Sketch 5: Triptych

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When I first began, admittedly, it was difficult to think of ideas.  This is especially because I wanted to kept terse yet meaningful.   Thus, I decided to make inanimate objects have human characteristics.  Then, those inanimate objects turned out to be drinks.  This idea came from, initially, Veggie Tales and Sausage Party.  Both give foods personalities and human characteristics.  This comic strip was different than anything else we have done this semester because we actually drew an entire sequence rather than one image.  It was challenging at first because I have never really made a comic before.  In my second window, I decided to use a technique that McCloud described where I focused in on one subject.  Also, I ha dot accompany the images with words that told a story.  One interesting thing I did was I already knew how the story would turn out.  Thus, I drew the images first and then filled in the boxes with text.

 

Access to triptych instructions

A Matter of Perspective

tryptich complete

 

Perhaps the most difficult aspect for me was finding a simple story that I was able to tell in just three frames. I had never really had to reduce a story to such a small span of time and was thus a challenge to think of it that way. However, how I did it was think of a punchline at the end that would create some emotion and then build a story around that.

I’m currently in the process of becoming more familiar with digital art so I pushed myself to draw every element in the Triptych. This was also a very big challenge for me but as I got more invested in making this project, it became significantly easier, to the point where drawing the man at the end was easier than deciding how to make sand.

This was somewhat similar to the human document project from last week because I had to find a story with very big limitations on my possibilities and thus I had a starting metric to go by.

 

Triptych

While looking around my room for inspiration, I gazed upon my chess board. After giving it a stare down, I knew how I wanted to use it for the triptych. I thought it would be interesting to play with the expectation of the names for each piece by swapping the title of knight for pony. In order to compose the triptych, I set up all of the black pieces to give the viewer a setting of a chess game. I then isolated the white pieces to highlight the individual characteristics of each piece. I used my desk lamp for extra lighting to further accentuate the pieces and draw attention to the background where the names were placed. To me, the most challenging part was combining the individual photos I took into one photo. However after finding a website that could do it, the rest of the editing was simple. The route I took for this project was different than most of the other assignments we’ve done because I used pictures instead of drawling. Overall I found this process to be relaxing and enjoyable.

Triptych .jpeg

Triptych

When deciding on what to draw for my triptych comic I had to consider several different factors. Did I want it to be dark or light? Did I want the drawing style to be more cartoonish or a little more realistic? Should there be dialogue or not? In the end I decided to keep the first triptych I’ve drawn simple. I liked the clean yet effective style seen in the cartoon I drew. The idea wasn’t hard to think of, I used to see similar stories in other comics, I just had to make it my own. The experience was different from the writing I’ve done earlier this semester in that the decisions I had to make were artistic rather than editorial. Instead of considering what wording to put in, I had to decide what to what to put in or exclude from the frame. Overall I found the triptych a fun exercise that shook things up.

(For some reason the program won’t let me set the image as a featured image or an image in the text so the link to the image is attached below:)

triptych

Sunday Sketch: Triptych

 

When trying to create this triptych, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do. I had been thinking of ideas all week and none of them really came into fruition in my head. I made this series of images myself, taking the photos while pouring my morning cup of coffee. That’s when my idea really hit me. I like the idea of progressive photos because I think it demonstrates a chain of thought. Representing said chain of thought with a photographic medium is much more difficult than I anticipated. I enjoyed the process, but I don’t think triptychs are my most favorite type of comic to produce. I enjoy reading triptychs made by others, but I feel as though the message of my creation falls short in comparison.

Triptych

For as long as I can remember, haiku has been my favorite form of poetry. Although only 17 syllables long, these short three line poems can tell so much. In my triptych, I attempted to convey a comedic story, about a young boy asking a girl to be his partner for a project. Recently, I have been talking to my friends who are seniors in high school and are worried about finding their first college roommate. I have been teaching them the ins and outs of “glirting” or girl flirting which is important in making connections online to find a roommate. I started thinking about these conversations and how I could make a relatable comic about it but could not come up with a good way to execute it. My mind drifted towards the idea of flirting in general. Middle and high school aged boys can be pretty awkward, especially when it comes to talking to girls. My comic shows a high school aged boy, worrying about asking a girl “something.” In the first 2 panels, my hope is for the reader to assume that the boy is going to ask the girl out on a date or to a school dance. However, their is a plot twist in the last panel in which he actually asks her to be partners in a project, not to be a couple. I wanted the comedy to be seen through the dialogue, not so much the the images themselves. Instead of drawing pictures and scenes that would distract from the story, due to my lack of a strong artistic ability, I used the online resource, Storyboard That, to help me set the scene. The site allows users to pick characters, props, scenes and even allows you to choose from hundreds of colors and even emotions to personalize your comic. I feel like so far in this course, everything I have created artistically has been pretty abstract, or required less detail. However, when looking at the two examples we saw in class, I realized that these triptychs required much more detail to give the text more depth. Unlike our other projects, this was the first one that required me to come up with an original story, one that tells much more than a singular picture or some words on a page. It seamlessly combined them to give even more meaning than the two do separately.

 

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Cinema Smuggler

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The inspiration for this comic is just based off of a random thought I had earlier this week. I wanted to make a humorous narrative so I made it about how it would be funny if the stereotypical “trench coat disguising two people”  went a step further. The hardest part of making this comic was the actual drawing of it. I’m not much of a drawer, so the last frame was particularly difficult to draw. Making this comic was completely different from any other writing assignment I’ve had this semester because it forced me to think about how I could represent the narrative visually.

Triptych

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I based this on an actual conversation I had with someone in high school. I was the character that was “above ego”. I enjoy poking fun at people who take themselves too seriously, because I was always a kid who took things too seriously and a lot of my sense of humor has developed from learning to make fun of myself for it.

In terms of art style- I wanted it to be kind of quirky and simplistic looking with a few bold colors. I wanted The last panel in this triptych to be a larger panel, because I wanted the two characters to appear smaller, and less significant. I thought this would serve to accentuate the humor.

Sketch 5: Triptych — Beginning, Middle, End

Due: 2/25

Tag: sk5

In How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels, Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden carry out an extended discussion of comics through repeated analysis of the single Nancy strip by Ernie Bushmiller from August 8, 1959 (at the top of this post). They explain that “one of the least tangible yet most significant implements in the cartoonist’s toolbox is the varied use of rhythms.[…] One repetition makes a pair. But add another and the repetitions have become a series, the basic building block of all rhythm. A set of three has the smallest number of elements that can establish a pattern (as well as violate it). Three implies more to come” (134).

For this week’s sketch assignment, create your own triptych comic. As you compose your triptych, I most want you to focus on creating a story with a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Your story can be minimalist, impressionistic, comic, dark, weird or whatever you want it to be — but make sure that each panel of the triptych moves that story forward from beginning to middle to end.

You can draw your triptych, or create one using photographs, maybe along similar lines as the webcomic A Softer World, which ran weekly for about twelve years starting in Feb 2003. Emily and Joey published 1248 comics in that time, each consisting of three panels with photographs and words superimposed on them – often it seems to be a single image cropped into three panels, but sometimes it’s three photos taken as a series – and then the title of the comic appears when you hover your mouse over the comic (creating space for a sort of fourth panel or commentary). The comics tend to be quite dark.

I’m looking for compact and playful storytelling through both images and words. It’s an opportunity for you to play with irony, humor, and/or wit.

Add a paragraph reflecting on your triptych comic. What choices did you make in crafting your narrative? Describe the composition process a little bit. What was challenging about this assignment? How is crafting this sort of comic strip different or similar to other writing you’ve done this semester?

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