Author: Micah

A simple ‘cocktail’ that represents what i’ve learnt from this class is composed of three (technically four) parts:

The first and arguably my most significant takeaway from the class was an increase in my writing ability and confidence in what i’m producing. Through the Sunday sketches, where we wrote on and reflected about a variety of ideas, I came out of the class feeling more capable of expressing ideas about the things I do. Additionally, I definitely felt more proud of the literacy narrative the second time I wrote it, which is a testament to what i’ve taken away from this class.

The second takeaway was an increased understanding of how to analyze comics. Beyond looking at things like color, text, and other blanket-level traits, I learnt both how to and why we should look deeper behind some frequently overlooked parts of comics, such as camera angle and how the frame of each panel changes the flow of the story. The tracing project, for example, helped me understand how the choice in making the main character in Stitches and Spinning seem smaller in a certain panel symbolized the suppression of their emotions — a level of analysis I wouldn’t have been able to detect prior to this class.

The third takeaway, although the smallest, is at the top of the cocktail as it is likely the first thing I will remember about the class: a much deeper appreciation of comics and the work that goes behind creating them. No matter what type of comic — political cartoons, graphic adaptations, or superhero strips — I realized after the class how deliberate choices are made to subtly but surely alter the perception of a given panel. As I mentioned as part of the previous takeaway, I feel like being able to analyze aspects of a comic such as art style, angle, frame shape, and more, have all given me a much deeper sense of respect for the work that goes into the creation and editing process for works of this medium.

Finally, the cocktail olives: although it’s not much by itself, a martini wouldn’t be complete without it. Even though it’s not something that the class was focused around, I still found it to be something I was able to take out of the class. Beforehand, I wouldn’t have realized that my ideas could still be represented through my subpar drawing capabilities.

Track List:

1. Take Me Home, Country Roads — John Denver
2. Sleep Well — d4vd
3. Rock Your Body — Justin Timberlake
4. Bad Luck — BoyWithUke
5. Stronger — Kanye West
6. Annihilate — Metro Boomin
7. Spot Theme Epic Version — Carameii
8. Life Goes On — Oliver Tree
9. We Didn’t Start The Fire — Billy Joel
10. Don’t Stop Believin’ — Journey
11. All I Do Is Win — DJ Khaled
12. We Are The Champions — Queen
13. Sleep Well — d4vd

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5PVtVuI7T3Bgk6eb3RFrN5?si=464be03ed9144318, the mixtape cover is a photo of the team that was taken after winning the tournament.

This past weekend, the Barkley Forum at Emory competed in the largest debate tournament of the fall semester: the Franklin R. Shirley hosted by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. Because of the long road trip to and from Wake Forest, as well as constant self-prescribed music breaks during the more anxiety-inducing moments of the debate competition, music was a large part of the trip. The playlist I created consists of not only music that I enjoy, but also tells a story of how the debate trip went:

Starting off with Take Me Home, Country Roads (1971) by John Denver, the trip begins with a trip across the east coast — a first for me, who lived in Taiwan. Although I was excited for what I could see on the highways, I quickly realized that there wasn’t anything more than a mildly interesting billboard to keep me entertained. This made me understand that the quickest way for me to pass time was to sleep through the trip and catch up with the sleep debt I accrued the week before — a sentiment that I felt was captured in Sleep Well (2023) by d4vd.

After an uneventful and exhausting drive, check-in process, and below-average sleep, I surprisingly woke up with the energy to see the first day of the competition through to the end with the ambition and passion of Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body (2002). However, I was quickly struck with bad luck (a reference to Bad Luck (2021) by BoyWithUke), as our first opponent was one of the teams that were expected to win it all. The debate itself was as expected: we got crushed. However, I didn’t let that deter me from moving on with the day, knowing from Stronger (2007) by Kanye West that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

The next two rounds went very well, going two-for-two. I felt in my zone, like Spiderman felt as Annihilate (2023) by Metro Boomin played in the background. However, in the last round of the day, disaster struck as we were presented with yet another difficult opponent. As we needed to win at least three rounds on the first day, my heart sank as though Spot’s Theme (2023) was playing in the movie theatre, and I knew that something bad was going to happen (spoiler alert: we lost).

With the first day done, I knew that there was nothing we could do about the undesirable pairings. I knew that life goes on (a reference to Life Goes On (2021) by Oliver Tree), and that was the mentality I held coming into the second day. After all, our coaches made it clear that the tournament wasn’t over until the last one of us gets knocked out of the tournament.

Like Billy Joel tells us in We Didn’t Start the Fire (1989), it’s up to us to continue fighting on. Like a montage scene straight out of a movie, the enthusiasm everyone had on the second day resembled the cheesy yet uplifting tune of Don’t Stop Believin’ (1981) by Journey. The first round of the day was the sweet sixteen, yet it seemed as if our senior was out for blood as they won round after round after round (a reference to All I Do Is Win (2010) by DJ Khaled), eventually reaching the final round.

We won that finals debate! It would be criminal for me to use any song except We Are The Champions (1977) by Queen to describe how elated the whole team was. With the tournament over and the trophy on the bus, there was nothing else to do but bask in victory and sleep well (a reference to Sleep Well (2023) by d4vd) knowing that the trip was a success.

The most important thing I wanted to measure was my personal well being, and specifically how much I’m improving myself from before. Because of this, I decided the 5 most important things I wanted to track were (in no particular order): Sleep, Happiness, Exercise, Academics, and Relationships.

Using an Excel spreadsheet, I would rate how I subjectively felt every day as I got ready in the morning about the day before in all the categories, with the exception of Sleep (for which I used data gathered from Pokemon Sleep — strongly recommend!). I did this from the dates of 10/22 (Su) to 10/28 (Sa).

Looking at this data as a graph made me notice quite a few things about my life habits in each category. For example, I realized that sleep was rather inconsistent, which is something I am going to work on improving. However, on the day I slept the most (Friday), I recorded rather low scores in Happiness, Exercise, and Academics. Overall, I think this was a good way for me to hold myself accountable in terms of constantly becoming a better person, as I can see where I can improve myself on each day so I can hopefully live a life where I can confidently record constantly higher scores. It achieved the goal of helping me understand myself better, and I plan on continuing to track my self-scored data for a while to see whether I am actually improving myself.

This quadriptych was inspired by a common experience I have whenever I sleep, where I can never seem to find the right temperature. In the comic, the protagonist (me) tries to sleep at a reasonable time, but is kept up by the cruel indifference of the changing temperatures, which I’ve exaggerated through hyperbolic imagery. When thinking about the story that I wanted to tell through the quadriptych, I realized that the addition of one extra panel exponentially increased the possible creative directions I could take in crafting a story. Having the middle act take up two panels allowed me to quite literally double the breadth and depth of the story, making even a simple story such as this be more detailed than what would’ve been possible with a triptych. All of this opened my eyes at how much work goes into writing an entire book in comic form, and made me appreciate the creativity of all the comic artists we’re reading from in class.

My triptych comic follows an unconventional story, as it leaves a lot up to interpretation to the reader. I attempted to etch the message “LIFE IS GOOD” throughout the three panels, as I knew that I wanted the theme of my story to be motivational and highlight the beauty of things around us that we see in a day, whether it be a tree on a sunny day, the beautiful skies during sunset, and the busting city at night. My interpretation of this story is of someone taking a break from their day-to-day lives and taking a step back to enjoy the things that were previously taken for granted.

In this combophoto, I superimposed the lens on a camera over a stock photo of an eyeball. This is meant to represent how, like cameras, we perceive the world through these circular lenses and rely on them when we visualize the world around us. By juxtaposing these two images together, we can almost see how technology imitates nature insofar as it almost becomes hard to tell that the iris has been replaced with a camera lens if you look far away enough.

Camera Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/feedthepheonix/14767350560/in/photolist-ouWwQq-9aR9gQ-oFQZET-2NFnLk-qy8jw1-9nt9sK-5uRBWZ-mN2qzt-pVyp5f-nRWznn-PonuMT-QyA9fj-q5AjNt-q78bsj-mbi3Va-dRPJWB-aZJJ1Z-cUDc3y-9K5zR1-qpPgmK-cYnXUU-f5UQcm-4y1535-brsYQu-dtrKix-8DyFcX-37tCke-pZCYYB-cJBjhG-oK9bNH-M9i8UB-hSvmm9-CgT6y4-7BccqG-dAFEAs-oTjpBK-4rTHok-fiqZCa-m2cmW6-bU24TF-bKWJgH-dzT3Hn-2aA8P-czpUK7-7PLiAy-7kHbPJ-p2xGJd-UptcKP-aASUA2-tTL9i

Eyeball Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/112532853@N05/11582619946/in/photolist-iDvXnU-tN6RY-9Pne8j-NxBiX-8jNysL-qn3cVW-cTWWaw-oaKrkw-fQeBJo-rwJqEZ-smeRu-onGbW-ey55Q4-fPX44B-9AQZ5N-mkBMZe-5ZVFYM-bx9U72-2Bmdgm-ewabHq-8aVbsw-5pEZ2U-nPqair-99HSd8-o23vQU-5CkWTU-66KycX-39TqbN-AJSf4-kbNXe7-9NpqYr-6fNZr9-9tUJJs-p8VAU6-f2Jj1q-nJJrnk-9kvG7V-9N5Yrw-7R2yd4-2paLe-5RWoeK-62d198-CfhKp-bvBWWt-9vvLjc-zdvF3C-8zzkU-9pte3J-9CWeE-53spkt

Edited with Photopea

This sketch assignment was quite easy for me, as I’ve used visual notes for a long time. Ever since I was small, I’ve understood that I was a visual learner, and I was able to grasp information significantly quicker if it was displayed in a way that was easy to understand. In my ENVS 190 (environmental science) class, I had difficulty understanding the Greenhouse Effect because I wasn’t familiar with other terms, but I easily understood what was going on after my professor drew out a sketch of what was going on. Since I usually take notes on iPad, this was the visual device I created to grasp the concepts outlined in class.