The Secret Language of Comics

Author: Kyle

Reflection: Tracing Pages

Student Posts

The process of tracing the two pages for Symbols: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN was demanding. It took a long time for me to decide what specific page I would like to trace and analyze. I also thought that the assignment would have been easier if I could refer to more than just a single page and explore it together. Especially for Stitches, which had many pages that symbolized David’s status, it made it hard for me to choose one. When I was tracing the selected pages and scanning them, I was not sure what the problem was, but it became blurry, which was a thing that I didn’t expect. I got to think about the secret language of comics, focus on the details of the authors, and analyze the purpose of using such drawings. I think it was the process of analyzing the page for a long time that allowed me to think about the secret language of the author naturally. It took some time for me to make my thesis statement in the ABT format, but it was interesting to write a thesis statement in the last paragraph. Also, during the process of tracing, annotating, and analyzing these pages, I learned that comics are not something just for kids and superheroes but can be profound as a book and be highly descriptive as a poem.

Me trying to make my bag as light as possible

Student Posts

Laptop – Need it if you are an Emory Student

Laptop Charger- Must have this as my laptop runs out of battery quickly.

Ipad- Use it to take notes, and read books from ENGRD

Pencil Case- Use it when I take notes on paper

Mouse- For control of my laptop

Earphones- For music, online classes, and videos.

Wallet- Has my credit card and student ID

Mask- I try to carry an extra mask just in case I forget to wear it. 

This image of what’s in my bag shows how I don’t want to have a heavy bag. As I have a gaming laptop with a heavy charger, I try to have a few things as possible in my bag in order to make it as light as possible. It’s not really about staying organized because I normally carry a lot of things with me and am not good at throwing away things that I don’t use a lot. When taking a picture of what’s in my bag, I think it would have been better if I had my Japanese notebook in the photo as Japanese is the subject that is causing me a lot of stress due to its difficulty. During this exercise, I felt the power of a strong single device and how it can speak more than a wordy essay. I think it’s a similar stand with first impressions as the first impression of someone tends to last for a long time, which is similar to the image of what’s in my bag as it can create an image of what kind of person I am. I do think that representing myself in a catalog of the stuff in my bag can be considered as a different type of writing that we are used to doing. This is because, such a catalog was able to deliver a message or information, which is similar to the functions of the type of writing I have been doing. No specific challenges were faced and I rather enjoyed reflecting on myself and making sure to organize my bag after taking everything out. 

Sunset or Sunrise

Student Posts

When looking at the instructions of this week’s sketch, I immediately thought of the picture that I took back when I was in high school. My high school was located on Jeju, an island at the south end of South Korea with beautiful skies. I wanted to talk about the beautiful sunset view, which usually means that the day is ending, but I chose to question people if they think it’s a sunset or sunrise. The message that I wanted to send throughout this triptych was that whether the picture is a sunrise or sunset is not what is essential, it is about what people think of it. If some consider it as a sunset, it would mean that they are willing to take a break, while a sunrise would mean that they’re ready to start an afresh journey and step up.

Crafting this sort of comix strip was different from other writings I’ve done this semester in using images (or drawings) when delivering the message I want. Also, I needed to make the text short and precise because there wasn’t as much space for me to write down further explanations about what I intended to say, as I was used to doing for the writings I’ve done this semester. However, this activity had similarities with my previous works in trying to deliver the message that I wanted to say clearly. Overall, I enjoyed this activity and am looking forward to taking such an experiment when creating my comic. 

Sunset or Sunrise

Student Posts

When looking at the instructions of this week’s sketch, I immediately thought of the picture that I took back when I was in high school. My high school was located on Jeju, an island at the south end of South Korea with beautiful skies. I wanted to talk about the beautiful sunset view, which usually means that the day is ending, but I chose to question people if they think it’s a sunset or sunrise. The message that I wanted to send throughout this triptych was that whether the picture is a sunrise or sunset is not what is essential, it is about what people think of it. If some consider it as a sunset, it would mean that they are willing to take a break, while a sunrise would mean that they’re ready to start an afresh journey and step up.

Crafting this sort of comix strip was different from other writings I’ve done this semester in using images (or drawings) when delivering the message I want. Also, I needed to make the text short and precise because there wasn’t as much space for me to write down further explanations about what I intended to say, as I was used to doing for the writings I’ve done this semester. However, this activity had similarities with my previous works in trying to deliver the message that I wanted to say clearly. Overall, I enjoyed this activity and am looking forward to taking such an experiment when creating my comic. 

The Holy Broccoli

Student Posts

When first looking at the instructions for this week’s sketch, I immediately thought that I would like to use nature as the background and another object as part of nature. So my first idea was to use a broccoli and an image of mountains as the head of the broccoli. However, I found it weird to have the mountains as the head and felt that it couldn’t show the beauty of the mountains. So I decided to keep the broccoli but not the mountains. Then I remembered the scene in Shawshank where Andy makes Red find a tree. That tree felt like a holy tree that helped Red let go of himself, so I wanted to make a combo-photo of broccoli in a beautiful background and appear as a sacred tree. When finding a photo of a broccoli, it was hard to find one standing, looking normal and was clean. When editing the two images, it took some time for me to get used to the ‘cut out’ technology, but after getting used to it, I enjoyed making the two photos smooth into each other as if it was a single photo. The final image conveys that many things come from nature and that nature has the power even to make a single broccoli seem to be holy.

Image Credit

  • Broccoli: Uploaded by “Lux Obscura” found on Flickr
  • Nature: Uploaded by “Steven Penton” found on Flickr

Visual Note Taking (Sunday Sketch 3)

Student Posts

For this assignment, I decided to create drawing notes on the topic of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” that I have learned in my POLS 110 class. In the past, when I was making notes for science classes, I had some drawings in my notes to help me remember the content more easily and think of it right away when it comes up in the test. When the drawing was too complicated for me, I used images to prevent myself from not remembering critical parts of the image due to my poor drawing skills. 

Due to this previous experience, I found this assignment really interesting. As my previous experience of using drawings was remembering images of the body or lab materials, I found it interesting to use drawings as the primary focus for this assignment. This experiment taught me that using my creativity when taking visual notes makes it much easier to memorize the context and express it in various ways, which can not be done through words. I found it a bit frustrating when I couldn’t fully show my intentions when turning the content into visual notes due to my poor drawing skills. Overall, this assignment was challenging as it required a lot of creativity and some of my drawing skills. In the future, I would definitely use such a note-taking method for specific subjects to help my understanding and encourage such an approach to other students. 

Sketch 3: Visual Note Taking

Literacy Narrative Part 1 Reflection

Student Posts

When first seeing the prompt for our first literacy narrative, I was glad. This was because our pre-writing exercise focused on one memory that I associate with reading and writing but what I wanted was like our prompt where I get to talk about the process of how I shaped the way I read and write now.

After reading the prompt, I definitely wanted to include my story of myself stepping up as a student during the last 18 months of high school. This was when I was motivated the most to achieve my goals as a student and human being. During this period, I focused on developing various skills, one of which was my reading and writing skills. When writing this literacy narrative, I made sure to show the process of how I read and write since I was a child.

While writing this narrative, I learned how to jot down remarkable memories of mine in a narrative way. The clarification by professor Morgen that there is no structure that he wants and that it is okay to use “I” in the essay helped me talk about my story spontaneously. This assignment was interesting because I never got the opportunity to think about who and what influenced the way I read and write as it was instead of who and what influenced the way I talk, think, act, and play like (in sports).

This is the link for my essay 🙂

https://kylemooncom.wordpress.com/how-i-pulled-my-socks-up-and-was-able-to-step-up/

Futuristic Car

Student Posts

The object that I used was my gaming mouse. When deciding what I would use for the Sunday sketch, I wanted to choose something that I use a lot in my daily life. Therefore when I looked at my desk, I found my gaming mouse and decided to use it as my object. When looking at my model, I recognized that its side looked like the BMW X6 model, where the car’s ceiling is bent at the back. After choosing to draw a car, I planned to sketch a car driving on a highway at night with buildings in the background. However, as a person that likes nature and wants to live in a place in the future where nature and buildings coexist which each other, I sketched trees and bushes with a building in the background. I made sure to draw the car’s wheels and try to express the buttons on the side of the mouse to appear as the windows. The design of the building was motivated by a typical building that can be seen in Seoul, South Korea. I really enjoyed this project because it has been a long time since I’ve sketched something. Also, it was fun using my critical thinking ability to see objects around me artistically and turn them into a piece of art despite my poor drawing skills. 

Sketch 1: Avatar

Student Posts

One of the reasons I chose this avatar was the increase in the use of technology every year. Considering this trend, I wanted to use technology to create an avatar with my characteristics. As a result, I used Samsung’s ‘AR Emoji,’ a program that makes a 3D animated version of a photo taken of me. When I created my avatar, I chose this typical hairstyle, a famous hairstyle in Korea, to show my nationality. The energetic gesture of my avatar indicates that I am interested in learning new things and that I am excited to learn more about comics throughout this course, which is a field that I have never explored before. I inserted my name in an autograph to appeal to myself as a professional in this area. I didn’t have much difficulty making my avatar, but I expected it to take longer to sketch it on paper because I am not a good artist.
I am looking forward to doing some drawing in the future and listening to feedback that would eventually improve my skills in critical thinking.

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