My triptych sketch is a play on karma as a bird pooped on the taller boy after he laughed at the little boy dropping his ice cream. An interesting aspect I came across while doing this assignment was combining multiple events in one panel. Planning how to fit the story in only three panels encouraged me to group occurrences together such as the bird pooping mid air for foreshadowing while showing why the taller boy was laughing with the ice cream dropping on the ground. This experience is very different from writing since I typically can write as much as I want and however detailed I want it but in this assignment I barely used any words and had to set the emotions through facial expressions.
My triptych this week was a 3-panel satirical dig at materialistic mindsets. In the first panel, both characters agree that money can’t buy happiness, and that it only comes from within. In the second panel, they go on a shopping spree with bags full of clothes, new phones, and a new car. Despite their temporary jubilation, the feelings of joy wear off shortly in the third panel. The man sarcastically says, “I think that I bought inner peace too…”.
In terms of idea generation, I was able to use the creativity involved with triptychs to create what was exactly on my mind at the time – a critique of materialistic mindsets. Due to my limited artistic abilities, I used a cartoonish style, mixing it in with satire/a sarcastic sense of humor – a decision which represents my style as a person. As expected, the most difficult part of the composition process was putting ideas onto paper, but with some persistence I was able to create what was a fairly accurate depiction of my thought process. The triptych in general was similar to the assignments we’ve done so far in the sense that we had to create some sort of narrative (although very short) and use our creative side to visually depict our narrative in some way.
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 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.
Screenshot
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
