Comic Studies: Sequential Art

Making comic books is a form of storytelling. For my last junior year, I submitted a proposal for comic making, something that I’ve wanted to learn more of. I chose this study because I always liked to write and create things. I got interested in political comics and I thought that it was really cool that you communicate a meaning behind them, as serious or not as you want it to be. My goal was to get to know more about the process of making comics, make my own comic and of course, read a lot of new comics.

At the beginning of this course, I started with broad research. I looked at different manga artist and anime artist because I know that anime and cartoons go hand and hand with what I was researching. I also did my first mini-comic of the term, this folds into a little book, throughout the term I did a couple of these: here’s my first one (follow the numbers):

MW, How to Leave a Coma, 2019 

I also did my first Comic-Jam of the term with my adviser, this is one of my favorite things that I did in this class. A comic Jam is when at least 2 people are involved and each person has a sheet of paper. You both start off with making one comic panel, it can be for as long or as short as you want it to be. After the time is up you pass it to the next person and you keep passing it along until the comic is done. Here’s my top 2 of the term.

MW, AM, Untitled Jam04, 2019

AM, MW, Untitled Jam05, 2019

I had 2 field experiences for this class. The first one was Free Comic Book Day, I went with my friend who also likes comic books and my goal was pretty easy to achieve, get new comic books. This trip really helped me because it gave me a lot of inspiration. It felt really awesome seeing so many different styles and I got to talk to an comic artist while I was at one of the stores. The second one was more of an internal experience. I had the opportunity to talk to a writer, Dave Scheidt. He's from Chicago, and has wrote for Cartoon Network, Huffington Post, Nickelodeon, and a good amount of others. This experience was impactful because I got an actual perspective of someone working in the field of comics.

My goal for this course was to Create a comic book. I ended up not being to have a finished project but I'm not mad at that. The process seemed so much simpler in the beginning. As we all know, not many things are as they seem. I had made a lot of different plots while trying to come up with the idea that I used in my comic. The script is down below, it was my first time completing a script/ story this long.

My main inspiration for this story was just the human mind and the span of emotions that we feel, I think with all if my stories, I exaggerate different emotions and how I process things that may be different for other people. I didn't want a story with a clear message. I want it to be up to interpretation. I'm proud of what I made, it might not be that understandable but I tried to make it make sense. I did realize that I have a lot of dialogue and maybe next time I could find different ways that characters can communicate without words.

 I was able to draw a few of the panels after I established character design and revised some parts of the script. Here's one part that I was able to draft.

MW, Room Draft, 2019

Overall, I wish that I was able to finish this comic by the end of this course but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to continue working on this project. I think that this process has allowed me to appreciate comic art more. I'm glad that I was able to do this independent study.