Week 5a

Today in class we discussed different ideas for the next project, which is a one-page comic. We had to come up with three different narratives. Here are my three:

A Person's Life:

My idea for this is about a female character I have. She is not very developed yet, so I think she is enough of a blank slate to work on this idea. Basically, I want the story to be told about her, but from the perspective of a boy who was friends with her. It will start off with him narrating about what he knew about her childhood and such. The time jumps will be pretty large. It will start at birth, then jump 6 years, and then from there jump 10 years. The majority of the comic will take place when she is 16. It will detail some of the adventures they shared as friends and some of the quirks about her as a person. It will probably show different scenes, like them walking through the woods together, or getting popsicles at a 7/11. It will end with her disappearance, the search, and the boy narrating how he never got to tell her that he loved her after the case lost hope (likely 6 months or less since they won't have any evidence to track her). I imagine the mood of this being a mix of melancholy and nostalgic.

A Place's Life:

There are a few ideas I could do for a place's life. My initial thought is just a bedroom since I think it goes through the most changes. It could show move-in day, with some boxes scattered around. Slowly, as time progresses they unpack, leaving fewer and fewer boxes behind, with new items popping up in the room. You could see different activities happening in the room, between the occupant getting ready, to them coming home after a date with someone else. It could also show the deterioration of organization over time, and the clutter could build up. On the other hand, it could show someone who had a messy room whipping it into shape because they met someone or wanted to make a change in their lives. Another idea would be a depiction of divorce, where the couple slowly dissolves apart and the comic would show how this happens through the items in the room. This idea could also be used to show the progression of a mental illness. Overall, there are many options for what can be done with this idea.

A Thing's Life:

In a similar vein, as my first idea, Professor Pannafino suggested I could follow the life of a missing person poster. The story could follow the missing person poster from production to it being forgotten. Some of the scenes could follow the poster as it's blown around to different locations. At first, it could be a lot of people looking at it, it being passed around, hung up, and such. Then, it blows off of where it was hung up, or out of someone's hands. The poster could get worn and tattered over time until it is eventually forgotten because the person has been missing for so long. It could be shown traveling to different parts of a town, or even all the way across the world. It could also end with it finding the missing person that it's for. This could lead to the end of the life of the missing poster, since it's purpose has been fulfilled. I imagine there could be a lot of interesting ways to play with this idea.

We also went over different transitions. They are as follows:

1. Moment-to-moment: a seamless connection, much like a film reel
2. Action-to-action: an intense progression with distinct subject matter
3. Subject-to-subject: changes perspective, but is of the same scene
4. Aspect-to-aspect: showing different elements of a place, idea, or mood
5. Non-sequitur: no logical relationship, skipping around in subject matter.

Week 4b

Today in class we played a game called Mangaka. The premise of the game was to create comics using different parameters which were determined by drawing cards. My group first drew the words archer, nail care, and transforming into a more powerful form. The first comic was 2 panels:

Then we drew a trend card for comedy, so we had to include all the words used before and this trend card. This time the comic was 4 panels:

For the third round, we had to use 2 trend cards and all of the theme cards as before. For this we drew  the happy ending card and one called simplicity. For the simplicity card you had to use words with no more than five letters. Unfortunately I messed up the simplicity part, so I did get the points. This comic was 6 panels:

For the last round, you had to use 4 trend cards, ours were longest word bubble, most dead people, someone yelling someones name, and revealing a villain. This was tough to do, but I managed to get it done. It was 8 panels:

I ended up winning the game. It was really fun and allowed for me to think about different ways of storytelling.

Week 4 Outside of Class - IIDCon

On Saturday, I had to go to IIDCon. Having been in the past, I knew kind of what to expect. However, it is always interesting to see what the new speakers have to say. The first presentation was by Todd Miller, the Wawa Director of Digital Marketing. He started at Kutztown University, unsure of what direction he exactly wanted to take. He knew he wanted to do something which was a mix of computers and art. This led him to work in the web industry. He told us he worked in many different places, such as for the company which works on South Park, Harley Davidson, Victory Brewing, Warner Brothers, and Sherwin Williams, among others. Eventually, Todd Miller moved into Wawa. At Wawa, it started by just emerging into the web environment, however now it has exploded into all aspects of the web. Along the journey, he said he learned a few important lessons. These lessons were as follows:
          1. There is no clear or obvious path of what you'll do
          2. You will meet a lot of people, be nice, and be humble
          3. Nobody knows what they are doing, be true to what you want
I thought these lessons were really applicable to my personal life and were echoed in most of the other presentations.

The next speaker was actually a team of husband and wife, Christine and Phil Newswanger. Together, they run Modo, which is a design-build web consultancy which works with mostly non-profit clientele. The common theme between all of the clients was their need to make communication. The design company itself focuses on the idea of simplicity, which they described as the subtraction of the obvious and the addition of the meaningful. In running this company, the couple also had three life lessons they came across in design. The lessons were:
         1. Forget passion, pursue curiosity (always ask questions)
         2. Keep working at it, keep producing work and connecting with people
         3. Risk delight (try new things)
In my opinion, the most interesting lesson they spoke on was the idea of risking delight by doing things outside the norm. Generally, I try to avoid risks so hearing that I should because it can be very beneficial kind of made me try to reframe my perspective on risk.

The third speaker was Doug Logan. His presentation was on the business of being right and explaining how to work on being persuasive. He started off by saying that research has the ability to bring others to your side of thinking. Therefore, we should use data to convince others of what we believe to be right. He also gave 3 types of research to use to persuade now:
          1. Design thinking. He also recommended a resource I would like to try, which is a design thinking pamphlet by IBM.
          2. Industry reports, which are a great source of data.
          3. Spy tools, which allow for you to see all marketing and display ads for various companies.
I found this talk to be very interesting and relevant to a class I am taking where you work with a real client. I hope to use many of the tools he suggested in the future, although I found the spy tools to be most interesting.

The final speaker was Bri, who I remember seeing when we went to visit the design studio in spring. She does a lot, being a partner and designer of Shake and Shift, the president of the central PA AIGA, and organizer for Shine Lancaster, and an instructor at Thaddeus Stevens, among so much more. Her presentation was mostly focused on the idea of sharing ideas and learning, and how important that is. She had many tips on how to work on sharing knowledge:
         1. Set up expectations, create a foundation to stand on
         2. Create an intention, what is the purpose?
         3. Hold space: hear people out, and make them feel heard.
         4. Knowledge is more than what we study, it comes from
         5. You get out what you put in
She also gave general life tips:
         1. You can't be everything to everyone
         2. It's okay not to know
         3. It is a two way street
         4. Meet people where they're at
I also enjoyed this talk. It was a nice reminder that we are all human and can only do our best. Sometimes it is hard to forget all of the tips she laid out.

Overall, I thought this years IIDCon was very interesting. Although many of the presentations share common themes, there is a lot of information I will continue to take with me moving forward.

Week 4a

Today in class we had a critique on our final comics. My comic went over relatively well, however here are some of the criticisms I received:

• good line weight on the border
• the colors of the silhouette varies from that of the border, make sure they are the same
• the spikes on the speech bubble which denotes music are too extreme, maybe add more spikes around the whole bubble, or deemphasize them a little
• try to make it more obvious that it is music as opposed to speech, maybe by adding 
• in the first panel, consider zooming out to show more of the class
• the title isn't the best choice, a better one might be "The Hypocritical Professor"
• maybe add another student and have them reacting to the professor
• maybe add another panel where the professor is fumbling with his phone
• good technique with shading and hatching

Week 3 Outside of Class

Over the weekend I finished my final comic. This is what it looks like:

Overall, I am happy with how it turned out. I am happy with the illustrations especially. It was very difficult for me to come up with a gag for this comic, so I am glad I finally did. I am interested to see what others will say about it.

Week 3b

Today in class we primarily just worked on our projects. By the end of class, I had my first panel illustrated. I decided to change my idea to one where the professor is getting ready for an exam and he tells the class to turn off their phones. Then, his phone ends up going off with a ringtone of Toxic by Britney Spears. Here is the first panel:

Over the weekend, I will continue and finish my whole comic.

Week 3a

In class, I met with Professor Pannafino to discuss my idea I had. Since I was having trouble coming up with more ideas, he helped me brainstorm. After this, I went back to work trying to think of more ideas. I sketched some characters and then did a few scenes. I like some of my newer ideas. Here are some of the sketches:

Above are some of the characters I sketched, along with some notes on what to consider going forward. The female character is a crazy cat lady who knitted a sweater out of her cat's hair and just generally loves cats. The bottom character is supposed to be an "evil" professor, but I ended up not really going with that idea.

This is another sketch I did following the idea for the kid professor again. I still like this idea, but I'm not committed to it still.

Finally, here are two comic sketches I did. The first one features the crazy cat lady idea. The character is introducing herself to the class, saying how she really loves cats. The "camera" pans back to reveal her entire outfit and posters on the wall. She also has a cat on her head, disguised as her hair, which I drew curling up into a new position in the second panel. The last panel is of her saying she knitted the sweater she is wearing out of cat hair. My other idea is a professor with a Ph.D. that kind of acts like he knows everything, then a student asks him a question (I'm not sure what yet), and he has to Google it for the answer.

As of right now, I am kind of leaning towards the last idea as my final one.

Week 2 Outside of Class

This weekend I tried to continue to develop my idea of the kid professor. As I mentioned in my last post, I don't really have ideas. I tried to think of some more, but to no avail. So, I decided to just develop the one idea I did have some more. When I initially came up with the idea, I thought it would be somewhat funny to have a kid professor teaching a difficult class. However, I realized I didn't really have a punchline for that. So, after thinking about it some more, I decided it would make more sense to have the kid teach an "easy" class. So, my set up for the "joke" is these college students sitting waiting for this class to start. They remark to each other how easy they think it will be, and then say that it would probably be so easy, a child could teach it. Then, the kid professor shows up to teach the class. I'm not sure how particularly funny this is, but I think there is more of a joke with this idea. Here are some of the sketches I did this weekend:

Week 2b

Today in class, we got into groups and started to discuss ideas for the professor comic. Although I had been thinking about it a lot, I still did not have very many ideas. I was kind of at a loss for what to do. However, my group helped me reflect on some potential ideas. Through talking it out, I got an idea about a class that's taught by a kid as a professor. I'm thinking he could be teaching a very tough class, but I am not sure what the punchline would be. I started sketching out what this character might look like and the reaction from the class. Here's what I came up with in class:

I like this idea of the kid professor, and I think going into the weekend I will continue to develop it. It seems like a cute idea that could be kind of funny, if put in the right circumstances.

Week 2a

Today was Labor Day, so we did not have class.

Week 1 Outside of Class

Over the weekend, we had to do a reading on writing gags. The first step to writing a gag strip is to make a start. This basically means come up with some idea or situation and draw related images. The second step is to make wider observations based on the first idea. What this involves is developing a context for the situation. Another important part of making gag strip comics is called the "problem" method. This is where gags are based upon problems, so the comic addresses what could happen or potential solutions for the problem. All of these steps are built upon through sketching and brain-storming. This reading also touched upon the difference between gag strip comics and cartoon strips. The primary difference is that cartoon strips work to develop a punchline over a longer period of time. The characters seen within the cartoon strips will often be seen in following strips. To develop a cartoon strip, the author recommended using the opening frame method. In this method, you start by drawing any situation, any at all. From there you listen to your characters and further develop the story. The overall process of creating a cartoon strip goes like this: pick a situation, expand on the chosen situation, sketch it out, do a more finished rough draft, and finally, complete the final artwork. Overall, I found this reading to be beneficial in getting a grasp on how to start this first project. I will definitely keep what was said in mind as I progress into creating my first gag strip comic.

Week 1b

Today in class we watched a documentary called Stripped: A Revealing Look At the World's Greatest Comic Strips. The documentary focused on the perspectives of several comic artists. It started off by talking about the history of comics. I found it interesting that being a comic artist was very desirable in the 40s and 50s, up through the 90s. Unsurprisingly it was also very competitive. This was because in order to have your comics published, you had to pitch them to a syndicate who would then sell them to newspapers. In order to do that, however, your comic had to really stand out. As the 90s approached, popular characters from newspaper comics started appearing on TV and in movies. However, the transition into the 2000s and up to present day created new challenges for comic artists. Newspapers began to close down, meaning less income for comic artists and less chances for new artists to get their work out there. However, the internet was the answer to the decline in newspapers. Comic artists began posting their work online for free. This was liberating in a sense because syndicates no longer were in control. It also created new challenges in creating income. Thankfully, artists began to figure out that as a consumer base was created, the demand for products relating to their comics also increased. It soon became a balance of online presence with in-person presence at conventions and meet ups. This appears to be the route for those interested in pursuing a career in comics today. Overall, I found this documentary interesting in terms of the business side of the comics industry. I had never really thought about how the industry worked, so it was very informational in that regard. However, I would have liked to have seen more about each artists creative process. I felt that what they did go into was rather short, and I would've liked to have seen more in terms of materials and such. What they did mention was interesting. It was cool seeing the stacks of sketchbooks some artists had, while others did things digitally. It was also interesting to hear that many kept notebooks for ideas with them at all times, which I thought made since given that many of them had to come up with something new everyday. In terms of actually drawing the characters, I remember the wife of the creator of the Peanuts said that her husband, Charles Schulz, liked to imagine the characters actions in his head while drawing them. I thought that was cool, and another idea I would like to implement in my future comic creating endeavors. In the end, I found this documentary to be an interesting look into the world of the comic industry.