The Secret Language of Comics

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Sunday Sketches~Sketch 8: Daily viz from Everyday Life

Student Posts

For this Sunday Sketch assignment, I decided to track two sets of contrasting categories: sleepiness vs. energy and stress vs. contentedness. Sleepiness and stress are the most prominent emotions I feel throughout any school week, so I was curious to see how they fluctuated on a daily basis.

As seen in my graph, I decided to use a line graph that would show the change from day to day over the course of the three-week frame where I took data every morning (I felt this was the best way to measure my sleepiness and pre-class stress levels). I noticed that the category that fluctuated the most was, unsurprisingly, my levels of stress. I noticed that it increases at the start of the week, where professors are assigning weekly assignments, and then decreases the closer I got to the weekend, showing how I was completing assignments and necessary assessments/projects. I noticed my stress levels were particularly higher on Fridays, which I believe to be connected to the number of assessments I have each Friday, which is at least two, one of them being my Computer Science course.

I found this to be a valuable tool for analyzing myself, and if I were to continue this process, I would likely gather my data using the same process that I have been using, it allows me to look at myself at the start of each day and encourages me to be the best version of myself so tomorrow’s numbers are healthier. I hope to be more aware of my levels of stress and sleepiness so I can take the necessary course(s) of action and be a more energetic and content person.

Data Visualization: Sketch 8

Student Posts

One of the conceptual issue that I was tracking was “How often do I feel stressed out throughout the week?” Lately, one of the emotions I’ve been feeling intensely is stress. Whether is about academics, social life, or personal issue, I feel stressed out about the tinites situation. Creating a data that visualizes how often i feel stressed showed me how my stress levels are at an unhealthy level. At the end of each day, I took note of how high my stress levels from that specific day was from a scale of 1-10. I found it easy to track my data on my notes app because I use it quite often for my everyday mini notes. If I were to continue this project, I would probably keep track the same way because it’s a habit to go on my notes app. Overall collecting data was a good tool for self reflection and it showed me areas in my life or habits that i need to fix to be better myself.

Another conceptual issue that I was tracking was “How many hours I devoted to myself throughout the week? My idea was to compare how my high stress levels are and what I do to take time for myself . One of my observations is the main cause of my stress was academics. Majority of the time, I choose to study for hours because it doesn’t feel right when i taking time for myself and not being productive. But the times I do take times for myself is usually sleeping and once in while socializing with my friends. Similar to the first data, I tracked it on my notes app as well. If I were to continue this project instead of tracking how many hours i take for myself, i would substitute some key activities to destress and see how i feel after the first week. Overall collecting both data showed me, how unhealthy my habits are and why I need to change my habits.

Data Viz

Student Posts

The activity that I decided to collect data on was the type of music I listen to when I am studying. I am a huge music fan and I constantly have my earbuds in listening to music, for almost every activity that I do during the day. During the time we had to collect data for this assignment, happened to overlap with my studying for the QTM midterm. So the data I decided to collect was does the type of music that I listen to when I study affect how well I stay engaged. Of course there are a lot of outside factors that could have also played a significant role in this study, so I tried to limit al of these factors by trying to got to sleep and wake up at the same time during these days and making sure I go to the gym after I study, to try to limit fatigue as a factor of my data. In addition, I went to the quiet section of the library, the Matheus Reading Room, to try to limit outside factors affecting my study as well.

The main way in which I measured my data was observing how many times i looked at my phone during my study session for my QTM midterm. I made this a sign of “losing focus” in my study. I studied for this midterm for 10 days, 5 days during the week of October 16th, and 5 days during the week of October 23rd. I listened to 5 different genres of music: Hip Hop, Country, R&B, White Noise and Hindi. I listed to each genre of music twice during the span of the two week period, to gather my data.

I also logged the time I spent studying for my for my QTM midterm each day, so I could see if this had any effect on my ability to focus as well.

The results demonstrate the the music that I actually study best with is R&B, but this was also the type of music that I spent the least amount of time studying to as well, but the result that surprised the most was that the “White Noise” genre of music was actually the type of music that caused me the least amount of focus, because this is considered to be the best type of music for most people to study and get the most work done with.

Tracing Stitches and Spinning Reflection

Student Posts

My project

Assignment prompt

The thesis of my essay is comparing the resemblances and dissimilarities of Stitches and Spinning in regards to both of the comics exploring the complex relationships between the authors mother’s. I argue that although there are similarities between the two, certain nuances in illustration and artistic choices allow David Small and Tillie Walden to tell their own unique narrative’s of how they navigated through tough familial relationships.

By tracing the comic pages before I started crafting my essay, I was able to visually process what I wanted to be said. This was really helpful during the creation process of my analysis because I had a more clear understanding of the similarities and differences that I could extract from both illustrations.

Writing this essay using an inductive style approach allowed me to jump right into what I wanted to say, instead of starting from a general claim and then trying to find ideas from there to expand upon.

I definitely feel like this assignment has allowed me to get in on this “secret language of comics”, as I looked for clues that consisted of panel length, framing, character positioning, and word choice that helped to push each comic’s narrative. I also feel like I better understand the authors choices for why they decided to use less panels during a certain moment or why they didn’t show a character’s facial expression after something was said after analyzing the pages. The single biggest insight that I’ve gained about the two books would be that in Stitches, intense facial expression is utilized to show how much a moment impacted David and in Spinning, the use of negative space and panel size is used to convey Tillie’s feelings of isolation and loneliness. These choices of illustration had not occurred to me as intentional until I traced and really analyzed each panel.

Literacy Narrative Pt. 2 Reflection

Student Posts

Turning my literacy narrative into a comic proved to be more difficult than I had expected. I struggled to combine the visual aspect with the narration in a way that told a coherent story. It felt like I was still relying on the words to convey most of the information, so I tried to put as much detail into the drawings to support the ideas in each panel. 

I was unsure if my narrative felt like it was a comic because for the majority of the panels, I used text to narrate my thoughts and actions. I wasn’t sure how else to convey my ideas, but I think I was able to compensate for this by having my drawings support and complete the ideas written as narration. 

Although there were several reasons why I felt like I struggled with this assignment, I believe that by taking the time I needed to convey my ideas, despite how hard that proved to be, is the reason why I was able to demonstrate several of the learning objectives. In specific, I think this assignment has helped me reach the goals for writing as a process and visual thinking. I spent a lot of time trying to translate my essay into the medium of comics, and after finishing my draft, I realized how essential that draft was to my final vision. It helped me come up with new ideas and patterns I could experiment with. For example, I tried to juxtapose the panels on page 2 of my literacy narrative comic with the panels on page 3. The first frame ties the pages together by showing the same image of my high school. The second frames show the difference between how I felt about many of my other classes compared to my junior year English class. I also repeated a specific visual style in the 4th frames of each page to establish the change in my mindset throughout high school. I only incorporated these visual connections after I was able to step back and think about what edits I wanted to make from my draft. 

During the process of writing my literacy narrative as a comic, I realized I felt much more comfortable expressing my thoughts and feelings with words because I could control the flow of the narrative easily and transition from one idea to another seamlessly. When it came time to create my comic, I knew I wouldn’t be able to convey every sentence I had written, but I felt unsure how to transition from one idea to another. I think in that way, if I could have had more time to expand on my comic narrative, I would have stretched out specific scenes to have several moment to moment transitions from panel to panel. Throughout the essay and the comic, my perspective was to split the narrative into 3 sections. I viewed the beginning as a way to convey my passion for reading as a child. Then, in the middle, I would transition to how school and other influences in my life caused me to lose my love of reading. Finally, I’d express how I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who really cared about making an impact on her students and how that sparked my interest in reading. Due to this beginning-middle-end structure I was attempting, I decided not to stretch out specific scenes/experiences, and instead aimed to convey the bigger picture of how my connection to reading has constantly evolved as I’ve grown. 

Literacy Narrative Response

Student Posts

Creating a comic of my literary narrative essay has helped me meet the learning outcomes of practicing writing as a process by implementing the strategies of research, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection. Not only did I have to make multiple drafts and revisions, but the brain power it took to turn pure prose into words and pictures was a challenge of its own. In essay form, I focused my idea on being chronological so it could be easier to adapt to a comic later. I talk about my struggle with incorporating metaphors and analogies. Ironically, when it was time to make the comic version of my idea, creative writing was required to shorten my sentences and fit all my ideas into a handful of panels.

One challenge I faced was making each page have different panels. Variety is key in showcasing my ideas, thoughts, and if I am to be so bold, talents. Once the visual component was added I was forced to think of how my words would fit on a page in space. Also, my first designs and drawings were not always the best, and many revisions were needed to put the idea I had fostered in my head, to paper. 

Writing comics and essays involves distinct thinking processes. When I was crafting my comic, I had to mix words to tell a story. To use a metaphor, it is like a team sport, and I have got to be super clear and to the point in my drafts. There is not much space on the page compared to an essay which one can keep writing on, and on, and on, so brevity is key. When writing the essay beforehand, I tried to dive deep into arguments and evidence, focusing on structure and detail. While they both need analytical thinking, comics are like the fun, creative cousins of serious, scholarly essays.

No comic is complete without an ending, and since I struggled with the writing beforehand, I was very concerned with how my comic would end up. After lots of thought, I decided to go with a slightly open-ended finish. I reflected on the texts we had read in class and why I liked some more than others (I am a fan of “It’s Lonely at the Center of the Earth” and not so much the ending of “Spinning”). Since my essay did not have an ending worth illustrating and lacked the “ABT” form, it was a challenge to create something I felt comfortable with to end my comic. I decided to use inspiration from the page I traced in “Stitches”. I took the panel when David was in the air above the wave and transformed it with a positive lens. For my last panel, I drew myself in the same spiraling way that David was and wrote: “When I got that first email… I thought I could fly”. I was reflecting on the emotion of getting my first college acceptance letter in a way that was not literal and was based upon material we had read in class.

https://wordpress.com/page/observant-bschuchat.wordpress.com/101

Literacy COmic Reflection

Student Posts

Creating this literacy comic started off with thinking how I could shapeshift my words into images. This part of the process encouraged me to think critically about what I should emphasize in my comic and what I should omit, in order to effectively tell the story of how my viewpoint on reading shifted. It was very different creating a comic when compared to writing out an essay because you learn quickly that expressing what you want to in a panel is much more difficult if you lack the skills in drawing. For example, if I had a better skill set in drawing I could have drawn my characters with more human-like form, being able to focus on capturing emotion and facial expressions with greater detail and emphasis. I feel that I spent more time making my drawing make sense than I wanted to, which I felt limited the depth of the story because I had to simplify so much, even the little details of what book I was reading on page 4 and why the story was so compelling to me. Thoughts regarding my literacy narrative have changed in the sense that I still have much more to discover about myself when it comes to my interactions with English in and outside the class. I feel that in creating this comic, I gained an interest in comics and how they can be utilized as an effective tool of expression in fewer words than an essay or any other conventional piece of literature.

Focusing more on the final product of this process, I wanted to talk about some of the choices I made. While reading through the comic you’ll notice that any book pictured in a panel is drawn in grayscale and without any highlighted, gold accent or color. You’ll notice however, that after I made the decision to change my approach to how I treated reading, “discovering the gold” in it, the books pictured have this yellow accent or an addition of color in some form. I made this choice in order to show how reading had been enhanced and made more enjoyable through my growing interest in reading beyond the surface and truly experiencing literature. This brings me to the decision I made on page 2 where I show how reading had become more visual to me, showing a panel with a book that translates to “When did reading become this way? I can [see] the [world] I’m reading.” I made the words “see”  and “world” into pictures to show this visualization of words. I also want readers to notice how my house shifted from “Home (Not So) Sweet Home” to “Home Sweet Home” ” after I began playing around with my newfound interest in books, reading The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope. This book is what I wanted to capture in the final panel of my comic. The process of making this comic had many different steps like drawing out a first draft, receiving feedback, and revising your product. This aligns with our learning objective of writing as a process as we are encouraged to take our time and the necessary steps to produce something we can be proud of. All in all, creating this comic has been a layered process that has taught me a lot about myself and I can say that I’m happy with what I produced. 

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