Tag: triptych

While creating my comic I struggled to come up with an idea at first. I’m a very wordy person and most of my stories tend to run long, so writing a short one with only three panels was really difficult for me. I ended up creating a comic about a clownfish trying to escape a shark by hiding in the tentacles of a sea anemone, thus beginning a symbiotic relationship with the creature. With the idea for the story in mind, the composition wasn’t very hard to figure out. Because I only had three panels to tell the story, the composition had to be very straightforward in order to fit all the important details. The first panel introduces the conflict of the story: a clownfish is being hunted by a shark. The second panel shows the middle: the clownfish finds a solution to his problem and asks the sea anemone for help. Then finally the third panel is the conclusion: The shark lost the clownfish and the clownfish and sea anemone become partners.

This assignment was different than most writing I do because I had to incorporate pictures in my storytelling in a way I normally don’t. Especially because we had so few panels, the images had to be the primary storytelling elements. This, unlike most writing assignments, forced me to extremely minimize my word usage. I tend to write long, detailed stories and for this assignment, I had to pick and choose which details to include in order to efficiently use the space while still getting the same impact. Overall I found the triptych comic challenging, but enjoyable.

The triptych above is a simple sequence of events. A man is sad, someone lifts up the ends of his mouth into a smile, and he stays there smiling.

When thinking of ideas, I thought about my week and how draining it was. Naturally, I thought that this was what the rest of my semester would look like, and because of this, on a Friday night, I was feeling sad with a bleak outlook on the next few months.

The next morning, I decided to just not be sad. I smiled in the mirror for ten seconds and went about my Saturday morning. Making that small decision to just begin smiling made my day so much better and was the inspiration for the triptych.

I think the minimalist style conveys a strong message to the reader. There aren’t any hidden clues or flamboyant imagery that symbolize something, it’s just telling you “Don’t worry, be happy.”