Author: Nate

For my 11th sketch, I decided to frame all the assignments we did this year as components of an eye. Over the course of this semester, I learned a lot about the possibilities and the depth of graphic novels. I thought a good way to show what I learned would be through a literal eye. I broke down the 4 major assignments we did this year to show how they helped me learn about graphic novels:

Tracing Maus: After reading our first graphic novel, Maus, I was shocked. I didn’t know that graphic novels could be so serious, deep and dense. By tracing it, I analyzed the pages closely and it helped “open my eyes” to the diversity and potential of graphic novels, just like an eye-lid open the eye to the world.

Comparing Palestine and Pyongyang: After Maus we read two graphic novels which, although they shared a similar style, they approached and used the medium in very different ways. By comparing and contrasting the two, I saw how flexible and customizable the genre is, similar to how the iris filters light and allows different colors and shades to be seen.

Literacy narrative: After reading and studying a few graphic novels, we wrote and illustrated our own mini-novels and I was able to understand the struggle in writing, planning and creating a graphic novel. This is similar to the pupil/the back of the eye, where light is processed and turned into something comprehensible.

Mapping Spinning: The last graphic novel we read was Spinning, which we analyzed for some non-obvious pattern. It was an exercise in seeking underlying messages and themes of graphic novels to understand the depth they can have. It was a fascinating process where we looked past the surface for patterns. (Not really sure what the white part of the eyeball does but it felt fitting to put the mapping Spinning assignment there…)

I set out to map something about Spinning by Tillie Walden, but what that something was I didn’t know. I had skimmed the book multiple times, looking for different visual or textual patterns but couldn’t make out anything too anomalous that might inspire me. However, when I was skimming, I did realize that there are surprisingly few male characters in the graphic novel. What then came to mind was: why was that? While looking for a possible reason for why there were so few males, I noticed that a lot of the male characters Tillie interacts with in the novel have a bad influence/effect on her. The skating coach in New Jersey was nothing but a taskmaster to her, the SAT tutor sexually assaulted her, even her own twin brother turns from friend to dissenter when Tillie tells him that she’s gay. I figured that this may have been a reason for including so few male characters; Tille doesn’t have many good experiences with men (at least as portrayed in Spinning)

My map shows how I attempted to quantify the effects of the male characters on Tillie. It is not a map that is totally reflective of my findings (I have some more data that I wasn’t able to fit into the graph) but it got the main points across. I chose the format I did to visually show which males effected her the most and in which ways. I think the use of size and color to show which characters were good or bad, stressful or less so was a good way to simplify the info I’m trying to get across. It is not a perfect map though, the numbers I gave each character are my best approximation of how all the factors I studied reflect on that person and the graph could be more expansive with the amount of topics covered. I spent a long time looking around for different info-graph types and templates but couldn’t find one that fit my needs much better than the one I chose.

I think looking at the book through the graph I created brings attention to the pattern of negative male interactions that some might otherwise miss when reading the book. It is easy to miss just how few men are in the novel and how their interactions with Tillie influence her thought process and life. The graph reveals this pattern which reading the book panel by panel may not make so obvious.

During class when we passed around the rough drafts of our Literacy Narrative’s I both received a lot of helpful feedback and absorbed aspects of other people’s comics that I might want to incorporate into my own.  From the responses I got, it seemed to me that most people were able to understand the basic story and themes I was going for (which is pretty impressive because the sketch is admittedly pretty rough). A few things that people pointed out to me that I might want to change were the dialogue, which as of right now is lacking, perspective changes and most importantly, panel structure. I got a lot of criticism for having a cluttered and complicated panel structure. I understand the criticism and had a similar reaction myself when I looked back at what I had sketched after a day or two without looking at it. I think it would be a good idea to break up what I have now into smaller panels. This would make the story more organized and the visuals more manageable. From seeing other people’s comics I realized that it’s a good idea to follow their suggestions, so that will be the main thing I try to incorporate into my comic as well as the other suggestions made.

The writing process for this assignment was a little harder than for previous ones for me. A couple things in this assignment were new for me. I had never traced a comic page before, I found it it can be quite a long process. I’ve never tried writing in close analytical detail of a graphic novel before and when I tried, at first I was lost as to what to say, how extract meaning form a page of drawing. The page notations helped, seeing some notes pointing to the specific details on the page helped sharpen my ideas and I was able to write easier after that. I also have never tried to write three different posts which are supposed to reference/relate to one another simultaneously. The way I approached it was to first write just about the idea at hand and then once I had finished all of the different pages, when I had was editing, I would add connection points to each. The annotated pages really helped here because I was able to see visually how the ideas all connected so it made writing about it easier. Overall I think it was a challenging assignment but one that I learned a lot from and had a lot of fun doing.