The Secret Language of Comics

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.

The inspiration came from my own experience. One day, my friend was looking for her phone. She anxiously messaged me that she lost her phone. Actually, it turned out that the phone was actually in her hand. We all have lots of similar experiences in life, such looking around for your glasses when they are actually on your head. The challenge of this assignment is to describe a scenario vividly by using a combination of words and images. What is different about this assignment is that not only do we need to draw the scene, but more importantly, we need to make connections between the panels to create a complete story.

I didn’t necessarily have a plan for what I was going to create for my triptych so it was last minute.I was merely searching through my photos for an image that could convey a straightforward narrative. Although there isn’t necessarily a beginning, middle, and finish to this triptych, it is still simple enough to get the point across. I used adobe software for the composition process and it was surprisingly easier than I expected. When it comes to editing it’s not typically my favorite but this sunday sketch changed my mind and introduced me to a new software. A triptych sketch is different in the sense that it does not require extra details and can be simple compared to my other assignments whereas I need focus on the information, the structure, and its formality.