a larger image so I began searching for another picture that would closely resemble the ocean background color. I found the image of the teacup and I knew it would fit perfectly. The most difficult part of the assignment was trying to create an original image that you couldn’t already find somewhere online. There were so many great examples that it became harder to make one of my own after I kept discovering more and more combophotos.

The actual editing of the photo was not very hard at all. I combined the two images and slightly blended them together to make the picture a bit more coherent. After creating several different combophotos from many images and ideas, I chose this one because I believe the two images went very well together and demonstrated a very nice larger picture at hand. I am pretty proud of the final image and enjoy the entertainment of the contradictory sizes of both the diver and teacup. To view this week’s Sunday Sketch prompt click here.

Photo Credits: Diver & Teacup

Mommm, I got the ball stuck on the Earth again… (Sunday Sketch #4)

Student Posts

This is a combination of one of the most famous photos of all time, Earthrise by NASA, and a soccer ball image I pulled from Target’s website. I knew very quickly that I wanted to use this specific space photo. I have been a huge space geek for years, and this photo has been my background/profile picture on many different devices and accounts. What I spent most of my time on was deciding on what spherical object to replace the Earth with. My first idea was to make some “deep” and “original” message by imposing a spherical ball of trash, but that felt really basic. I have played soccer for the past 16 years of my life however, so it didn’t take me too long.

The process of editing was very simple. Actually too simple. Once I put the image in place I decided to add some shadow to the ball. But even then it still felt kinda off and too unnatural and easy, so I made the image slightly translucent which let some Earth texture in. Even though it’s not exactly following the assignment, it made the image much more pleasant to look at.

What I’m realizing now is that this assignment was too easy. There was too much freedom and too many options. I didn’t really like that though. My main frustration was trying to come up with something original among the generic and unlimited ideas easily accessible from the toolbox of the internet. Nevertheless… I made something. I can’t say I’m proud of it, but I can at least say I’m glad I didn’t settle for the most basic version…

Insulin and Washington

Student Posts
F

For this assignment I wanted to create a “combophoto” that not only looked nice but had some contemporary significance. After pondering for a while I decided to combine a picture of the Capitol Dome and an insulin bottle. I chose this combination in order to visualize the relationship between insulin. Despite the power the government has over the price of insulin, the price is soaring at unprecedented levels. This is causing people to try to ration this life saving commodity. Growing up in Turkey which has nowhere near the economic prosperity of the US, yet still has free healthcare, I find it outrageous that the government is not taking action to solve a problem that has already claimed lives.

Tippy Top of The World

Student Posts

At first it seemed very daunting when thinking of ways to recreate Stephen Mcmennamy’s examples of pictures he’s taken/edited. However, the more I looked into his work, I realized that his images are more about the story they capture. That said, the hardest part about creating “Tippy Top of The World” was finding two images that would work well together. The only criteria I had for selecting images was that they be of high quality. Putting the two pictures didn’t take too much effort or editing because I used PicMonkey, and their site is pretty intuitive.

The story that this combophoto captures is the feeling of being on top of the world. It can feel like a ballerina on top of a cliff. After creating this piece, I thought of how it relates to the current book we’re reading, Spinning. The protagonist is a figure skater, and much like ballerinas, figure skating requires perfection from the performers. One false move can send you over the edge, just like being at the tippy top of the world.

Images Obtained From:

https://unsplash.com/t/arts-culture

https://unsplash.com/t/nature

Treeccoli

Student Posts
Treeccoli by Joyce Xu

While having lunch today, I began to feel a little bored, so I started to stare at the food on my plate in a daze. Suddenly, I saw the broccoli on my fork, and it reminded me of a miniature tree. With this week’s sketch assignment in mind, I decided to combine the upper part of broccoli and the trunk of a tree to form a whole picture. 

I started by searching up pictures of broccoli and trees on Google, and I experimented by putting them together. However, the original background of the broccoli picture was white, and thus it didn’t match the blue sky background in the tree photo. Therefore, for the first time in my life, I tried to use Snapseed, a photo editing app, to manually add a blue sky background for the broccoli picture. Although the edited image seems a little fake in general, it does create a better transition between the two pictures.


Copyright: https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/how-to-cut-broccoli/

SHUTTERSTOCK
Copyright: https://www.readersdigest.ca/travel/world/beautiful-trees-photos/6/

The final picture surprised me initially because I never thought a tree and broccoli would go so well together. Sometimes when I see the small version of the combo photo on my desktop, I mistake it as a real tree growing vibrantly in the wild. I think the fact that the broccoli in itself is green and luxuriant adds a quality of vitality to the tree. Also, considering that the tiny broccoli which can easily be fit into my mouth is now as “large” as the canopy of a tree is amazingly peculiar and striking.

Pen-sile

Student Posts

I decided to combine a pen and a missile together to create a “pen-sile”. The process of selecting two images that worked together and satisfied me was quite difficult. Initially, I tried to mentally visualize two random images that came to mind and somehow place them together, but soon I realized that I was not getting anywhere without looking at actual images. I also looked at some examples in order to have a clearer view of what type of images and combinations I should be trying to create. After searching through several different images and going through multiple trials, I finally settled at an image of a pen and missile cropped together. I decided to use the top of the pen and the bottom of the missile as those are the more defining parts of each item and I wanted to make it clear what each item actually was.

Prompt

Image Sources:

Pen

Missile

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