JPEG of Comic by Deyanira Tovar-Moreno, 2018.

For my comic project, I wanted to portray an issue which has swept America by storm, which is, homelessness. I wanted to depict the concept of homelessness from the perspective of a homeless person because I wanted my viewers to change their point of view and challenge stereotypes regarding homelessness. Furthermore, my project fits Scott McCloud’s definition of comics because my storyline entails contrasting illustrations which were aligned to depict my narration.

Moreover, I used several specific concepts which were communicated throughout Scott McCloud’s book to come up with the idea on how I wanted to illustrate and explain my conception. First, I needed to address how I would choose to depict the characters and scenes within my comic. I decided to use traditional cartoon characters after learning from Scott McCloud’s book that cartoon illustrations flow easily through the conceptual territory that is between panels.

Next, within each specific panel, I needed to decide what types of transitions I would use to accurately narrate my comic, while ensuring that the reader could clearly understand events and time which occurred during and in between my panels. Furthermore, for most of my panels, I used action to action transitions, which transport us through time and space from panel to panel. However, to better the understanding of other panels, I used aspect to aspect transitions which bypass time and sets a wandering eye on different aspects of a place.

Lastly, my comic fits Scott McCloud’s definition of comics because the of the manner in which I used transitions to illustrate time passing. According to Scott McCloud, to create the depiction of time passing, the composition of the picture is joined by the composition of change, drama, and memory, which I did.

I believe that my specific comic is better understood through print due to the importance of text over the illustrations featured. In other words, my cartoon illustrations were simplified because they do not need to be detailed for the viewer to understand what is happening. Moreover, the text bubbles are the main source for my viewer to understand what is happening in each panel, and therefore, it is not as necessary for my comic to be digitally viewed as it would be for comics with illustrations which are vital to the understanding of the comic, and would therefore be better understood using digital tools such as the zoom in and out features.