My comic, “What Goes Around Comes Around”

My comic project fits Scott McCloud’s definition as I have used a mixture of frames with pictures, frames with pictures and text, and a frame with only text. All of my frames are put in a sequence where the reader’s eyes flow from the first frame all the way down to the final frame. The specific concepts from McCloud’s book that influenced my decisions when designing my comic were making frames, no matter what size, that would tell my story smoothly. Sometimes comics can be tough to follow if there are frames that seem to ‘jump’ from one section to the other, so I wanted to create little frames that would pull my story together and make it flow. Another concept I tried to incorporate is McCloud’s description on the importance of sequence. I decided to move around some frames to make the story flow better because if there are frames that do not fit well together then it also makes it difficult to read. Thirdly, I wanted to incorporate including detail when necessary and keeping designs simple. I added details on the outfits to make it more realistic and Christmas decorations to bring in holiday, cheerful spirit, but kept the supermarket and alarm clock, for example, as more simple designs.

The ideal reading environment I wanted for my comic was to have it in print so the reader would be able to physically hold my comic and read it versus putting it on the screen. It seems as if everything is digitalized now, not all bad reasons, and I really wanted to create work that would bring the reader back to a nostalgic period of their life when they would physically read comics in print such as comic books and newspapers.

A snippet of two frames from, “What Goes Around Comes Around”

I hope my readers will read my comic and have a warm, fuzzy feeling people get when they do the right thing and are rewarded for it. The title, “What Goes Around Comes Around,” is a saying I try to live by every day and wanted to demonstrate this saying in an artistic form.

This was pretty much my first official time working with Illustrator and watching tutorials on how to utilize the tools so it was a very fun and rewarding experience!