Comic+Assignment


 * Brief Narrative Summary**:

The narrative for this comic follows a simple person, perhaps a student walking down the city streets. As he continues to walk through the city he encounters many people worrying about what they have heard or seen. Its a shot at media saturating our minds with fear of imminent peril, or worrying us more then we need to be worried. Instead of saying things once they go on and on about the same thing until we fear that the same thing could happen to us.The man in the comic walks by all this, ignoring the people who are worried and enjoying what he has, his music and his life. The final three scenes cut into what he is listening to which is “Don’t worry be happy.” This is the message of the comic tries to convey, for a minute forget what the media is saying and enjoy what media has to offer.


 * Analysis:**

When designing this comic I had McCloud’s suggestion of icon when creating the main character. I made the main character appeal mostly to students, as if we do not have enough to worry about with school, as fees increase all these problems enter our spectrum. The main character is listening to music while walking down the street. The character was drawn as simple as possible which allows the reader to identify with him instantly. This was based on McClouds suggestion of universality of cartoon imagery. The more cartoony a face is the more people it can describe.(McCloud, 31) With a simple smirk on his face he walks past all the worried people who are either screaming or talking nonsense. All the other characters in the comic convey people who instantly worry about everything they hear, turning them into fear mongers. This idea was based on the fact that no matter where I go there is someone telling me that my misfortune is imminent. If you notice the main character is silent listening to his Ipod while everyone else is talking. His silence and smirk show that he is moving past all this and getting on with his life. Originally I was going to make this as serious as possible with well drawn characters shading and the whole works. I wanted to portray realistic background with realistic characters, so the reader would relate to the environment. Then when I started it I realized it would be more effective if it was very basic, and straight to the point. With a little detail in the background you get an easy city environment. Now you have a cartoony character with a realistic background so you can see it is going for some sort of modern present time.(McCloud, 42)

The creation of the comics sequence is based on panel to panel, there is no twists or turns or gaps for the reader to try and guess.The closure is not necessarily meant to fill the plot but to understand what the overall ideology closure of the comic is trying to show you.(McCloud, 70)By using panel to panel you see a progression as the character walks, he walks past each example of situations that have you scared. In the final three frames the box zooms into his Ipod, which displays “Don’t worry, be happy”. These final boxes transcend the panel to panel to an aspect to aspect. Now the final frame has you contrast everything that happened up to this point. (McCloud,72). The reason behind this was influenced by the comic David Boring created by Daniel McClowes. A lot of times the panel would focus on something forcing you to think of the meaning behind it, forcing you to see that the sequence was aspect to aspect.

The final elements to my comic was trying to make what the main character was doing more recognizable, adding in music notes allows people to see he is listening to music. This symbol helps the reader pick up a representation of sound. (McCloud, Pg 129) With these music notes you see that what everyone is saying is unheard and blocked out by the music notes. If you try to imagine the comic without the notes it would just be a character smiling and being unresponsive to anything around him. With the notes you see he is distracted and it adds an excuse as to why he is not responding to what people say. Using colour in the comic allowed emphasis on the main character while the background was less vibrant. This ties into what I wanted the different icons in the story to represent. The background is simple bland colours making it static and easy to follow. With a sidewalk and a road you see the character is walking in a straight line. The character is also the brightest colour in the comic symbolizing positivity. (McCloud, 188) The other characters however are wearing bland, dark colours symbolizing negativity.