Category: Student Posts

After completing my comic, I realized that the work that I have done reflects the learning outcomes of the class. Firstly, comics involves multiple types of literacy, and to complete my comic I used multiple modes communication to express my ideas and help the readers understand the plot of my comic. Whether it be using different colours or sizes of panels, I used different techniques to help the readers realize what is significant and what is not. Also, the entire process of completing my comic involved several steps from making the first draft of my literacy narrative and the comic, to editing it and turning the final copy into the final comic. This showed that I practiced writing as a process, drafting and editing my words while writing reflections like this. Finally, I used technology appropriately as I used my iPad to sketch out my comic and revise it into the final copy. If the same process was done on paper, I think it would’ve taken more time and would not be as efficient. 

Overall, I think it is different to write my literacy narrative as a comic. As a comic, some of the aspects of the literacy narrative had to be turned into a visual representation, and after those aspects were added, the story itself became more obvious as to how I became a reader. I feel that I did not need to explain as much in the comic as the essay since I could show certain things using images directly. I also realized some of the unnecessary details in my alphabetic literacy narrative that does not contribute to the bigger plot or storyline. I think turning my literacy narrative into a comic helped me see it from the readers’ perspective, and I really realized what I need to include in both formats of my literacy narrative to make them better. 

When creating my comic, I had to select only the important events or details to include. If I tried to include every single detail, my comic would be very long and hard for the readers to follow along. This realization came after looking at my old comic and the feedbacks. I thought about how my comic would look from an outsider’s perspective, and some of the panels simply did not make sense. Also, I tried to make the comic all the same colour except for important details or events. I made everything black, with occasional usage of red to emphasize certain moments or details. I also added some panels with only words in them. This gave my comic a sectional feel, and it is easier for the readers to follow along my journey that I described. Overall, I think I used some writing techniques when composing my comic, which I learned from other assignments that I competed this semester. 

Comic can also be found here

I mentioned this in class but it was a challenge determining how to layout my comic, since with essay’s the only things writers really have to worry about is where to break off a paragraph. It was also fun to choose how to visually represent certain things, such as my repeated failures in 4th grade or the “FCAT” taking the forum of a pure black cat with judgemental eyes. Another difference was, for my comic, a lot of stuff I liked in my literacy narrative had to be left out. I wanted to explain why I struggled so much as a kid in school but I realized that the reason why I struggled didn’t matter as much as the effect it had on me and what I had to do to overcome the fear I gained from the FCAT. This did help be to see my story in a different way. It is so easy to be mad at that situation but writing it out then drawing it made me realize how little that event really was in comparison to the impact it had on me.I had to think more about how this event actually changed me. In the future whenever I have to analyze writing I can’t just focus on any single part, events that happen on just page one of a book can have effects lasting all the way to the final paragraph. 

In my comic I had to take a, well let’s call it a “minimalist” style. I had to sacrifice backgrounds for the sake of time (and sanity). If I had more time or artist skill I would have loved to add in backgrounds, seeing the school background slowly progress from elementary to middle to high school would have been a nice effect. I’m also pretty lousy at drawing still, especially real people. I simplified faces a lot just so I could save time and I didn’t have to look up 800 references. It would of also been nice to just make it longer, there was a lot of stuff that’s important to me that I had to leave out. It’s hard to tell my entire 19 year long journey in writing in just 4 pages, and I didn’t even get the chance to touch on my experiences with reading and the burnout I felt at the end of highschool. 

Drawing this comic was a very enjoyable experience. I did not end up sticking to my original written narrative in part one. Instead, I took certain elements from the written narrative and weaved it into a different story. This helped in creating a more engaging comic because this new story had more visual potential than the recounting of events that led up to my writing style. The written narrative was more linear, and I did not think that it would make an engaging comic. When I came up with my idea for the comic, ideas started going off in my head, almost in a sporadic and non-linear way, which was the opposite of the original. This worked well for the comic medium because I could arrange my ideas spatially in two dimensions rather than the linear one dimension. My many ideas lead me to make a series of choices, but once they were made through the storyboard draft, it felt much easier to draw this comic than it was to write the narrative.

The first page is most similar to my narrative. It is almost like a traditional comic where you have three panels and images and text inside them. Instead of regular side-by-side rectangular panels, I decided to use overlapping puzzle pieces. This not only hints at what is to come in the comic, but also creates early conflict because the overlapping puzzles block the audience’s view of the scenes. I hoped this conflict would encourage the audience to continue reading and find the resolution of the first page in the last page, where a completed puzzle can be found.

A lot of what I am trying to do in this comic is to encourage the audience to read outside of the panels by going against convention. The second page uses squiggly rectangles as panels. This creates a connection to the bottom panel on the first page where I am thinking, but also echoes the traditional thought bubbles in most comics, in order to signify that I am talking about my thoughts. I also try to push the readers to look outside the panels by drawing a web that connects the second panel to the others. Thus, creating a story that is not bound by the panels.

The third page combines the puzzle piece theme and the squiggly rectangle theme, bringing some sense of resolution from the two drastically different panel styles in the two previous pages. Despite this, the worm’s eye view perspective of the scene highlights the difficulty of the task, which ultimately resolves in a nice fitting puzzle in the last page, concluding both the story in the panels and the story outside of the panels.

Overall, this was a very fun process. I think that this medium really brought out my creative side compared to the written narrative. If I had more time, I would probably try to incorporate some more detail and color. Right now, it is monochrome, and I don’t think there’s any particular significance in the colors I use. I wonder if using or adding different colors will change the meaning and story of the comic?