ENG101.02. Spring 2018. Emory University
I chose to do a pseudo-cake recipe because of all the integral parts involved in cake making. All of the ingredients represent different parts of this class. Larger parts of the cake, such as the flour and sugar, represent main assignments like Spinning and Tracing Maus. Smaller portions represent daily activities and Sunday Sketches. All of the “ingredients” came together to supply the parts for the cover letter and reflection, or the “cake” of this assignment.
For my data viz project, I chose to track how many times I spoke to my mother over the course of a few weeks. Before I go on, I just want to say that I love my mother with all of my heart, she is a wonderful woman, and an outstanding role model. I also know that she does want the best for me (no matter what I think in my head when I’m angry sometimes) and she is willing to push me until I realize my full potential. Reasons why I chose this project:
I decided on tracking how may cell phone calls, FaceTime calls, and text messages exchanged between my mother and me. As you can see in the graphs below, there is a lot of fluctuation within some of the days. April 16th, for example, was the day I got an exam grade back while April 18th was the day she had breast reconstructive surgery following her breast cancer diagnosis in June of 2017. On the average, I think we FaceTime at LEAST one a day, and average about 40 texts. Here are the graphs. (I included pictures as the background because my mom and I are kind of the same person. My dad says the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with us!)
I really enjoyed making this project, it brought light to another way in which I can view books I read in the future. I didn’t think that my data would really make any sense, as my topic is kind of subjective, but it turned out to look pretty good. I used a photo of page 67 is the novel as the background for my graph, as it is a sort of “map” that relates to Tillie and the novel as a whole. I then made all of the elements of the graph either purple or yellow to continue with the overall color scheme of the novel.
For this project, I chose to count how many times Tillie Walden mentions being gay or shows interest in girls/women she is surrounded by. When I began reading the book, I noticed some fluctuation. A reader does not discover Tillie is gay until chapter 2, she completely neglects to mention this daily important piece of information in the whole entire first chapter! Not only does this seem nonchalant, but maybe even a little neglectful. Immediately, I was curious how much of a role homosexuality was going to play in this novel. While reading, I noticed after chapter 2 Tillie does make mentions of her sexuality, but not as frequently in some chapters versus others. For example, chapter six is when she has a sleepover with Rae, and chapter seven her mother finds the doodle of the two girls. These two chapters have a lot to do with Tillie’s self-esteem and personal image. She finally realizes that it is now appropriate to tell her friends and teammates that she likes girls. Tillie starts telling her peers in chapter seven. On the contrary, chapter 8 only has one mention of her sexuality, as this is the chapter that includes the encounter with the SAT tutor, and after the incident Tillie seems to shut down. After analyzing the novel, I thought it was really interesting how the book peaked in the middle when speaking about Tillie’s sexual orientation, it doesn’t seem to be a main theme in the beginning and ending of the novel.
Writing this essay was. little more difficult than originally intended. I began by writing the “meat” of the essay, trying to organize my thoughts and decide on an overarching theme for my essay. I wrote the middle with ease, most of my ideas coming quickly and fluidly. The concluding section was by far the most difficult to write, as I took FOREVER to decide on what I though brought my whole project together coherently. Eventually I made a decision, and it all worked out pretty well.
Recreating this scene was super fun. I chose to do the movie/TV show M*A*S*H. M*A*S*H was a program about army medics in the Korean War who used a lot of humor to survive in the area. When creating the photo, I was thinking of ways I could implement not only myself into this project, but people/things that are of importance to me. Immediately, my mid went to my EEMS kiddos. I spend the majority of my time with them and we have all become a really tight group of friends. So, once I decided I wanted to use EEMS as a way to recreate a photo, I knew M*A*S*H was the perfect medium. Saying these guys were excited to recreate the photo was an understatement. They wanted the full effect with the red outfit and matching uniforms. We did our best and this is probably the best shot out of the 30 we took!
Wow, what a journey this comic making process has been. Comics were never something I have been interested in, and now I’m making them. It’s a complete 180 that I would have never guessed to happen. I really enjoyed this project. It is something I didn’t have to throw all of my time into (not in a way that I slacked off!), but I could really put a lot of emotion and truth into it. I didn’t have to spend half of my time researching and citing and worrying about something being incorrect or interpreting information the wrong way, but instead I was able to put all of my energy into trying to accurately convey what I knew. No strings attached. This is the final project, I left it black and white because I didn’t like the idea of color for this project. I really like the simplicity of the black and white. I hope you all enjoy!!
This was probably one of my most favorite Sunday sketches we have done so far. I really enjoyed the searching process involved with creating this “masterpiece”. I have seen photos of this kind before, so I used the ones I have seen previously to kind of inspire my idea for this week. I found two photos from Flickr. The ballerina figure is from @leggab titled “Alone in the Ballet”. I knew I wanted the ballerina/flower combo, so it was a challenge finding the right pose with the right flower. The flower photo is from @wvgasguy titled “Dedicated to those with breast cancer…”. I used befunky.com to combine the two photos and create the ballerina/flower tutu combo. My photo is definitely not as polished as Steven McMennamy’s, but with some practice and maybe some fancy equipment I could get there.
I really struggled coming up with a theme for this Sunday Sketch. I was wracking my brain for good conversations I had during Spring Break or since then. I was at a loss, until I remembered a conversation I had overheard during my break at home. Let me preface this comic a little bit. My cousin Lauren is 7 years old and LOVES boys. She met my boyfriend, Nathan, over Christmas and was a smitten kitten 5 minutes after they were introduced. We told Lauren that Nathan was coming to this game, and that is all she spoke about for about a week before. This is a conversation they had during the hockey game that my family, Nathan, and I attended over break. {P.S. she offered to lend him her bed so that he could spend the night, I’m not sure that he would have enjoyed a pink princess bed that much :)} This true story was easy to tell because it was an authentic conversation that I witnessed. I’m not sure if writing about a secondhand conversation would have been as easy as this one.
After reading the comment sheets given back to me in class, I noticed a few things that I am really considering taking into consideration when re-configuring my comic.
-all 3 of my results told me to fill in the last two panels (I am still struggling to figure out what to illustrate there, if you have ANY ideas please let me know)
-a few comments were about my frames, mostly to change the size as to not have a grid for a page, however, all critics enjoyed the differences in frame and angle that were utilized
-2/3 people noted on my use of difference in focus, they both noted how they liked the focus shifting from people to objects and back to people, some fries are completely dedicated to a simple objects or a group of similar objects (i.e. a stack of books)
-all noted that my comic was relatively lighthearted and hopeful, this is the kind of emotion I was hoping to pull out of my readers, my journey was never really difficult so I wanted to show that I had a really positive experience with reading and writing when I was younger
Collectively, the critiques given by my peers were very helpful. I enjoyed seeing the feedback, both positive constructively critical. I think the comments will help me build better comic than I could have all by myself.
