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CCT300 Comic Creation Blake Lipson 997619796

The idea for my comic came as a result of a true story involving one of my roommates. Having noticed the humorous nature of the events that occurred during his night of drinking, I decided it would make excellent subject matter for a comic. Moreover, I noticed that the best web comics were ones based on real experiences, especially those of trauma. Whenever I do a recap of that night in my mind, all I can think about is how it was a terrible example of how someone should behave when drinking. In this sense, it seemed obvious to write the comic in the format of an instruction manual on how not to drink.

As far the as the artwork goes, my drawings are about as rudimentary as it gets. The use of simple stick figures and shapes helps the reader to focus on the story. McCloud argues that the bases of language are symbols, and that these symbols help to construct our understanding of a situation (p.134). My comic is full of common symbols that help to convey a night of heavy drinking and chaos. First, the glasses and the bottles are easily recognizable shapes associated with alcohol. Second, the skull and crossbones are symbols that represent poison. In this case, the reader understands that the bottle is not actually filled with poison; rather, they understand that the content of the bottle (high potency alcohol) is seemingly just as dangerous to a person as a real bottle of poison. Third is the use of symbols to represent fire. Even though I did not use colour, or sound to indicate a fire, shapes that are wavy or spiky are often just as effective because fire is indistinct. That is to say, fire does not hold any particular shape, which makes it much easier to represent with unconventional shapes.

Another technique I used in my comic is motion lines. McCloud observes that motion lines have many uses, particularly for displaying action and drama (p.112). First, I used motion lines to create the appearance of distress, when a person is waving their arms up and down. Second, I used them to show a display of incredible force behind the slap of a gymnast. Third, I used motion lines to convey a sense of speed behind a runner preparing to leap frog over his friend. Finally, I used motion lines as a substitute for speech bubbles. Although this is more of an indirect method of using motion lines, they helped create a sense of timing in the dialogue by separating the conversation across the frame.

The last major element of my comic is the transitions. I noticed that instruction manuals seem to follow one of two different formats. One provides the reader with incredibly detailed step by step instructions on how to perform a task, such as how to build a piece of furniture. The other provides the reader with a vague process, jumping from scene to scene and assuming that the reader can fill in the blanks. My comic mostly follows the format of the latter, which McCloud would identify as scene to scene transitions between panels (p.71). There are however two deviations to this format in the form of subject to subject transitions. The main goal of my comic is to provide the reader with an interesting (and hopefully funny) story, and so I realized that it would not be possible to strictly follow one type of transition. The subject to subject transitions helped clarify certain scenarios and actions that simply could not be captured in one scene. References McCloud, S. (1993). //Understanding Comics//. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.