We received a new assignment during our class on Monday to write a comic for the most exciting topic ever: the humanities requirement. Jack and I paired up and decided to take the depth/breadth route for our comic. These comics are for the chair of HUA, Kris Boudreau who wants a better way of explaining something WPI students dread. Because of this, Jack and I brainstormed an theme that would appeal to the typical tech student. We decided on navigation theme with the perspective from the inside of a car giving clear and simple instructions on which roads to take in order to successfully complete your HUA requirement. We will have a speech bubble coming from the screen in the car showing the directions and signs on the road ahead indicating where to turn. We also outlined all of our frames in the comic:
Frame 1: Welcome to Mission HUA, one of your most valuable experiences at WPI. Why
humanities, you ask? In order to solve the world’s most pressing issues, it is critical for
you, as a WPI student, to be able to critically think and expand your knowledge outside of STEM.
Frame 2: Ready to depart for your trip to complete your humanities requirement? Let’s take
Route HUA: Depths and Breadths! (Sign reads “Road to HUA”)
Frame 3: Exit to Depth X, based on your interests. (Sign reads “EXITS AHEAD: 1 - Art/Art
History, 2 - Music, Drama/Theater, 3 - Literature/Writing, 4 - History/International Studies, 5 - Philosophy/Religion)
Frame 4: Depth (Rest) Area sign has three classes listed (one in 2000 level or above. Pit
stopping at these rest areas represents taking the classes.
Frame 5: Now that you’ve completed three courses in your depth, it is time to find a capstone
called an inquiry seminar or practicum. You must get the registration form signed by the professor teaching the course in order to successfully register.
Frame 6: *STOP* A seminar/practicum counts as another class. It is not recommended that you
overload while taking this as it is a rigorous ⅓ credit course.
Frame 7: Now that you’ve completed your Depth pit stop, merge onto i-HUA to complete your
Breadth! The Breadth consists of two HUA courses.
Frame 8: Your breadth must be taken in at least one different grouping than your depth.
Groupings are listed on the road sign ahead. (Sign reads: Art/art history, drama/theatre, music, 2 - Foreign languages, 3 - Literature, writing, rhetoric, 4 - History, international studies, 5 - Philosophy, religion)
Frame 9: Select two of these exits to complete your remaining courses.
Frame 10: Mission completed. You have successfully fulfilled your HUA requirement at WPI.
Your knowledge has surpassed that of many of your competitors in engineering and you will be able to problem solve using your interdisciplinary skillset. Well done.
We also sketched a couple of frames:
We will most likely create the actual comic in PowerPoint combining vector drawings with real images. There is a lot of work to do, but I'm excited to see it start coming together.
Now that I've seen the overall plan of the comic, I'm liking your group's design and direction more. I think your idea of creating a more "technical" drawing/comic for the more "technical" student is a good idea for drawing in students and maintaining their focus, but I fear that if not pulled off well it could seem cliche. I already posted to Jack's website about the design, but I think pulling the perspective away from the interior of the car or truck cabin and focus more on the windshield would open up the design more to readers and keep them focused.
ReplyDeleteAlsoooo, I'd be careful in the sequentiality (is that a word?) of the frames that you have planned out, as it seems a little formulaic and not that organic or allowing for free choice (which the humanities strive to provide you with, free choice). So perhaps coming up with an idea on how to break that sort of monotony of a preplanned trip would breathe new life into the audience's drive for reading the comic. Overall though, I really like your idea and am excited to see the rough draft of it on Monday!
I disagree that a technical comic is generally better for the technical student. As creators, we need to remember that the people who are consuming our content are first and foremost humans; they are not robots who live off of solely math and science. I like the idea about a road trip explaining the comic. Although, that methods might become formulaic which suggests that the depth and breadth approach is formulaic. In order to bypass a ‘formulaic’ feel and incorporate a connection that is more humanistic, you could put people in the car and have two people talking back and forth.
DeleteRegarding your drawings, I think is is very important to have variety in the them because that will help keep your reader interested. In these two images, there is a lot of text. In future version, it might be easier to read each comic if there is less text. It will also be clearer to read if it is typed up.
I agree with both of your criticisms and this was part of the reason why I decided to change the entire theme of the comic. I wanted something that would be much more engaging and fun, rather than something that could come off as boring and lose people's attention easily. It was hard to come up with something more interesting with the idea of a car driving through the HUA requirement which is really the reason why we had so little done on our first draft. Thanks for both your insights and advice!
DeleteI like your idea of driving and looking through the windshield for focus and correlating that with focusing on your humanities and taking different paths to achieve the fulfilled requirement. I do not, however, like how there was white around the windshield. Maybe I'm intimidated by white-space but I think that it is missing something there.
ReplyDeleteI like how you are using an expensive car because it's a popular car, but just keep in mind that it is not popular everywhere and, in using this brand, you may be limiting your audience.
These are interesting points you bring up - even though I have now changed my comic completely, it is important to be aware of the elements and focus of the comic and how they may limit your audience. I wasn't thinking of the Tesla as expensive, but more of a vehicle that people like and would want to drive. This is a new perspective I hadn't thought of, thanks!
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