Category: Student Posts

To be honest, this comic assignment was a challenge for me. When I first knew that there is an assignment that I have to draw a comic, I was so panicked, since I am not a good drawer and I was not confident to convert my written task about my experience that shaped my writing skill into a visual comic. At first, I was struggled with this, since I felt like I was losing a lot of the details and it was hard to choose the right frame that fits a page and goes well with my drawing. I had some useless spaces left on the page, because I could not pick a perfect frame. Also, showing the atmosphere of the situation and feelings of that characters through my deficient drawing skill. It was annoying to have a clear image and specific vision of what I wanted my drawing to look like, but it was not possible to actually realize it due to my lack of skills. However, the more I drew each page, I could feel that I was improving my skills of choosing the right frame and showing a clear storyline on each panel. 

After I struggled and finished my comic with the peer feedback, I realized that the details are just shown in a different way through the process of arranging and editing. Since the main events and important parts of my writing were in my comic, there was no problem understanding the story and message, even though there were fewer descriptions. Through drawing a comic, I could even have a better understanding of my own literacy narrative. Also, I could find some unnecessary parts that I have to get rid of and significant parts that I have to focus more on when I write my literacy narrative 3. I have been taught to easily find the main important parts from my essay and compose written texts in a comic. This assignment was a rewarding experience, even though there were challenges that I had to overcome. 

My final Literacy Narrative Comic

Writing my literacy narrative as a comic was a challenging but rewarding learning experience. Writing out the narrative was something that I had done before, so it was familiar. While translating my writing into a comic was new and came with its own set of challenges. Some difficulties mainly were about what angles I wanted to include and how to get the main point across. When I created the draft for my comic, it was challenging to choose what words I wanted to have and how they helped develop the story. The first draft of my comic had an issue with wording, and it took away from the primary goal of the story I was trying to present.
Translating my Literacy narrative into a comic allowed me to understand the time and energy of creating a comic. The different choices that authors make allow their story to progress excitingly. In my literacy narrative, many of the details needed when you write a story translate a little differently when you are writing a comic, like time. When you show the progression of time in a written narrative, you can time jump and use ellipses to show change, but in a comic, you can use more panels and perspectives to change how the reader perceives time. Time perception is crucial because it can help the reader understand the importance of certain events and memories in the narrative.
In my comic, I choose to include color on some panels to show emotion or lack thereof. On the classroom panel, I decided not to color it because I wanted the reader to understand that reading in school was a dull experience. While in other panels, I choose to include pale colors and bright colors to show a change in emotion. On other pages, I had many panels on the pages that all offered a different perspective of the same image. This setup goal was to show what I imagined in my head before zooming out into reality on the next page. I don’t think I got many different perspectives in my comic because it was challenging to draw the different stances; I wanted to be straightforward to the reader. Overall, drawing my comic was fun and a little scary because I represented my writing differently.
After I completed my comic, I felt that I could add a lot more to the pages, but I did not have enough time to do so in a way that would be the best representation of my work. My comic could be more in-depth in certain scenes, but while creating it, I felt that if I added more pages that only centered on a specific moment, the comic would not have been clear.
So I sacrificed the length of my comic to have more detailed panels with more color and emotion. The colors and emotions they evoke are essential to the story because it allows the reader to have a more personal connection to the work. Also, the colors make the pages more vivid and entertaining for people who are reading.

The final Comic

Writing my literacy narrative as a comic was a challenging but rewarding learning experience. Writing out the narrative was something that I had done before, so it was familiar. While translating my writing into a comic was new and came with its own set of challenges. Some difficulties mainly were about what angles I wanted to include and how to get the main point across. When I created the draft for my comic, it was challenging to choose what words I wanted to have and how they helped develop the story. The first draft of my comic had an issue with wording, and it took away from the primary goal of the story I was trying to present.
Translating my Literacy narrative into a comic allowed me to understand the time and energy of creating a comic. The different choices that authors make allow their story to progress excitingly. In my literacy narrative, many of the details needed when you write a story translate a little differently when you are writing a comic, like time. When you show the progression of time in a written narrative, you can time jump and use ellipses to show change, but in a comic, you can use more panels and perspectives to change how the reader perceives time. Time perception is crucial because it can help the reader understand the importance of certain events and memories in the narrative.
In my comic, I choose to include color on some panels to show emotion or lack thereof. On the classroom panel, I decided not to color it because I wanted the reader to understand that reading in school was a dull experience. While in other panels, I choose to include pale colors and bright colors to show a change in emotion. On other pages, I had many panels on the pages that all offered a different perspective of the same image. This setup goal was to show what I imagined in my head before zooming out into reality on the next page. I don’t think I got many different perspectives in my comic because it was challenging to draw the different stances; I wanted to be straightforward to the reader. Overall, drawing my comic was fun and a little scary because I represented my writing differently.
After I completed my comic, I felt that I could add a lot more to the pages, but I did not have enough time to do so in a way that would be the best representation of my work. My comic could be more in-depth in certain scenes, but while creating it, I felt that if I added more pages that only centered on a specific moment, the comic would not have been clear.
So I sacrificed the length of my comic to have more detailed panels with more color and emotion. The colors and emotions they evoke are essential to the story because it allows the reader to have a more personal connection to the work. Also, the colors make the pages more vivid and entertaining for people who are reading.

The final Comic

Link to Comic

Making an alphabetic essay to a comic was very interesting and fun. Before I started working on the comic, I went to the writing center and rewrote the essay, keeping in mind this will turn into a comic. I had mental images of what I wanted to draw while I was reworking my essay. The rewriting process prepared me when it came time to draw a comic because I already had a vague idea what certain panels will look like. 

Before the drawing process, I had to think about what I wanted to include in the pages and how the story builds on. I had to think about my essay in a board way then add more details. The rough sketch of the comic really helped because I was able to mess with how I wanted to format everything. Beforehand, I was able to visually think how the story should progress and what scenes are important. We mentioned something in class about structure and how making a comic provides more structure than the aplahbetic essay. I totally agree because I tried to focus on how each thing will add to another and how to make things cohesive. I had to leave out a couple of things from the alphabetic essay because I wanted the comic to be short and sweet. Straight to the point. When I would read through my essay to see how I wanted to draw it, I would have a perfect picture in my mind, and it was harder than I thought drawing it out. I think that goes with any type of drawing, but it was my first time using a digital software to draw something a little more intricate. 

For my text, I chose to handwrite it rather than have a text box. The handwriting was so the comic can be more authentic in a way, and it was also easier. Overall, I wanted the comic to be authentic and not be like the frames in “Sabrina.” It also allowed for there to be more of me in the comic. Not only is my story in the comic but also my unique handwriting. This is my first comic, so there is bound to be rustic, in a way. If I knew what I was doing, I would’ve focused on the art itself and making it more realistic. More backgrounds and details. Even without the addition, I think I was able to put enough in that the comic does not feel incomplete. I also tried to incorporate different perspectives in the comic, but it kinda just felt right. Especially with the three frames of the book falling from the sky, the change in perspective, to me at least, was humorous. Hopeful, others think the same way. 

I enjoyed creating the comic and thinking of different ways to present an idea. This assignment kinda inspired me to maybe in the future make more comics. We will see if that ever happens. Lol. 

This assignment was definitely very different from any essay or narrative that I have written before. Due to the visual nature of medium, creating my narrative comic was rather challenging because I purely had to show not tell. In other words, I had to not only identify the most important elements of my written narrative but also effectively illustrate them. The two resources that helped me the most during this process was Scott McCloud’s Making Comics and Hillary Chute’s Comics for Grown-ups. Scott McCloud’s work introduced me to several fundamental concepts of comic illustrating such as moment, frame, and image. These concepts helped me recognize what makes a comic successful in storytelling. Specifically, I used these concepts in the beginning of my comic when I establish the setting as my middle school. In the first sequence of panels, the images go from general to more specific. The first panel of the comic is an outside image of my school, and the last panel of the sequence is the door of my classroom.

 Hillary Chute’s Comics for Grown-ups was also useful. By reading Chute’s work, I realized that comics can be poetic in a certain sense. Panels not only show the constant passing of time, but the author can choose to make illusions or perhaps give the reader a rather unique intended direction of reading. Furthermore, Chute’s work gave me the liberty to be more experimental and creative with my comic. By applying the principles of these two works to my comic, I successfully synthesized and evaluated ideas scholarly sources and applied them to my own work.

My literacy narrative was quite different as a comic than as a standard piece of writing. In my comic, I wanted the illustrations within the panels to do a majority of the story telling. Therefore, I had to turn my written narrative into a more comprehensive story, so that it could fit the medium. I could not simply state retrospectively that my attitude towards reading changed. Instead, I had to show how it changed through experiences and memories. One example of me doing this, is on page 4 of my comic. In my written narrative, I simply stated that I struggled to read Romeo and Juliet during freshman year of high school. However, I wanted to elaborate upon my reading struggles, so I illustrated multiple books alongside pictures of myself being confused. By doing this, I think my comic is more effective in showing my struggles firsthand, than my written narrative. Once I finished my comic, I realized that my written narrative lacked emotion and personality. My written work was effective in telling a story, but I think my comic would connect better with an audience because I am truly shared my thoughts and past life experiences.

Given that I am not an amazing artist, I wanted the drawing style of my comic to be pretty simple. Going into the comic, I knew my limits as artist and tried to work around them. That is why there is never any dialogue within the panels themselves. However, with a simple art style, I made sure to vary the format of each page as well as the size of the panels. I do not think that my illustrative style hindered my comic too much. I think a professional illustrative would aid my work but improving my drawings would have no impact on the story I am trying to tell.

My Comic