CCT+300-+Assignment+2-+Comic+Creation



 Web comics or internet comics are short comics that are posted on the internet and sometimes even newspapers and magazines. They are closely compared to the comics posted on newspapers and thanks to the internet, practically anyone can tell their own stories by writing up such web comics. In the last few years web comics have become quite the sensation and there are a plethora of such websites with stories that are available, websites such as //Cyanide and Happiness//, //xkcd//, //Oatmeal//, etc. Comics can tell a great story and even the short web stories are usually good for a chuckle and holds a high entertainment value. The short comic I came up with is heavily influenced by the internet culture and memes and is based on drawing and story style of the web comic series called //Rage Comics//. My story, called "Story of My Life", is based loosely on the actual struggles of myself and my fellow students regarding studying for and taking tests. It is a comical approach to the story, with goofy //Rage Comics// characters representing the protagonists. As in real life, sometimes studying hard for a test often proves to be futile as the material prepared for is not the material that is being tested on. This story emphasises on such prospects.  As most comics do, the web comics follow certain steps which McCloud describes. Using McCloud's book //Understanding Comics//, we will analyse "Story of My Life" which borrowed comic concepts from his book. To begin with, according to McCloud, time frames are an important aspect that distinguish time and the length of time passed for the readers. The longer the panels, the more dramatic and the more difference it will make in our perception of time (McCloud, 101). Some of the panels used in my story, for example, the long panel of end dream sequence and the freak out sequence at the end, uses the aforementioned concept by McCloud and gives us the lingering impression that more time has passed in those panels than the rest.  Another important concept borrowed from McCloud's book is the panel transition. Since "Story of My Life" is a very short comic, consisting of only 12 panels, I wanted to tell the whole story while keeping the art work succinct. Therefore, the right tool for this project was to use the subject-to-subject transition, as described by McCloud. This method of changes in scenes require closure on the readers part, that is, their involvement is necessary to make the transition meaningful (McCloud, 71). Therefore, as we can see from my comic the scenes transform rapidly from one to the other and the readers have to use their knowledge to perceive as to what is happening in between the panels. In one instance, the comic also uses the scene-to-scene transition as the story switches to the next day, which signifies transition of time and space, with a huge comic style label at the top to denote that (McCloud, 71). Also, the whole dream scene is depicted within a cloud bubble, which takes up all of the panel, to give the readers the notion of dreaminess.  The last element borrowed from McCloud's book is the idea of sound in comics. Within "Story of My Life" the use of sound to visually represent an idea exists in two instances. According to McCloud, adding sound to panels give the readers a high degree of closure, involving all four senses, making the reader understand the scene better (McCloud, 89). For instance, the sleeping scene is represented by visual "zzzz" sound to denote the character sleeping and in the end dream scene the use of the word "poof" to depict that the character is back in the reality, thus ending the dream.

Reference: McCloud, Scott. 1994. //Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art//. New York: HarperPerennial