Before writing your essay, you went through a pretty involved process of tracing and annotating two pages from the books. Briefly explain what that process was like for you — probably this was very different from most other writing you’ve done, so try to explain what was useful about the process for you. What productive thoughts or analysis occurred through the act of tracing and annotating?
This process challenged me to move away from the traditional high school five-paragraph essay format. Tracing and annotating pushed me to think more visually and analytically rather than just structurally. It helped me compare the two comics in a more connected and meaningful way, since I was looking at how their artistic techniques worked together instead of writing about each one separately. Overall, it made me focus on the comics as complete visual arguments and encouraged me to analyze how form, design, and storytelling interact on the page.
For this assignment, I asked you to be very conscious of writing an inductive essay with an ABT thesis at the end, which is probably a pretty foreign way to structure an essay for you. How did your writing process change to address this assignment?
Instead of placing the thesis at the beginning of my essay, I decided to include it in the final paragraph because it reflects the natural flow of my thinking — I developed idea A first, then idea B, and the thesis emerged as a conclusion that tied them together. Writing inductively felt more like building an argument step by step rather than announcing it upfront. I also found it interesting to write without a traditional introduction, since it allowed me to dive directly into analysis and let my ideas unfold more organically.
This assignment is a close reading exercise focused on identifying aspects of the “secret language of comics,” the series of choices the authors make in crafting comics that probably pass by many readers with little or no conscious notice. Do you feel that this assignment helped you to get in on this secret language? Do you understand Stitches and Spinning better after having written this project? What’s the single biggest insight you gained about the two books during the process of tracing, annotating, and analyzing these pages (maybe something you “knew” on some level before you started but that you really get now, or maybe something you hadn’t really noticed until you worked on the project)?
Yes, I do think this assignment helped me understand the “secret language of comics” more deeply, and I definitely understand Stitches and Spinning better after completing it. The project pushed me to look beyond the surface and notice how artistic choices—like framing, shading, and color—communicate meaning just as powerfully as words. I found it especially valuable to slow down and compare the two pages closely, since comics require a kind of careful, visual reading that traditional literature does not. I really enjoyed annotating the artists’ styles and thinking about why they chose specific visual techniques to convey emotion. My biggest realization was how both artists express emotional repression through their limited use of color—Small’s grayscale and Walden’s muted tones both reveal silence and pain without directly showing it. It made me appreciate how subtle design choices can hold so much emotional weight.
A backpack with Zootopia merch (Officer Clawhauser)
A hand cream
A comic book — Spinning
My ID and key
I think my backpack reflects my daily life as a typical college student. While working on this assignment, I realized that most of the items in my bag are related to chemistry—probably because it’s the subject that currently stresses me out the most, so I tend to carry those materials everywhere. Alongside my academic items, I also included objects that show parts of my personality and interests. For example, I have an Officer Clawhauser keychain from one of my favorite Disney movies, Zootopia, because he reminds me to stay cheerful and positive during busy school days. I also put Breaking Bad stickers on my chemistry folder since it’s one of my favorite shows and ties into the subject—seeing them makes studying feel a little less stressful.
However, I do not think this photo fully represents me as a person because most of what’s in my backpack is school-related rather than personal. I think items like photos, drawings, or posters would show more of who I am outside of academics. The most challenging part of this assignment was figuring out how to connect the objects in my bag to my identity and explain what they say about me.
For this assignment, I chose to compose a story from my daily life. It’s a story that happens a lot between my cat and me: I often buy her many toys, but she always turns out to like the cheapest and most ordinary things, which sometimes pisses me off. But I think this story is light and funny in its own way, since I believe many people with pets (especially cats) can relate to this and find this nature of their cats both frustrating and funny. This assignment took me longer than I expected. I initially thought it would be easy to come up with three drawing panels, but when I thought about the story I wanted to bring, it tricked me—because I not only needed to come up with an idea but also had to convey it in just three panels. Condensing the story was not easy for me. For other assignments, I mostly had some sort of text support (such as note-taking or the narrative 1: self-reflection) or just needed to be creative for a single artwork. But for this one, I had to combine my skill in storytelling through writing with art—presenting it in an art form. I think the transition into that kind of thinking was tricky for me, but I found it enjoyable since I had the chance to turn what would normally be a short piece of writing into a storytelling triptych.
When I was drafting my idea for this assignment, I drew inspiration from a recent animated series I watched, BoJack Horseman. It is one of my favorite shows on Netflix because of the way it reveals underlying societal issues through a deceptively lighthearted style, with anthropomorphic animals in human-like bodies. I wanted to recreate an image of BoJack using real-life photographs. One of the main challenges I faced was fitting the horse head onto the man in the business suit, since the proportions did not align perfectly. I tried experimenting with other images as well, but they did not work out as I had hoped. My final composition conveys a sense of goofiness—after all, it’s a horse head on a human body—but it also reflects my appreciation for BoJack Horseman and its exploration of themes like depression, substance abuse, and the need to reconcile with one’s past.
Photo Credits:
Horse image by acceptfoto
Man in suit image by MichaelBmxking
Original notes:
Visual Note Taking:
While creating image notes, I noticed that I remember the Bio Lecture content better than I did before I started drawing visual pictures. I realized that it is challenging to transition from traditional note-taking to visual note-taking. I had to plan what to draw and how to express the meaning from my notes so that my drawings matched the concepts accurately. In this assignment, I used Procreate and basic digital comic drawing skills along with text in a contrasting color (red) to contrast between the drawings and words. I found this process very interesting, and it helped me engage more deeply with the class material. Drawing pictures supported by text was very effective for me to learn, especially since, as I mentioned in my first narrative, I am more of a visual learner than someone who learns best through reading words alone.
Sip of Starlight
On Saturday night, walking back to my dorm, I paused out front to watch the stars. That quiet moment made me think about astronomy and the calm pleasure of simply observing—so I outlined the figure in blue, a color that feels relaxing to me. Back in my room, a Coca-Cola bottle caught my eye; its long silhouette looked like a telescope, and the base resembled a magnifying glass. I’ve always loved astronomy documentaries, so it felt natural to turn that spark into a Sunday Sketch about the night sky. I titled it Sip of Starlight because the bottle becomes part of the scene, and I marked the sky with yellow-highlighter stars so they appear to glow and shine at night.
My reflection on this narrative writing process is that I felt strange doing freewriting by noticing things happening around me, because when I write, I’m not used to being aware of my surroundings. Doing that really allowed me to relax and focus more on how I feel and what I sense in the moment. I think it also helped me better recall my writing and reading experiences. I found that there is a connection between my ability to write now and my childhood experiences with reading and writing. I think many of my struggles with writing and reading came from my early childhood, and they were areas in which I lacked when I was younger. I think this sentence, “These moments taught me that growth in reading and writing is not a straight line. It curves, pauses, and sometimes restarts, but it moves forward when I keep practicing.” is the most interesting because it speaks to a lot of people, and many can resonate with the experience that sometimes things can be hard and you just have to be patient and learn to overcome the difficulties. I think this is true not only in writing but in anything else in life, too. As long as you are trying your best, you can achieve the things you want to do.
My name is Laura Li, and I am from Shanghai. For my avatar, I chose to draw a picture of myself, my cat, and my favorite food: soup dumplings or xiaolongbao. I chose a simple comic style, which represents my personality: positive, humble, and inquisitive. I love drawing and caring for animals. I especially love cats and have had a cat named Mimi for eight years. My cat and xiaolongbao are the two things that remind me of home and represent my life and culture. I hope to carry them with me as I begin my new experience here at Emory. Some difficulties I faced when creating the badge were thinking about what elements to include with a limited picture size, so I needed to scale down to the three things that are most important to represent me: a picture of myself that showcases my personality, my favorite food, and my favorite animal. Some difficulties I have faced when creating the badge were thinking about what elements to include with a limited picture size, so I needed to scale down to three things that are most important to represent me: a picture of myself that showcases my personality, my favorite food, and my favorite animal.
