The Secret Language of Comics

This comic is inspired by my high school life. I always set a time and tried to start studying at that time. However, it often failed because I could not check the time while texting my friend or watching YouTube videos. In college, I just shift my day and night, since I prefer studying at night and dawn. However, it was hard in high school, so sleep was my enemy. Crafting quadriptych was fun. Brainstorming ideas was not easy, so I kept drawing and erasing for a few times. Just like a triptych, it was hard to put a story in limited numbers of panels. However, I felt like a quadriptych is easier than a triptych, since there are more panels that I can utilize. Also, it was pretty hard to express feelings of the character through facial expression, since my drawing is simple, so there was no multiple options that I can draw. I clearly showed time change in the bottom left of each panel, since time is one of the most important features in this comic that shows the beginning, middle, and end.

For the quadriptych I decided to make it using the same characters from my triptych. I wanted to see how the same or similar ideas would change from a triptych to a quadriptych. This piece is self-standing, but you can get some more interesting ideas if you read both this piece and the triptych. If you read this piece alone you might think that these two already know one another, but the triptych reveals that the ghost recruited the skeleton. Also, in the triptych it was unclear if the ghost could control lightning, but it looks like he can in this piece.

What was difficult about composing this piece was finding the right plot of events that would fit into the four panel style. I found it actually more difficult to compose the quadriptych than the triptych because you need a middle conflict that can be broken down into two essential panels. Each panel needed to be important such that when you remove one panel, it makes the story unclear. Creating the two conflict panels was difficult, but reading it as an audience, to me, felt more satisfying than reading the triptych because of that prolonged tension. The final panel is more lighthearted, giving a resolution to that tension which makes it satisfying to the reader. The beginning and ending panels still feel similar to the triptych because only one panel represented the beginning and the end. I think it would be interesting to see how to prolong the beginning/ending panels and what effect that has on me drawing it and me reading it.

The comic is about a student who is minding their business and realizes that their laptop and analog clock don’t match up. I didn’t know the time changed until this morning, and I was so disoriented because of it. I was trying to figure out if we lost an hour or gain one for like 5 minutes. My brain was not functioning today.

In the brainstorming process, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to draw, so I kept on starting something then erasing it. I kept on doing that for like 5 times, so I changed drawing platforms. Finally, I figured out a concept that I liked. I really wanted to portray a student who was so tired that they overlooked the time change and thought something was wrong with them. I thought the story would be funny ,and others will be able to connect to it as well. I liked doing the triptych comic better than this one. I think the extra frame made it harder for me to come up for a longer plot. The layout of the panels didn’t hinder me much.

I was excepting my triptych and my quadriptych to be very similar going into this, however that turned out not to be the case. I wanted to continue Cat, Rat, and Bat but I couldn’t think of a way to fit them into a four panel comic. I was lost for ideas listening to Spotify when Touch-Tone Telephone but Lemon Demon came on and I got the urge to illustrate some of the lyrics. I still wanted to tell a story with the song so I tried to portray the narrative the writer was trying to tell with it. I also wanted to do more angles, since I had more space to tell a full and complete narrative. It’s not a comedic cartoon al well, which while different then writing for comedy, was still fun to write.

For my Quadriptych I chose to make a story about procrastination. This is story was an example of some of the days I have been having this week. I chose procrastination because it is something that I have been doing a lot recently and I think many people can relate to it. This type of comic strip is a little longer than a triptych and because of that you have a little more space to develop the story.

When thinking of an idea for my quadriptych, I initially had trouble. I was trying to make a story from scratch, and I could not think of anything. Then I started to think about my past memories, and I thought of this idea. As an older brother to multiple siblings, I have seen my parents grow more soft over the years. In other words, they always avoid trouble and get what they want from my parents. Hence, the concept of the comic. In the comic, a boy asks his mom if he could have a gum ball. The mom says no, but the little boy starts crying. After the boy cries, the mom feels bad and buys the gum ball.

Overall, I thought the quadriptych was easier to make than the triptych because the extra panel allowed for more creativity and the opportunity to develop more of a plot. If I would make this comic a triptych, I would not have included the close up of the boys face with the tear. Without the inclusion of this panel, the meaning of the comic would be quite different.

This comic was inspired by the rest days the university had decided to put in place to ease the marathon of a spring semester. I chose to draw a stick figure instead of using a picture like my Triptych to switch it up and give it a more “personal” and “amateur” feel. I used a text box to match the screenshots I took from official emory communications about rest days. I think this type of comic strip was easier for me to make because I am more used to the 4 panel comic structure I see a lot on instagram, facebook, and reddit. I think the added panel allowed me to have more space to develop a story which was much harder in the three panel. I used the middle part to develop the bandaid type solution that the college had provided. I chose to tell this story because it was all I had been thinking about all week.