When we were tasked to create a comic about our own individuality I was stumped. This is a question that always stops me in my tracks as I never know what makes me well me, I often overthink it and want to do something amazing yet it’s always the simple things make me who I am. I decided to write a comic about two things that I love, food and friends and putting them together a meal with friends.

Idea/ Purpose

I wanted to create a comic that showed just how important my friends are to me and my love for food. At first I wasn’t convinced with this idea as it didn’t seem as grandiose as what other people might make and in comparison might be simple and not unique to me. But as I started creating the panels for my comic I slowly started pouring more of myself into this comic and by the time that I had finished draft of the comic I was proud of what I had created and felt that It was a part of me. I wanted this comic to show just how passionate and willing I am to eat a meal with friends, no matter where or when.

Form

The form that I chose was a comic as it was what we needed to pick. I knew that with this comic I wanted to be more creative with the use of the panels and not just stick to the traditional squares that I had used in my previous comics. I wanted to have the clear lines to make the comic panels well defined but the actual contents of the comic slightly rough and sketchy as I love that style.

Idiom

The genre or idiom that I wanted to go for what a short story that is based off my personal experience. I wanted to make a light hearted novel that wasn’t serious at all and having a cartoon feel. I really liked the idea of making the character in different styles to break the sense of continuity. As I am a person who likes to break with continuity and go with the flow of things.

Structure

I wanted to leave out unnecessary scenes in order to fit the whole story in the comic. Similarly to my first comic I wanted some panels to transition to different scenes while other scenes just transitioned to the same setting just a further in time similar to my second comic. I used to think that comic panels had to have a gap between the panels but as I worked and created these comics that notion began to breakdown and by the time I was working on the third comic I wanted to use those gaps in a creative way so I decided to use text in those gaps and even use words as a gap between panels.

Craft

I was working with paper and pencil in order to create the draft of the comic. I love using pencil as it allows for rough and sketchy looks that I absolutely love and wanted to include in my comic. I always thought that this sketchy look would not make for a good comic as the art would just seem messy and lazy. But when we looked at graphic novels in the CDSC I found a graphic novel that was entirely made of these messy sketches. It was at that moment that I knew that it could be done, so I wanted to make that style the focus of this comic.

Surface

To finish the comic I just went over it with pen in order to add depth. Most of the process went into the creation of the rough draft.

The Final Comic

This comic was more ambitious as I finally discarded the notion that there is a “right” and “wrong” way of creating a comic. I wanted to create something that I only I could create and by the time the comic was done I was truly proud of the work that went into it. I wanted to have fun shaped panels and I didn’t worry about the spacing and making sure the layout was a traditional layout. The focus of the comic isn’t about structure just how I tend to avoid structure and value freedom in a way the randomness of life. This was the first time that I was able to create something without feeling like I had to do it right. It was my comic, my comic about me and what I created isn’t right or wrong but it is me. I also wanted to include dialogue and characters. The previous comics I created I was afraid of having speech bubbles in the comic as I was afraid I would not have enough space. The reason this comic is my most ambitious is because I created it without limiting myself, I wasn’t bounded by the idea of right and wrong and I hope in the future all my creations will be like this.