When I began the assignment, I struggled to imagine how to tell a complete story in only three panels. Eventually, I realized I could capture the mindset of people who expect instant results — something I once related to deeply. My comic shows a man frustrated that a brief effort didn’t immediately transform his body. This mirrors how I used to feel when I was far more overweight and impatient for visible change.I have now learnt that real progress comes from consistency , over a long period of time.
Credit to Bob Fan Sep 29, 2025
When I started to conjure up an idea, I tried to came up with something funny. My first few ideas may work with three panels, but the drawing required makes them not really practical. It was not easy to think of a story that fits in three panels. Then, inspired by childhood experience, I had the idea of entering a wrong auditorium. I used scene to scene transitions to tell a full story. For the first and last panel, I drew from a general perspective to describe the plot. I chose the first person perspective for the second panel to highlight the reason of mistake. I also tried to draw objects that are further away smaller to create depth in the image. I feel like this activity differs from other in the way that it allows me to become a cartoonist and the power and responsibility that comes with it. Unlike in other assignments with some sort of a restraint, we can draw practically whatever we want in this assignment. We have more control but also a lot more choices to make.
When I made this comic, I just wanted it to be funny and kind of relatable. I thought it’d be fun to show someone trying to be healthy but instantly giving in to temptation, since that’s something most people have probably done. The hardest part was figuring out how to make the joke land in only three panels without dragging it out too much. I realized the middle panel had to clearly show the turning point, or the last one wouldn’t feel like a punchline.
I first thought of making my triptych a duel, but three panels didn’t feel sufficient for a smooth fight sequence. I’ve added a twist in the last panel—the duel is actually a scene from a TV show a man is watching on his couch.
When making my narrative, I first had to decide whether to find images or draw them. I’m not a big artist and drawing is very time consuming personally, so I wanted to find images online. However, for my vision that I had of a school prank, it was difficult to find images that met the copyright standards. Because of this, I decided to draw my narrative. I wanted to make each frame larger as the story went on, to portray the rising action. This comic strip is a bit different than the other projects because it tells a progressing story, but similar in the sense that we’re combining different images to create one project.
While making this comic I wanted to create a series of pictures that would display a common phrase and a common scenario in peoples lives. Spilling milk when I was young came to my mind and I decided to make a story about it. The first panel shows the milk sitting on the table. The next shows the milk spilled and thew child crying. In the third Fram the father comes in and says the famous saying, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” A challenge about this assignment was finding a clever phrase that I could convert into images that was popular enough to be well known but after a bit of brainstorming I came to this conclusion. Finally, this comic is different from other assignments because of the limit of three frames to tell an entire story which was challenging but also enjoyable.
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.
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.
