The Secret Language of Comics

Category: Sketches

Sketch 10: Mix Tape

Sketches

Due: 4/17

Tag: sk10

This week, I want you to think about using audio for particular rhetorical situations by creating a mix playlist with a group of songs.

Rules (all of which are breakable, if you have a good justification for why):

  • I usually think of a mix tape as about an hour of music, but for our purposes let’s aim for 45 minutes or so
  • Preferably no more than one song by a single artist
  • Create some kind of consistency and an audio progression as someone listens from beginning to end

Just as giving a speech, writing an essay, or publishing a photograph are rhetorical acts, choosing particular pieces of music in particular situations can also be a rhetorical act — and choosing to curate a specific list of songs that you put together in a particular order, with a particular emotional or intellectual affect in mind, is certainly a rhetorical act.  In the case of the music mix you are producing for this assignment, the rhetor is you, the medium is your playlist, and the audience is probably your peers in the class (though you can decide to address some other, fairly specific, audience if you would like).

There is a lot of music in the world, and there are lots of ways to combine music together and lots of people doing so. If you are struggling to come up with ways to craft your mix, I encourage you to either respond to a very specific rhetorical situation (“a mix for my good friend who just went through a bad breakup,” for example, or “a mix to apologize to my friend for not locking up his bicycle when I borrowed it so it get stolen”); come up with a very specific narrative or emotional hook that you want from the songs you include in your list (“songs about the summer” or “songs to prepare for exams to” might work well as hooks that are topical right now); and/or to make up some specific rules for yourself to spur greater creativity (“My Halloween mix can only include songs with the word ‘pumpkin’ in the title” or “all the songs need to include the words ‘new’ or ‘old’” or “every song must be 2 minutes and 42 seconds long“). As Robert Frost once said, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,” so creating rules for yourself about choosing songs might help you to structure the game that you’re playing to make it more fun.

What do you have to turn in?

Create your playlist however makes sense for you — it can be a Spotify playlist that you share via a link; you can use Mixcloud (which will also import Spotify playlists) or Soundcloud; or you can record your vinyl onto MP3s and upload those files to Google Drive or send them to me to host on my server, then embed them on your site from there. Publish a post on your site with the link(s) to the playlist and a numbered track listing that names the songs and artists.

Your mix tape needs an image to serve as the album cover. If you were recording your mix onto cassette tapes, I’d ask you to use gel pens to draw a cover that you’d stick into the little plastic case, but you’re not, so instead create a square image that has the title of your playlist and that serves as a compelling visual representation of your mix. Do not just use the image that Spotify automatically creates from the album covers included in the mix — design your own album cover.

Finally, write a reflection to accompany your mix — explain the rhetorical situation you are addressing, what rules you established for yourself, and how you went about solving the problem your rhetorical situation presents. Articulate the choices you made and why you made them. Finally, think about your mix as an argument (even though it’s not a direct, academic argument) — what are you conveying in your mix and how?

Literacy Comic Reflection

Sketches

Now that you’ve completed your Literacy Narrative Comic, publish a reflective blog post of about 500 words about the writing process, paying special attention to how the work you have done has helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class. That post should link to the page with your literacy comic.

Some other questions you might respond to: How was it different to write your literacy narrative as a comic? How did you think differently once the visual component was added? How did that help you to see the story you were trying to tell in different terms? Was your analytical thinking process any different? How have your thoughts about your alphabetic literacy narrative changed in the process of transforming it into a comic?

I’d also like you to discuss choices you made in creating your comic and to explain why you chose the way you did. Especially if there’s something you were really trying to do in your comic which you felt you couldn’t realize as perfectly as you would if you had a lot more time, more resources, or if you could have hired an illustrator to turn your vision into exactly what you wanted. If there are aspects of your comic where you have a clear sense of what you were trying to accomplish and how you would have done so if some things were different, then explain that in your reflection. Doing so allows you to demonstrate that you have the knowledge you need about this sort of writing even if you have not yet developed all the skills necessary to make that knowledge visible in the final artifact you’ve produced

Halfa Kucha Reflection

Sketches

Due: Friday 4/15

Export your halfa kucha slideshow as a set of images (in Powerpoint: File > Export… and then in File Format select jpeg and “save every slide.” Powerpoint will create a subfolder where you tell it to and save each of your ten slides as images). Then in your WordPress dashboard create a new post and upload those images to a Slideshow block.

If you used Google Slides, you can embed the slideshow by going to File > Publish to the web and then selecting settings. It will give you an embed code that you can paste into an HTML block in your post.

Then write a couple of paragraphs reflecting on the process of writing and then giving the presentation. How was it different to construct an argument that you were giving to the class as a presentation than to write an essay? How did you make choices about the structure of your argument? If you made a choice to organize your presentation in a certain way so that your audience would follow it more clearly, is that something that you could also make use of in your written work? Was your analytical thinking process any different?

What decisions did you make about the visuals for your presentation? How did you go about creating an impact for the slides that accompany your spoken words?

What did you learn by giving this type of presentation, where you had no control of the timing of the slides and couldn’t put much in the way of text on your slides, as compared to other presentations you have given? What did you notice about your classmates’ presentations that you might think about incorporating into your own presentations in the future?

What do you think you could have done better in your presentation?

Halfa Kucha assignment prompt

Tracing Stitches and Fun Home: Reflection

Sketches

Once you have completed your Tracing project and published the pages to your site, you need to publish a reflection post as well. The post serves to turn the project in when it syndicates to the class site, and is also an opportunity for you to explain your process in the work you just completed.

Your reflection post should link to the main page for your project and also to the assignment prompt. Tell us in the post what the thesis of your essay is and give a one or two sentence preview of your argument.

You should also address the following questions:

  • 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?
  • 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?
  • 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 Fun Home 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)?

Literacy Narrative Comic Reflection

Sketches

Now that you’ve completed your Literacy Narrative Comic, publish a reflective blog post of about 500 words about the writing process, paying special attention to how the work you have done has helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class. That post should link to the page with your literacy comic.

Some other questions you might respond to: How was it different to write your literacy narrative as a comic? How did you think differently once the visual component was added? How did that help you to see the story you were trying to tell in different terms? Was your analytical thinking process any different? How have your thoughts about your alphabetic literacy narrative changed in the process of transforming it into a comic?

I’d also like you to discuss choices you made in creating your comic and to explain why you chose the way you did. Especially if there’s something you were really trying to do in your comic which you felt you couldn’t realize as perfectly as you would if you had a lot more time, more resources, or if you could have hired an illustrator to turn your vision into exactly what you wanted. If there are aspects of your comic where you have a clear sense of what you were trying to accomplish and how you would have done so if some things were different, then explain that in your reflection. Doing so allows you to demonstrate that you have the knowledge you need about this sort of writing even if you have not yet developed all the skills necessary to make that knowledge visible in the final artifact you’ve produced

Sunday Sketch Assignments

Sketches

1: Avatar (due: 1/16, tag: sk1)

2: Sunday Sketches (due: 1/23, tag: sk2)

3: Visual Note Taking (due: 1/30, tag: sk3)

4: Combophoto (due: 2/6, tag: sk4)

5: Triptych (due: 2/13, tag: sk5)

6: What’s in your bag? (due: 2/20, tag: sk6)

7: Quadriptych (due: 2/27, tag: sk7)

8: Data viz from everyday life (due: 3/27, tag: sk8)

9: Recreate a movie scene (due: 4/10, tag: sk9)

10: Mix Tape (due: 4/17, tag: sk10)

11: Assemblies (due: 4/24, tag: sk11)

Sketch 2: Sunday Sketches

Sketches

Due: 1/23
Tag: sk2

Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, artist, and author whose work regularly appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. He’s got a mixed media series that he calls “Sunday Sketches,” in which he takes some object from his surroundings and creates a sketch on the page around it. Some of the best such works he’s included in his book entitled Sunday Sketching.

Some examples from Niemann’s Tumblr:

You can see that each of these pieces is an actual three-dimensional tangible object placed into a drawing on paper to transform that object into something new. Niemann then photographs the resulting sketch to create a two-dimensional artifact.

For your third sketch assignment, I want you to create your own Sunday sketch in a similar style.

  • Take a picture of your sketch and publish it as a post.
  • Give your post a funny or witty title.
  • Write a paragraph or two in which you explain the process whereby you came up with the idea for your Sunday sketch and the choices you made in realizing that idea as an actual sketch.
  • Include a link back to this prompt and tag it “sk2”

Sketch 1: Avatar

Sketches

Due: 1/16

Tag: sk1

Objectives:

  • Very basic photo editing
  • Introduction to the concept of Creative Commons
  • Uploading and publishing to your new WordPress site
  • Visual images as representations of complex conceptual topics

Avatar

Once you’ve created your web site, you need an image to represent yourself and/or your site for the class: an avatar. Your avatar can be whatever you want it be but try to create something that both reflects your personality and speaks to the topic for this class in some way.

Start by choosing one or more of your own photos as the basis of the avatar, drawing something yourself and scanning it, or finding one or more Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr that you can modify. (Make certain to keep a note for yourself of the URL for the photos you use if they are not your own.)

CC-licensed images

Creative Commons licenses work with copyright law so that creators can share their work in a way that allows others to use it with attribution. The video on the left gives a good overview of the concept of Creative Commons licensing. The one on the right gives more explanation of how they work. They are short and worth watching.

You can find CC-licensed images by choosing licensed images on Flickr or with an advanced Google image search.

Edit Photo

Crop and otherwise edit the photo(s) in a photo editing application (like Photoshop or Pixlr). You can create a layered or collage effect, if you’d like. Add your name on your badge in such a way that it’s legible — it can be your full name, just your first name, or the nickname you want to be called this semester.

Your final badge should be square and at least 512 pixels wide and high. Please make certain your badge is square so that it will fit into the design on the student sites page.

Publish

When you’re done, you’ll need to put the image two places, with an optional third:

First

Load the badge into your Media Library and publish it to your site in a blog post. (If adding it as a feature image means that the entire square image won’t display, then also insert the image into the post itself.)

Include information and links in the post about the source(s) for images included in your badge.

Write a paragraph or two about why you chose those images, what aspects of yourself and your interests are represented in your badge, and/or what difficulties you faced in creating the badge.

Please tag your post with the tag “sk1,” plus any additional tags that you think are appropriate.

Second

Go into your dashboard to Design > Customize > Site Identity. Load the image as your site icon (not as the logo).

Finally

If you do not already have a gravatar, create a gravatar account and load your avatar there. From then on, your avatar will show up as your picture when you leave comments here and on other students’ sites.

Sketch 3: Visual Note Taking

Sketches

Due: 1/30
Tag: sk3

For your sketch assignment this week, I want you to create a set of visual notes for one day in one class (other than this one) that you are currently enrolled in. You do not need to take your visual notes in real time; in fact, I recommend that you don’t. I recommend that you go to your classes and take notes in whatever manner you normally do, then after class go through your notes and recreate them as visual notes.

Below is an example of a professional illustrator creating a set of animated video notes to represent a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on “Changing Education Paradigms”

You do not need to make a video like this, but only a static image.

You do not need to draw your notes in a digital environment, either, though you are certainly free to do so. If you prefer to doodle with pen, pencil, or marker on paper then do that and once you’re done with your drawing, just scan the pages as JPG files so you can upload them to your site. If you have an iPad or other tablet or would like to draw on your laptop or desktop, then you might try apps like GoodNotes, Procreate, Inkflow, or Adobe’s Sketchbook or search for other free/cheap drawing applications. I am completely tool agnostic on this assignment, so make your drawings in whatever manner make sense to you.

Your visual notes do not need to be polished or beautiful or supremely intricate, like the RSA Animate video above. Do try to take this assignment as an opportunity to really engage differently with your material – don’t just make a series of doodles that follow the outline of the lecture or discussion in your notes but try to translate the concepts and information into a new, visual set of notes. You might think about creating flowcharts or diagrams, which are also visual devices.

Once you’ve got your notes, load them onto your course site as a sketch post. Embed the images from your notes into the post and as you do, take a few moments to reflect on the process and then write a paragraph or two about what you learned during the process of creating your visual notes. Did it help you to understand the course content any differently or better to create notes visually rather than just as text? Did you discover anything new about yourself or the way you think in the process? Did you find it enjoyable or find some aspect of it particularly interesting? Someplace in your reflective text, create a link back to this blog post assignment.

Sketch 4: Combophoto

Sketches

Due: 2/6

Tag: sk4

Stephen Mcmennamy is an Atlanta artist and Creative Director at the advertising firm BBDO. He first came to my attention when I saw his series of “combophotos” that splice together two different images to form a surreal new creation.

Here are a few examples from him:

cauliflower + poodle

paintbrush + spaghetti

bridge + guitar

Take a few moments to look through the images he’s posted on his site linked above or on his Tumblr or his Instagram. Then create your own square combophoto and publish it to your site. You can take your own photos, but probably you’ll want to use CC_licensed images you find on Flickr — make sure you give credit to the originals that you modify to create your combophoto.

The level of technical aptitude for this assignment is actually relatively small, just simple cropping and resizing. The greater part of the challenge is thinking creatively and finding images that you can work with. That said, note that Mcmennamy comes up with ideas and then specifically stages photos to combine, and he seems to often spend significant amounts of time shooting and selecting his images. You won’t have lots of time, models you can hire, or expensive photo equipment to work with, so I don’t necessarily expect your final images to be as polished and perfectly aligned as his are. More important is for you to be playful and come up with images that combine to create something funny or witty or striking.

To edit the two photos together, you can use whatever photo editing software you’d like. Pixlr is a good free web app, as is PicMonkey. Adobe Photoshop is also available for you to use on the computers in the Media Library on the 4th floor of the Woodruff Library.

Once you have your image, publish it in a post on your class site. Don’t forget to give it a funny or witty title! Tag your post “sk4“

Write a paragraph about how you went about choosing the two images you combined and why. What challenges did you face as you created your combophoto? What do you think your final image conveys?

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