The most interesting part of this course to me was the Sunday sketch assignments. They were all a lot of fun to finish and see the completed product of something I developed and put into my very own website, which was a little complicated to work with at first, but learning to navigate the website by just randomly making something was also a lot of fun to experience.These sketches also reiterated what a comic was and how many different types of them one can create. The triptych and quadriptych, for example,have the same goal, but different outcomes. I would say that the triptych came off as short and melodramatic, while a quadriptych is more complete.
The three major writing projects, Narrative Literacy, Tracing Fun Home and Stitches, and Halfa Kucha, taught me that having a structured outline is not always practical when writing. I discovered that I always attempted to have a structured thought before writing. For instance, when working on the Tracing Pages assignment, I skimmed through both readings to pick as my references, which were picked because I wanted to look at them more in depth than when I was reading. They were also picked because they could be connected to one another. But once I began writing, my idea did not appear to fit the puzzle that I had formed in my head. Writing the thesis statement got really unclear and difficult for me to figure out. So, when that didn’t work, I took a step back and reanalyzed them to identify patterns in both works that fit my requirements. That also caused me a lot of difficulty, so I just wrote without thinking too much about the task and instead focused on my thoughts and feelings about the pages. After finishing up my writing process, I like to go back and reread to see if it was written so my peers and course instructor are able to understand and that it fits most of the criteria assigned.
Composing my Narrative Literacy assignment was fairly easy as I am used to having to create literary works; however, I only now started to learn and actually compose texts using other mediums such as comics and online websites, such as WordPress. I was a bit uncomfortable at first to use these mediums, but I also noticed that having a visual form of expression allows one to think things through more clearly. This is primarily due to the fact that you must understand why and what you are sketching in order to correctly portray the story. Besides learning from the assigned texts, there was also a lot that I learned from listening to how others interpreted the text, which was always interesting. I think that after hearing what others thought process was, I pushed myself to think more conceptually than I would have if I never heard of others’ points of views. It was also interesting to see what others concentrated on when looking and discussing a certain part of the text and how discussions occurred during topics that caused opposing outlooks or when they were the ones reviewing and giving you feedback on your work, such as creating a comic for our Narrative Literacy assignment.
Looking back at my work one thing I noted was that I tend to never fully like my writing. I always feel that there is something that could have been done better. This could be due to the struggle I have of putting my thoughts into writing, which makes me lose confidence in my abilities. Even so, I am still proud of what I have written purely on the fact that I was given full reign of what I could write without many restrictions on myself. I also noticed how different my thought process was when comparing my Tracing Pages to my Halfa Kucha. These two were very similar assignments, but my Halfa Kucha was more clear in terms of
clearly conveying what I wanted to say. My capacity to make textual judgments has improved significantly. I gained more knowledge about what I needed to concentrate on in order to present my ideas concisely. My writing process and skills have changed and will continue to do so.
Personally, comics were unknown. The most I could relate to comics was having read Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. However, through this course I’ve learned about how comics have evolved and the various perceptions that have caused these changes over time. Like how many people believe that comics are only used to create works of entertainment for superhero enthusiasts, which is not the case given many works of serious topics, such as trauma from being part of the LGBTQ+ community or of living in a toxic environment, have used comics as a medium. I believe that knowing how to make comics was quite beneficial. Sometimes, a visual depiction of an idea can help me convey things more effectively than words. The third sketch assignment, in which I drew virtual notes for one of my courses, really demonstrated how anything literary can be adapted to something visual without losing its understanding effect.
Overall, each project in this course served a purpose and contributed to my grasp of the secret language of comics.To visualize my learning experience in this subject, a nice metaphor to employ is that of a house architecture plan. The Sunday sketches and specified readings prior to reading actual comics helped lay the groundwork for understanding comics. The act of reading the comics brings the comic’s goal to life. They are examples of how they could be used and created. Discussions in class regarding readings were a good way to broaden my thinking on a reading and be surprised that I hadn’t thought of it that way before. As a result, they opened up new doors for me to bolster my writing arsenal. The major writing projects then reinforced my grasp of how a comic book is one of many mediums utilized to depict various themes and narratives. This reflection would be the roof because it encompasses all that I have learned.
Ana Hernandez 