Category: Student Posts

This semester in “The Secret Language of Comics” has been unlike any other semester. For starters, we worked with graphic novels, a form of text I am not accustomed to, and really took apart the meaning of each individual aspect. The main aspect where this can be seen is through the Sunday Sketch Assignments. For the first Sunday sketch we created an avatar of ourselves. I chose to make a digital one, where I utilized google drawings. I had never worked with that tool before but wanted to learn. When I made the sketch, I was in quarantine for having COVID, so I had an abundance of time on my hands where I worked to create the perfect avatar: a burger. Later, visual note taking incorporated seeing my notes in a visual form. I chose to turn a probability tree into a real tree. Believe it or not, it did help me gauge a better understanding of how the actual probability tree is linked. When studying for the final, I actually made another identical tree and added on other notes. Next, Professor Morgen had us make our first comic. I had never been assigned to really make a comic for class. When I was little, I am sure I made some very, very rough comics, but never anything that was supposed to be actually turned in. For mine, I made a satirical comic about a COVID denier who goes out, gets COVID, and takes his belief to his deathbed as he repeated “COVID is not real.” Later in the semester, another assignment was to recreate a movie scene. I saw this assignment and later was going on a boat ride with my friends. Obviously, It was super fitting to recreate the iconic Titanic picture. These new, unique assignments Professor Morgen assigned were super productive in the composition of new texts. I vividly remember a class where we went into breakout rooms and shared our literacy narrative 2: the longer comic.  At the time, we were reading Spinning. My group finished sharing early and we began discussing the meaning and reasoning for why Walden included some very dark frames. Hannah and I got in to a back and forth, I was arguing it was to display a level of sadness. Because Walden showed an absence of color, I believed that it was to show that she had no one with her. Conversely, though, Hannah argued that it was to show optimism as the next page had light. That way, as you turn the page, her life gets better.

Throughout the semester, my writing definitely has improved. I credit that to a lot of reasons, but the main reason was the redrafting of the Literacy Narrative. In the beginning of the semester, Professor Morgen had us write an essay with the prompt: write an essay in which you analyze the key experiences that shaped the way you read and write. After writing what I thought was a pretty solid essay, I had a meeting with him. He tore my essay apart, highlighting my skills and weaknesses, addressing areas that needed improvement. After redrafting the essay for Literacy Narrative Three, I used his notes and addressed the problems he said I had. After reading the final essay next to the first one, it is like night and day. He wanted me to go more into detail on the interesting aspects and improve the flow of the initial anecdote. Side by side, the essays are like night and day. Moving forward, I will keep his advice and use it when writing my future assignments.

I want to give an in depth description of my Data visualization from everyday life. For this assignment, we had to “choose one concept in your life that you want to analyze, something that is not already easily and obviously measured, or doesn’t vary within the span of a day or a week. So, I chose to track five different, random categories from my everyday life. I tracked how happy I was with my previous night’s sleep, the happiness I felt towards my lunch, how satisfied I was with my lift, how satisfied I was with my social life in that day, and, lastly, how I feel mentally during the day. I graded myself on a scale each day and, at the end, put the work on a graph. The graph showed some trends that I would not have realized otherwise. For example, when I sleep and eat well, my lift is better; When I don’t have the best social interactions, my mental health grade goes down. I wanted to track aspects of my life and see how much they actually correlated. As a result, the most clear trend is between sleep and my lift. I tend to workout in the morning, so, if I am not well rested, the lift will see the repercussions. It being on a graph really helped me gauge an understanding of how much they correlated. Likewise, the link. One outlier is on day 7(April 2). April 2 was a Friday which explains several things. First, it shows the lack of lunch. I have no class on Friday so I was able to sleep in in. I missed lunch that day, but my mental health was still great. This is definitely related to the great sleep I had – seen on the.

            This class has left me with a complex and new perceptive on how I view different media. Now, when watching a movie, looking at art, or reading a comic, I have keen insight on how to analyze different forms of media. For example, on May Fourth, I watched Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I didn’t realize how much of a role color plays. Specifically, when Luke is on the verge of changing to the dark side, he changes from his usual outfit to an all black suit. With the insight I now have, I realized the reason for that; however, before, it simply did not occur to me.  

Overall, this course has been a great time. I loved reading the different graphic novels, specifically Kindred. The course gave me a new perspective on how I view texts, and I can confidently say I understand the Secret Language of Comics

The side by side comparison of Stitches and Spinning was helpful in creating a thesis about the two works. By putting them next to each other, it made realize how important color is to communicating a theme. My thesis is that the Elements of Art are significant in the representation of a visual theme. Both works create an ominous, cynical theme where the protagonist is facing struggle. This is clearly evident in the illustration of stitches.

This is my traced representation of the last frame I drew. In the book, he is literally facing his struggle: his vocal cord. I tried to make the image show that, but, in doing so, the vocal cord looks like an eye. I wanted to show a literal more clear as he is literally looking at his problem dead in the eye. This metaphor coincides with bildungsroman as it is an important step to coming of age. By doing so, he is addressing his problem, and, from here, will have to learn to adapt and live with it.

As I was looking over my annotations, it occurred to me how relevant color was in the work. Many of the elements of art coincide with color. For example, the darker lines, the dark background, and the usage of positive and negative space.

Here are four of the fifteen frames from the tracing. Obviously, color has a tremendous impact on the mood. The first three frames are bare of any color as Walden was alone, waiting in the dark. Finally, a car comes to get her and the color is there. The juxtaposition of color, makes it flow from sadness, to a glint of optimism.

This assignment definitely helped understand a new language. I didn’t realize the impact color really had on texts. Expanding to movies as well. For example, in Star Wars there is a literal “Dark Side,” where the antagonists appear in dark colors. The project helped me get a deeper understanding of the underlying issued the protagonists had in their childhood, and how hard it must have been to overcome them.

literacy comic

Creating this comic has targeted multiple learning outcomes related to this class. After creating the rough draft, I had my class peers review it and give me feedback on what to revise and improve on. While my peers critiqued my comic, I also reviewed other peer’s comics as well and gave my own opinions on what they should work on. This exchange of positive criticism targets the learning outcome, writing as process, as I learned to provide constructive criticism for others’ works and learned to receive feedback with an open mind. Additionally, it took me several drafts until I finalized my comic and I had to revise it multiple times. Another learning outcome that this literacy narrative overlaps is digital citizenship. Since I am a poor drawer and drawing is an essential component to comics, so I would search up creative common licensed pictures online and use those images as a guide for my own drawings. This insures that I am not copyrighting other people’s intellectual properties. This comic process allowed me to practice being a good digital citizen.

I found it hard to write my literacy narrative as a comic because there were a lot more factors to consider. I had to use certain choice of moments that would emphasize what I was trying to convey. For example, I wanted to emphasize how hard it was for me to write summaries of the chapters I read in books by utilizing the choice of moment, moment to moment. In the second page of my comic, there are five panels dedicated to illustrate my struggles in writing and they are all moment to moment panels. When the visual components were added, I realized there is a lot more emotion involved with my literacy narrative. During the process of creating the comic, I had to take consideration in the choice of image used and the emotion I had to convey through facial expressions within my panels. In my literacy narrative, I wrote about how my parents were concerned with my lack of ability in expressing my thoughts. On the other hand, in my comic I had to show my parents’ concern through visuals. I did this by drawing my parents’ facial expressions that displayed confusion and concern.

I focused a lot on choice of image for this comic to convey what was going on in my head when I tried to write a summary about a chapter in a book or when I tried to explain to my mom what happened at school. I tried to illustrate the racing thoughts that were going on in mind by drawing a panel that zoomed in on my head and a tornado inside my head. The tornado symbolizes the racing thoughts. Another example of choice of image is the panels that focus on my parent’s facial expressions. In one of the panels, it is zoomed in on my mom’s confused face. To further exemplify her confusion, I also drew question marks around her head. This close up angle of my mom’s face was an intentional choice of frame as I wanted the reader to focus on my mom’s bewildered facial response when I told her about my day in school. One thing I would like to add more if I did have the resources and skills is speech bubbles. In Spinning, there were a lot of speech bubbles that provided more conversations between the characters. In my comic, there is barely any conversation and I would want to add more to make the comic more flavorful and keep the reader interested.

literacy comic

Creating this comic has targeted multiple learning outcomes related to this class. After creating the rough draft, I had my class peers review it and give me feedback on what to revise and improve on. While my peers critiqued my comic, I also reviewed other peer’s comics as well and gave my own opinions on what they should work on. This exchange of positive criticism targets the learning outcome, writing as process, as I learned to provide constructive criticism for others’ works and learned to receive feedback with an open mind. Additionally, it took me several drafts until I finalized my comic and I had to revise it multiple times. Another learning outcome that this literacy narrative overlaps is digital citizenship. Since I am a poor drawer and drawing is an essential component to comics, so I would search up creative common licensed pictures online and use those images as a guide for my own drawings. This insures that I am not copyrighting other people’s intellectual properties. This comic process allowed me to practice being a good digital citizen.

I found it hard to write my literacy narrative as a comic because there were a lot more factors to consider. I had to use certain choice of moments that would emphasize what I was trying to convey. For example, I wanted to emphasize how hard it was for me to write summaries of the chapters I read in books by utilizing the choice of moment, moment to moment. In the second page of my comic, there are five panels dedicated to illustrate my struggles in writing and they are all moment to moment panels. When the visual components were added, I realized there is a lot more emotion involved with my literacy narrative. During the process of creating the comic, I had to take consideration in the choice of image used and the emotion I had to convey through facial expressions within my panels. In my literacy narrative, I wrote about how my parents were concerned with my lack of ability in expressing my thoughts. On the other hand, in my comic I had to show my parents’ concern through visuals. I did this by drawing my parents’ facial expressions that displayed confusion and concern.

I focused a lot on choice of image for this comic to convey what was going on in my head when I tried to write a summary about a chapter in a book or when I tried to explain to my mom what happened at school. I tried to illustrate the racing thoughts that were going on in mind by drawing a panel that zoomed in on my head and a tornado inside my head. The tornado symbolizes the racing thoughts. Another example of choice of image is the panels that focus on my parent’s facial expressions. In one of the panels, it is zoomed in on my mom’s confused face. To further exemplify her confusion, I also drew question marks around her head. This close up angle of my mom’s face was an intentional choice of frame as I wanted the reader to focus on my mom’s bewildered facial response when I told her about my day in school. One thing I would like to add more if I did have the resources and skills is speech bubbles. In Spinning, there were a lot of speech bubbles that provided more conversations between the characters. In my comic, there is barely any conversation and I would want to add more to make the comic more flavorful and keep the reader interested.