Humanities and Arts Comic, Part 3: Rough Draft #2
Rough Draft II
After receiving Professor deWinter's feedback, Jess and I went about revising our comic. While she added lists of suggested classes for students to take for certain thematic approaches and darkened the lines on her characters, I made a simple infographic to explain how the thematic approach works, and added in some word art to make some parts of the text pop out more visually. We also did a bit of re-arranging, mainly on the first and fourth sections, to try to improve the flow and readability of the comic.
Our completed second draft appeared as follows:
The infographic I made is visible in the pale green box on the left side of the fifth section. I chose a sun to accompany the step of finding a theme because it light casts down over and illuminates everything, metaphorically similar to how the theme affects and informs all of the subsequent steps and might even put the chosen courses in a different light than they are conventionally viewed. I used a simple capstone icon, viewed from an angle where it is divided in half, to represent the two distinct capstone project options. Supporting this from below is an abstract representation of the five regular courses a student will need to take, and below that I assembled an icon of a student talking with a professor to visually represent the final step in the process.
Class Feedback
In lecture today everyone presented their rough drafts and was given feedback from Professor deWinter and the rest of the class. According to deWinter, the content of our comic is good (though we need to note that the Inquiry Seminar can end in a project that's not a paper), we just have to continue improving the flow and readability of the overall work. We also should import our character images into Illustrator to make cleaner vector versions of them. The main points of feedback received from the class at large can be summarized as follows:
Pros:
- The narrative style using the personified disciplines, especially the book
- The way we explore examples of different themes
- The use of real photos helps make the comic more engaging
- The course examples
Cons:
- Some frames are a bit too cluttered or busy, making the flow hard to discern.
- There is a lot of text and speech bubbles.
Something that I didn't notice in class was that your first panel reminded me a bit of TV commercials for those "As Seen On TV" products (like the Snuggie). It gave me that "But wait, there's more!" feeling as well as the you've been living life wrong since you don't have this product. It definitely brings some humor into the comic and does make the reader intrigued and want to read more. It definitely makes the comic more interactive and a bit more reflective. Something that I did notice was you used two rectangular speech bubbles in the comic but the rest were circular. Was there a design choice behind this decision or was it purely coincidental?
ReplyDeleteYou mention that you received feedback that "There is a lot of text and speech bubbles." I disagree. Many of the comics being created in this class currently have a problem of excessive wordiness, but I feel that your comic does not have that problem. You keep the language simple, and each text bubble contains only one thought. This makes your comic easy to read. The comic does not seem too cluttered with text bubbles. I think you strike a good balance regarding the amount of text you employ.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the infographic you made and placed in the comic, I think that your font typeface, effect, and color choices create a bias towards the practicum over the inquiry seminar. "Practicum" is written in red, causing it to pop among the black text. It also has a fun curved effect added to it. "Inquiry seminar" is written in black and has no effect applied. The overall effect is that the reader's eyes are drawn to the practicum and the inquiry seminar is de-emphasized.
True, that is a good point about the infographic. I had formatted the word Practicum that way since it felt more expressive, which seemed fitting since it entails a performance or creative work, but it does definitely draw attention away. I believe Professor deWinter had even mentioned that most people do a Seminar instead of a Practicum for the thematic approach, which means that it's even more misleading that that option seems emphasized.
DeleteI really like the approach you guys took with the narration of your comic! Choosing a book is such a cool way to express information, because books are respected information bearers.
ReplyDeleteThis feedback is coming too late (I'm sorry), but I find the infographic difficult to read. The words and pictures seem to oppose each other, and I didn't understand the symbols you used in it until I read your explanation.