The Secret Language of Comics

Author: Sagar

What’s in my Bag??

Student Posts
  • Banana and Fair Life- I typically sleep through my alarm waking up at 9:30 rather than 9, causing me to need to take a banana and Fair Life as breakfast to go. 
  • Water bottle- I like to keep myself hydrated throughout the day to ensure I have a good workout or pick up a basketball session in the gym. 
  • MacBook and Phone Charger- I constantly keep my chargers on me to ensure that I can use my devices whenever I need to.
  • Keys and Wallet – These are essentials for when I leave my dorm.
  • Notebooks- For convenience purposes, I leave my Economics and Statistics notebooks in my bag to ensure I don’t misplace one of my notebooks and to save me time for when I am rushing out the door for my morning classes.
  • AirPods- Having AirPods available allows me to listen to music while walking class to class which especially helps me in the morning when I need to wake up and get ready to conquer the day.
  • MacBook- The main device I use for assignments and to play games in class when I am bored of a long lecture.

I found that creating the portrait itself was relatively easy as my ideas flowed very smoothly. I kept the portrait organic because I felt that the organic contents I actually carry on a day-to-day basis were interesting and funny enough in itself. Moreover, I felt that this portrait reflected that I am not a morning person who has trouble with waking up on time. I also believe this portrait properly represents the struggles of adjusting to life as a college freshman and trying to become more responsible and organized while learning to live on my own for the first time. Finally, this is a type of writing because it involves describing the purpose and a story of why I keep items in the most important bag as a college student.  

Time – A gift and a Curse

Student Posts

The composition I made has to do with time travel. I have been watching the TV show The Flash recently and it inspired me to do a funny comic about failed time travel. My principles of time travel were inspired by the show which means anything that happens in the past alters our current reality. The point of the comic was to show the irony in Sam’s, the main engineer, intelligence as he was able to create a time machine but violated the basic rule of time travel by talking to his mom when in the past. If he had not talked to his mom, his mom and dad would’ve met like they originally did and lived a happy life, leading to his being born. However, his carelessness has led to the second version of the present-day with no record of his existence and a failed time travel machine that his partner Tim can not figure out on his own. My main struggle with this sketch was being concise but clear. This resulted in me needing to ensure that my visuals had small details like stitches where you are able to infer the meaning of the story. This sketch was very different compared to the rest of the sketches but resonates closest with the week 2 sketch where we had to create a visual and explain the significance. Overall, this process was very fun a I look forward to creating larger stories with more panels to create stories with more depth.  

Neckzilla

Student Posts

This sketch definitely took the longest amount of time to think of a unique idea that fits the criteria. After exploring Stephen Mcmennamy’s Tumblr and the examples on the class website, I noticed a pattern involving animals so I decided to try to focus on that rather than trying to think of a random idea. I came up with the idea of a morphed giraffe. I originally was going to use an empty paper towel picture role to represent the long neck of the giraffe but I decided to take the photo one step further and use a bamboo stick. The final picture represents a Giraffe and its unique characteristics: a very long neck and eating habits. The bamboo even though it is not the tree that giraffes typically pick leaves from represents the giraffe’s eating habits. Even though I had a long brainstorming process, I enjoyed creating the sketch as the photo editing process was very smooth because I used Google Drawings which I am very familiar with. Overall, I really enjoyed this Sketch as it was very interesting to make a clever piece of art using two things that are unrelated.

Sketch 3: Visual Note Taking

Student Posts

Photo Credits: Sagar Thapar

The visual note-taking experience was a lot more helpful than I expected. I originally thought the doodles would be a waste of time, but surprisingly the doodles helped me understand the concepts better. I think this note-taking method can be very helpful in learning complex parts of a course’s syllabus because I am a visual learner, but it is time-consuming because I am not a skilled artist. Originally, I think I was overthinking what to draw because I am so used to structured notes. However, once I stopped overthinking and just doodled I started to see faster results. I think allowing yourself to doodle concepts allows you to truly test your brain’s understanding of the concept and can be a good self-assessment. If I were to repeat this process I would stress less and just see what my brain can come up with on its own. I think the next time I would use this process would be when I have a midterm or final in a class to give myself a different medium to understand the concepts.

Human Sponge

Student Posts

For my Sunday sketch, I was having trouble creating an idea that used a 3D object. I am at home for the weekend and searched my room for something I thought would fit.After being stumped on what to do, I decided to do something that represented my current state of mind. I found a sponge. I drew the arms and legs on the sponge to give it human-like features. The human-like features of the sponge represent what many other college freshmen and I are feeling right now: The constant need to absorb and adapt to the new experiences and challenges of college. More specifically, the thought bubbles help with representing trying to balance all of what college offers: academic rigor, social experiences, living on your own, and trying to make this place your home. 

sk2

Literacy Narrative Reflection

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Photo Credits: Bric on Flickr

I really enjoyed writing this essay because it helped me reflect on my unique journey and relationship with the english language. It helped me further understand when I started to truly care about my writing and reading skills. I had a slow start to the free writing. However, as my ideas started to form the free writing exercise helped me discover that my genuine passion for reading and writing stemmed from my junior-year english class. Before this, I never distinctly read anything significant that really made me want to sit in a chair and read something for “fun”. The writing process I felt for this was especially difficult because I had a very tough time associating memories or moments within my life with reading and writing because I did not find it interesting for the longest period of time. On top of this, writing about yourself with very little bits of memory of yourself makes it hard. One sentence I really am proud of within my essay I find the most interesting within my essay is “I started to recognize symbols, themes, motifs, and other rhetorical choices in the common shows I loved to watch, understanding, even more, why they were so highly rated.”

Avatar Week 1 Sketch

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I chose this image of a box with old baseballs, a check, and some empty space because I believe it symbolizes some of the most important parts of myself. Academically, I believe the empty space within the box represents my openness to unique perspectives, ideas, and stories that we will read in this class. I chose baseball because sports and fitness are large parts of my identity as I love to work out and play various sports with friends in my free time. Finally, the check represents my interest in business as it is my intended major.
One difficulty I had in making my avatar was finding a photo that symbolizes both academic and personal interests. I wanted to use an avatar that would not be forcing the two ideas but would naturally allow both to be symbolized. Additionally, I had difficulty with figuring out how to add it to the website. This was due to trying to understand how to use my new Computer with a different operating system.

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