The Secret Language of Comics

I take a lot of notes on notability. It’s sort of therapeutic, using calligraphy to write notes and creating colorful diagrams to aid in visual learning. However, in this assignment, I wanted to make a mind map of everything we’ve learned so far in physics. The portion enclosed within the blue rectangle are sketches from my previous notes, and everything else is hand-drawn for this assignment. Creating this actually helped me prepare for my test since I was able to visualize the material better. Furthermore, two parts of the sketch are “step-by-step tips” that explained how to solve an electricity problem. In addition, an aliens and astronaut are stuck together in physics land and the only way out is to answer a question. Answering an electric field problem using the steps outlined in the notes was a great way to practice for the upcoming test. I really liked incorporating funny doodles and characters with dialogue within these notes, and I found myself having fun studying physics (never happened before). I also kept looking back at the notes because it was pretty, and before I knew it, the steps to solve an electric field problem were ingrained in my head.

I think I got carried away as I really enjoyed doodling—the planets sketch took more than two hours alone. I kept wanting to add more and more elements, despite having spent ages on this assignment. Maybe I could sell this study guide for some money.

Link to image: https://imgur.com/doiRplJ

Close Up Details

Rambutan is one of the most delectable fruits found in Indonesia—it has a sweet, juicy center hidden in a red shell with soft spines, or hairs, sticking out. I used to wake up early and excitedly head to street markets in search of a pound of fresh, aromatic rambutan. Then, I would devour the 50 of these tiny, hairy, heavenly fruits in one day, and then complain at night that we ran out of rambutans. In the midst of my longing to go back home after more than a year of being away from my family, I wanted to incorporate some of my culture for this sunday sketch. After ruminating between exotic fruits, fried street snacks, and praying women at the mosque, I decided on rambutan, my favorite fruit. I struggled with finding the second image that would fit nicely with a rambutan. However, the inspiration was right in front of me: rings. I love rings, and I collect a numerous array of vintage rings. I found the image on Flickr, and this ring had an every similarly to the one I’m wearing on my left index finger. The second struggle came about when the editing websites wouldn’t work on my iPad. I wasn’t sure why, but I downloaded Photoshop Express as a result. But then, there was no precise cropping tool, and as you can see in the image, the cropping of the ring is… rough around the edges. The final image conveys my wish to go back home, compounded with a touch of my personality. Even though Jakarta is my home, I don’t feel like I fit in there after leaving when I was 15. In a way, this fusion of rambutan and a ring expresses my desire to create a new normal where I can exist. Honestly, if I saw a ring like this, I’d buy it instantly. It’s quite a statement piece.

My visual note taking process obviously started with me taking real notes first. In my ISOM class, we learned about something called the “simple decision tree.” This is used to find the optimal decision in terms of spending money for profit. For example, renting or not renting an umbrella for a hotdog stand everyday in Seattle is a common situation that would occur. How much more would one make if they rented it every day? Is it worth renting? Will the profits be higher or lower if you rent? A real decision tree is similar to a visual table, with different lines emerging depending on the decision one makes. Making it into a literal tree makes a lot of sense. Each branch represents a certain decision. The shortest being the worst while the longest is the optimal. Visualizing the tree into a real tree actually helped with my understanding of what each branch does. Obviously, the one I drew would be super simple, but as they get more complicated there would be more branches.

I typically take written notes during class in the form of bullets or an outline. Therefore, this visual note-taking assignment forced me out of my comfort zone as I adapted my written notes I took during my Italian class into a visual representation. I enjoyed this assignment because it caused me to revisit my notes, approaching them from a creative point of view. I reflected on the visual representations of the vocabulary we are currently covering in my Italian class. Adapting these words and phrases into images reminded me of the Italian culture I love. Moving forward, I will strongly consider implementing visual note-taking into my daily habits during my online classes, particularly in my Italian class but in other courses as well.

‘Visual Note Taking’ assignment helped me to find a strategy for understanding and memorizing the content. As my note is composed of images and is more colorful, I was able to better understand the confusing part of my BIO 142 class content. I was struggling on memorizing details of the model before, but I could be more familiarized with the model and details just by drawing. I found out that visualizing is important when I study, especially for Biology which requires memorizing. It was interesting to take a visual note, since it actually helped me a lot. I want to incorporate visual note taking for my chemistry class and other courses.

Coming up with an idea for the combo photo was actually very difficult, but after staring at the ceiling for a while, I noticed that the dangling lights kind of look like a tall glass with a stem flipped upside down. This lead me to thinking about ice cream, because I haven’t had it in a while. This where the idea for this sketch came from. This image looks like scooping ice cream from a glass, but at the same time it almost looks like a candle. The spoon and ice cream look almost like a wick and the light looks like an illuminated candle holder. This is where the name Ice Cream Lite comes from. Once the idea was generated, the cropping of images together was rather simple.

“Nahaufnahme von hausgemachter Schlagsahne auf einem Löffel” by marcoverch is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Image of the light was taken by my friend Javier Trujillo

My combophoto was inspired by Stephen Mcmennamy’s combophoto of “cauliflower and poodle”. I wanted to use an animal’s body and replace the head with another picture. The animal I used was a bald eagle and initially, I wanted to replace the bald eagle’s head with a human head, kind of the same concept of the reverse of the the ancient Egyptian god, Anubis. It’s the reverse because Anubis has a human body but animal head while I wanted to create a combophoto of an animal body and a human head. However, it was really hard finding a human head with the same white color of the neck of the bald eagle so instead I used a baseball.