The Secret Language of Comics

It was different writing my literacy narrative as a comic because I had to use significantly less text, and come up with images to match my writing. It was challenging to decide which key components I should take from my narrative and include as text. With the addition of the visual component, I had to think about how to transform my words into images. I decided early on that I wanted to use photos instead of drawing, which in a way made things a lot more difficult because I had to search for photos that could tell my story. I had to be creative at some points of the story, especially towards the end because I didn’t have many photos that I felt could tell the story of my breakup as well as tutoring my brothers. The visual component helped me piece together the story and have a better overall flow. My thinking process when creating the comic was definitely different from when I was writing the narrative. I found it easier to write the narrative as opposed to creating the comic, due to the fact that the comic had a lot more moving parts that I had to think through. I struggled with figuring out how to include any dialogue in my comic while telling my story. I also felt as though I included too much text at times, and could have done better with telling my story through more visual components. The main changes I made from my storyboard to my final draft included adding more visual components to add more creativity and better flow to the story. I felt as though my visual components were best on the first page, due to the fact that my mom was able to take pictures of the books I created when I was younger as well as my elementary school yearbook. I felt as though these photos were crucial for my story, because the books I couldn’t describe as well with words. I also felt that the progression of my age in the photos helped with the flow of the story; you could see me age across the panels. I tried to use colors in order to set the mood for my story. The first page depicting my childhood, I made an effort to use vibrant colors, while on the second page, I tried to use black, white, and grey tones as much as possible in order to depict a low point in my adolescence. The revival of colors on the third page is supposed to symbolize the way writing helped me push through the low points and process my negative emotions. In my final draft I added little emojis in order to add some humor to a relatively depressing slide. This was in order to show that with reflection, this “low point” wasn’t as dark as it really felt at the time. Overall I thought that the process of changing my literacy narrative into a comic made the flow a lot better, and provided a visual representation of my story.

After crafting my final comic, I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer, artist, and communicator. Based on the learning outcomes for this course, I feel like I have already demonstrated all five of the end-of-semester targets.

The Sunday sketch assignments have prepared me well to take on this bigger drawing project, and I utilized both visual and writing modes to compose a text of a narrative genre. By creating my literacy comic, I have met the learning outcome of being able to “compose texts in multiple genres, using multiple modes.”

Before we had to construct our own comic, we read various texts including Stitches, Spinning, and It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. From engaging in meaningful class discussions to analyzing and evaluating the material on my own time, I feel like I definitely have been able to “undertake scholarly inquiry” of the ideas of others in order to brainstorm my own arguments that I wrote about in my literacy narrative. The comics that we have read so far have been non-fiction memoirs recounting the author’s own personal childhood experiences, which directly relates to the assignment we had to do. I analyzed and assessed how the authors like David Small and Tillie Walden approached presenting their childhood experiences and then I tried to apply that strategy to my own literacy narrative comic.

Producing this literacy narrative allowed me to view writing as a process of research, drafting, and reflection. However, I feel like I did not really meet the learning outcome of revising or editing my writing. I stuck with my first draft because I felt like the quality of it was okay to move forward with the illustration process, but I feel like I could’ve challenged myself to reconstruct my essay as a whole, even if that meant the drawing portion of the narrative might be more difficult to effectively communicate and reflect the writing. If I could go back and restart the process of constructing the literacy narrative comic, I would be more bold in editing my initial writing.

An aspect of this assignment that I really liked was getting into groups and discussing my peers’ comic drafts that they created. I enjoyed not only understanding their experience with reading and writing, but also seeing their artistic process in being able to communicate those ideas. I was only able to view a couple of my classmate’s works, but I think it would be very interesting to meet with the entirety of the class to collaborate and share feedback too. 

Lastly, I definitely used technology appropriately while making my comic. I chose to produce the illustrations using a digital medium, Procreate, and it was very exciting to explore my artistic style by having access to different colors, brush strokes, and paint textures. 

For my comic, I decided to visually communicate my writing by mostly indirectly illustrating key points in the narrative. For example, if I wrote that I was ready to take on sixth grade English, I would draw myself as a superhero on a building of books, or if I wrote that it felt like all my English class lessons were just a constant repeat of “claim, evidence, reasoning”, I would draw a track to convey the feeling of boredom and repetition. I found that using symbolism to express my ideas allowed me to use less panels. If I had more time, I definitely would want to use more 3d forms instead of having a doodle-like quality to my comic, and I would play around with color and different media like Zoe Thorogood’s comic, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. I would also make my comic a lot longer, it feels really condensed that I feel like it misses a huge chunk of emotion and a sense of flow. 

Overall, I had so much fun with this assignment. Combining both art and writing to communicate something meaningful to me has helped me really understand and deconstruct my journey and relationship with reading and writing. I am excited to use what I’ve learned from this project and class readings to hopefully produce and execute something of higher quality!

You can view my literacy comic here.

In Stitches and Spinning, Both authors used various techniques to help readers consciously and unconsciously sympathize with their traumatic memories. When tracing the pages, I felt like I was situated into the author’s point of view and began to analyze the purposes of how the authors organized the pages. For example, tracing the compact panels on the Spinning page was a bit tiring, which led me to wonder about the mood or message the author tries to convey with the various panels. 

Having to place the thesis at the end with the ABT format, I was a little confused about what to put in the first paragraph, where I usually write the thesis. Also, it was challenging for me to synthesize a larger meaning for the similarities and differences of the two texts.

The close reading process helps distinguish many techniques that the authors utilize, such as the number and organization of panels, angles, the uses and locations of texts, and also understanding the mood and atmosphere these techniques create. In analyzing the text closely, I also thought about the metaphoric purposes of these scenes about how they expose the authors’ inner struggles and hardships, for example, of how David Small was pressured by his family and his own diseases. And of how Tillie Walden feared the exposure of her being seen by others. 

When creating the literacy narrative, I found it easier than alphabetic narrative to convey ideas either through concrete or metaphoric images. For me, illustrations seem to provide more diverse options to portray certain messages than words do. Similar to writing the essay in words, I also have to choose which moments are the most important to emphasize. I frame these significant moments in larger panels, much like how I use more words to analyze more influential parts of my experience.  However, concerns about variations in syntax, diction and the overall flow of the essay turned into efforts of designing diverse panel shapes and sizes and making the metaphoric images clear in their meanings. I found it interesting that I could manipulate the perspective and angle through which I draw each scene, much like manipulating camera movements when making a movie. 

When trying to arrange my essay into a comic, I realized again that too many elements are squeezed into the narrative. With the limit of page number and size, the process of organizing helped me filter out certain pieces and concentrate on the more significant ones. I found out that it would be easier to construct a comic if I have focused on one most powerful event in my experience. Doing so would allow me to expand on more details and make the story more engaging. Perhaps condensing my alphabetical narrative into one event would also strengthen the essay. 

In my comic, I tried to vary the panel size and the perspective from which the panels are drawn. For example, I chose to minimize the panel size for the part in which I was scolded by my writing tutor because I wanted to show my distressed reaction, but meanwhile it isn’t quite a significant part of the narrative. For the last two panels on the bottom of the second page, I chose to alter the perspective so that the last panel shows a closeup of my eyes seeing the shooting stars in order to highlight the emotional impact that the metaphor had on me. 

There are also several aspects that could be improved. For example, my narrative might still seem a bit scattered rather than revolving around a single event. In addition, I am uncertain if I effectively synthesized the two parts of my narrative at the end. I feel like I provided a hasty summary rather than analyzing and expanding on the lessons learned from my experience. Some parts of the comic might also seem unclear due to my insufficient drawing skills. For example, the bottom of page three is supposed to portray the character looking at the earth through a telescope made of a curled book, although the book looks a bit more like a sandwich. If I could hire an expert illustrator, I would have him clarify those details and perhaps add some colors into the comic. 

When reading Spinning by Tillie Walden and Stitches by David Small, there is a common theme of isolation that the main character feels. In Stitches, David had to deal with a lot of childhood trauma that stems from his dysfunctional family. One of the main reasons why David was isolated from his family and the outside world, was due to numerous medical treatments and appointments. In Stitches, the sketch I chose to trace, there are three panels of Small zoomed in lying on the medical table.  Similar to Spinning, you also see three panels of Walden lying on the ice. Walden was secluded from her family and friends because of the significant amount of time she spends in the skating rink practicing and weekends competing across states. In both sketches, you can see where the phrase “All at Once” by Hilary Chute comes to play. Both authors illustrated three panels that are similar so the readers can engage with the story on multiple levels simultaneously. Through these three panels,  Small and Walden share a common theme of isolation, allowing readers to understand through visual elements. 

In addition, two thought-provoking patterns I have seen in both sketches are the color scheme and the zoom in and out effects. Small uses mostly dark colors like black and gray, whereas Walden uses three primary colors: navy, yellow, and white. However, in these exact panels, both authors use the color white to emphasize their isolation. Small uses the color white and special zoom-in effects of himself as a child in the three panels to highlight how his isolation and trauma emanate from his childhood. Walden uses white and the zoom out effect in Spinning to depict how one of her isolations stems from her ice skating career. The panel is zoomed out making Walden seem smaller which looks similar to her other panels in the book,that display stars and the moon to depict her solitude, as if she is the only one in the universe.Overall, Small and Walden use the similar  technique, albeit in different styles, to demonstrate how their isolation manifests itself in various ways.

Despite the fact Walden and Small have gone through different experiences they both share a profound feeling of isolation. Through the different zoom in and out effects, color schemes, number of panels, and the common theme of isolation, they highlight the universal human struggle to connect with people and having to navigate their adolescence independently. 

 Work Cited:

Chute, Hillary. Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. 2017, openlibrary.org/books/OL28723757M/Why_Comics.

link to tracing pages

Click to access thinking.pdf