The Secret Language of Comics

Time – A gift and a Curse

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.  

Street Ball (Triptych)

The composition I made has to do with a street basketball reference. I like to play basketball a lot with my friends, and sometimes the games get very competitive, and we start throwing trash-talk and insults around when the games get intense. One of the main phrases we say when somebody when they miss a shot or when we know that they can’t shoot is “brick.” This insult means you can’t shoot and is often used when playing games at LA Fitness or parks. I just thought this comic was funny because the main character was working on his shooting and basketball game and went to play with his friends, but then the character realized that he was in the same place as before and still could not make a shot. This Sunday’s sketch was very enjoyable because the topic I wrote about was one that I experienced a lot. I chose the paper-pencil method because it was easier to draw pictures and have a more comic-like feel than doing the assignment digitally. The only really difficult part of the assignment was creating an entire plot that was only three panels long. The crafting of this comic was similar to the Sunday Sketch assignment (Sk2), as we needed to draw a picture that describes a situation or story. But it was also very different because we could explain a story using three different panels, and we did not have to tie in a real-life object to our panels either. 

Sunday Sketches~Sketch 5: Triptych

The triptych used as an example hit me hard emotionally–I wanted to do something similar with mine. I was looking around my dorm room for inspiration (like I usually do), when my eyes landed on my favorite stuffed animal (I’m not ashamed to say I brought it with me to college!). It has received a lot of love over the past 18+ years, which caused it to need a bit of “doctoring” from my mom. To show my impact on this stuffed animal, I tried to find a picture from early in my childhood where I hadn’t made any holes in my stuffed animal. I found one that my grandma has framed on her wall and laughed at how little I was in the picture. As I was writing the words to go along with this triptych, I stopped after writing the third and final panel: these words apply to me, too. Life has been full of obstacles for me, and definitely has scarred me in many ways, be it physically or mentally. Like she was there to fix my stuffed animal, my mom was also there to fix me. She is still my biggest supporter to this day, and she always encourages me to love myself just as much (if not more!) than I love my favorite stuffed animal.

*I apologize if this is really cheesy, but it’s how I feel about this!!

Sketch 5: Triptych

Due: 9/24

Tag: sk5

In How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels, Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden carry out an extended discussion of comics through repeated analysis of the single Nancy strip by Ernie Bushmiller from August 8, 1959 (at the top of this post). They explain that “one of the least tangible yet most significant implements in the cartoonist’s toolbox is the varied use of rhythms.[…] One repetition makes a pair. But add another and the repetitions have become a series, the basic building block of all rhythm. A set of three has the smallest number of elements that can establish a pattern (as well as violate it). Three implies more to come” (134).

For this week’s sketch assignment, create your own triptych comic. As you compose your triptych, I most want you to focus on creating a story with a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Your story can be minimalist, impressionistic, comic, dark, weird or whatever you want it to be — but make sure that each panel of the triptych moves that story forward from beginning to middle to end.

You can draw your triptych, or create one using photographs, maybe along similar lines as the webcomic A Softer World, which ran weekly for about twelve years starting in Feb 2003. Emily and Joey published 1248 comics in that time, each consisting of three panels with photographs and words superimposed on them – often it seems to be a single image cropped into three panels, but sometimes it’s three photos taken as a series – and then the title of the comic appears when you hover your mouse over the comic (creating space for a sort of fourth panel or commentary). The comics tend to be quite dark.

I’m looking for compact and playful storytelling through both images and words. It’s an opportunity for you to play with irony, humor, and/or wit.

Add a paragraph reflecting on your triptych comic. What choices did you make in crafting your narrative? Describe the composition process a little bit. What was challenging about this assignment? How is crafting this sort of comic strip different or similar to other writing you’ve done this semester?

css.php