Category: Student Posts

I was at a loss for what to do for this three panel comic, so I decided to create a comic about my team retreat to Tennessee this past weekend. It was a tiring weekend packed with activities – two full length practices, the Tennessee football game, exploring the University of Tennessee’s athletic facilities, and team bonding activities. I am not a great artist, so I decided to create my comic digitally using Canva. A challenge I encountered was finding the right graphic that matched my experience over the weekend. This comic felt different from the other sketches because it required more of a storyline, which was difficult for me to come up with in only three panels.

As a rising middle schooler, I was terrified at the idea of playing football. Baseball is a much safer sport comparitively and it was all I had known to that point. But when my school forced me to play either football or cross country, I decided I could handle it for middle school. In middle school I was still scared most of time, but I noticed how the constant facing of my fears was changing me little by little. Due to this realisation and the friendships that were involved I decided to continue into high school. The photo on the right is me and my senior teammate sitting on our logo our we lost in the post season. It was an amazing opportunity to reflect on how a sport that I was so scared to play ended up being one of the biggest blessings of my life.

Left are right photos are mine. Middle photo- @billbiggsphotography via instagram. The middle photo was actually from freshman year, but it is the oldest football picture I have.

The inspiration for my Triptych came from a conversation I had with my friend a few years ago. He was talking to me about how he thought he lost weight, but turns out his scale was broken and showed a “6” instead of an “8.” Rather than using the exact conversation, I decided to use the word “low” and add some humor with “low battery” and “low weight.” I thought the planning of the Triptych was challenging since I had to minimize the words but convey my idea at the same time. I thought this sketch was different in a way that I had to connect multiple ideas (drawings and dialogues) in a limited space.

Link to Prompt

GALveston 2023 was a senior trip I took with my friends this summer. With camera in tow, there were a lot of funny and cool pictures we took. However, the most memorable moment of the trip was being chased by seagulls when we got hamburgers, which ended, well, with me without my In-N-Out burger.

Making the triptych was one of the harder Sunday Sketches. It was different from a lot of everything we have done because I had to pay attention to text and image and how they were connected. I knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted it to end, but choosing the pictures for the first two panels was difficult. I thought that building a pattern for the first two panels then reversing it for the third panel would be interesting. I was inspired by the webcomic, A Softer World, since the photos had a very edited, dream-like quality while the text was ironic and dark.

I do not think my triptych is that funny, but it was still fun to make.

Galveston, Texas
Taken by Josie Sim

The idea for this comic came from my own fears about rock climbing. This 3 panel comic depicts a person staring up at a climbing wall, struggling while climbing, and finally falling off the wall. It was pretty hard drawing this, especially the angles and the shadows which I don’t think I captured correctly. If I refined this drawing, the first thing I would fix is the background. A good setting sets the tone for the rest of the comic which is why I would fix that first. Another thing I would spend more time on is to think what ways would best convey my message. For example, if I wanted to convey fear on his face, what other ways could I do that if my fear emotion didn’t get through to the audience. However, I enjoyed this quick sketch and it felt good to exercise some creativity.

While crafting my narrative, I decided to use a personal experience and condense it into 3 sentences. From there, I turned those short descriptions into each respective panel. The most challenging part about this assignment was choosing a story that could easily be told through 3 illustrations and brief words. Crafting this comic strip is similar to other writing I’ve done this semester because it makes me zoom into one experience while describing it chronologically, which is what I did for the literacy narrative.