When waking up this morning (Sunday the 28th) I set my alarm for 7:45 so I could go grab my soccer bag from the locker room at 8 when Woodpec opened. When 7:45 rolled around I thought I would give myself 10 more minutes to sleep. When I finally woke up it was 9 and I had missed the opportunity to get my soccer bag. Fast forward to this afternoon I was trying to brainstorm an idea for my Triptych. I thought back to this morning and thought it could be a fun idea to take my experience from this morning and make it a 3 panel comic. It was a fun idea that I really enjoyed making especially my second panel. I got my inspiration from Stitches by David Small. Specifically the close up of David on the table about to get an X-ray. The most challenging part of this assignment was coming up with what I was gonna draw in the 3 panels. I was able to come up with my idea pretty easily as it had just happened to me, but coming up what I was actually gonna draw was a bit more difficult. I’d say that crafting this comic strip is another step in our journey to crafting our much bigger piece in our full comic. Starting from our avatar, moving towards the combo photo, and now this comic strip. We continue to develop our skills and become closer each week to being able to develop our own comic. I would say that it is different in its advancement. This comic strip is much closer to an actual comic than the previous assignments that we have done.
Trying to think of an idea to complete this comic took me longer than expected. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to compress a story into only 3 panels without overcomplicating it. I looked up 3-panel comics on the internet in order to get inspiration and realized that the comic could be pretty simple. For my comic, I made it somewhat simple. In the first panel, I have a man walking down the sidewalk with a dog off to the side behind a fence. Then, in the second panel, I have the man petting the dog. And then in the 3rd panel, I have the man walking away, ending the story. Creating this was very different from the past assignments we have done in this class. This is because, for this assignment, you had to be more consistent with your drawing since you are creating a story.
Upon making this triptych, I knew I wanted to make something that followed the beginning-middle-end storyline but was also ironic. I don’t know why but a mouse getting tricked into eating cheese came into my mind. Then I thought, that’s not really ironic or clever, so how about we add another character, a mouse’s greatest enemy. But in this case, the mouse and cat are friends who mutually love cheese and are sharing. After making the triptych, I realized this could relate to real life where friendships form and exist unexpectedly and humanity needs to stop making assumptions.
For this weeks sketch we were asked to make a triptych comic which is a three panel story. I was pretty stumped on what to do for this one for a while. A three part story was hard for me. Not enough to develop a super in depth backstory but still enough to get in a comedic or weird aspect. I also took my hand at drawing which Ive been doing more of as Ive been trying to create my comic so this was a double trouble situation for me. I dislike the mornings and that feeling when you first wake up so thats where the idea came from. Then I decided to just have fun with it. I gave the kid a weird dream scenario. Somethings off from the beginning but you cant really tell and then boom the reveal. This one was a lot of fun in the end. Very different from what I usually do but I liked that.
Link to original assignment: https://engrd101f25.davidmorgen.org/sketches/sketch-5-triptych/
When doing this assignment, the biggest challenge I faced was thinking of what I could make that could be replicated more than 3 times and still tell a story. Another struggle I faced was the making of the image itself because I have limited experience with digital drawing. Despite having limited experience, I still choose to go forward with making this digitally because I feel it would add more to the story since I can add detailed backgrounds and objects into the drawing. I decided to set this story at a school and show how miscommunication can be spread very easily. Crafting this comic strip is different from other writing I’ve done this semester because it is very repetitive. In writing I try my best to not repeat phrases or ideas because it can get redundant, but in this strip I did the exact opposite. Despite the strip being mostly repeated actions, a story was still able to be seen.
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I chose three important aspects of my life: tennis, my dog, and traveling. Tennis started as a family sport but I’ve played for around ten years so I really enjoy playing for fun. I have a German Shepherd back at home named Koda who’s five years old and I love traveling and seeing the wold.
Tennis picture: here Travel picture: here Dog picture: here
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I chose three important aspects of my life: tennis, my dog, and traveling. Tennis started as a family sport but I’ve played for around ten years so I really enjoy playing for fun. I have a German Shepherd back at home named Koda who’s five years old and I love traveling and seeing the wold.
Tennis picture: here Travel picture: here Dog picture: here
When coming up with an idea for this assignment, I struggled with what two images I could convert and how they would be related to each other. I looked at examples of Stephen Mcmennamy for inspiration but because there was a variety of unique images, I was still unsure of what I would use. After deliberating on this for a while I came up with the idea of putting together an image of an exhaust of a vehicle and an oil spill in the ocean. I decided to put these two images together because both topics are connected with harming the environment since car fumes are a high contributor to climate change and oil spills contaminate and harm wildlife in the ocean. I decided to connect these two things by using the exhaust of a vehicle as a representation of an oil pipeline. This then connects to the image of the ocean because pipelines are known to pollute the ocean with oil, which in turn harms the surrounding wildlife. While making this image, I struggled with finding images of these two topics that would visually transition both images well. Despite this issue, I feel my image still conveys both topics effectively by comparing vehicles effect on climate change and oil spills effect on wildlife.
Photo Credits: Stanford Advanced Materials, Rear end of car exhaust, https://7cad390533514c32acc8-75d23ce06fcfaf780446d85d50c33f7b.ssl.cf6.rackcdn.com/sc/1686292424-normal-lutetium-oxide-catalysts-for-automobile-exhaust.jpg
Pngtree, animated sea view filled with trash, https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1171343181/vector/pollution-plastic-garbage-in-underwater.jpg?s=612×612&w=0&k=20&c=BjRQtLMX5NV5p6v93oWH_0gFglyV3UeGNkbjoBM9MBU=
I was sitting at my desk in my dorm , when I noticed my skull pen-stand . I decided I wanted to use it in the assignment and so I took a pic of it , but I didnt know what to combine it with. I spent some time pondering while doomscrolling when it struck me; I could use a picture of a phone! I had spent most of the covid years being chronically online and I would always feel dead and numb inside at the end of each day. this picture aims to portray that feeling
I used a picture of a phone from Flickr , as I couldnt take one of my phone using my phone .
I chose to combine a road and a zipper for my project because I was trying to get at the fragility of the Earth and some of the environmental impacts humans have. I attempted to show that once the Earth is unzipped (industrialized, urbanized), it is difficult to put back together and restore to its natural being. The road represents humans unzipping the natural planet. I did not face many challenges with this project, although I did have to edit the road’s shadows and color to get it to match with the zipper more. I haven’t had experience editing, so it was a bit challenging, although I feel I could match the zipper pretty well.
