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November 28, 2017

Breadth and Depth Requirement

 Caroline and I will be working together to create a cartoon about the breadth  and depth humanities requirement. We met today to pool ideas. (These are very rough and unorganized so please excuse the formatting.)
  • Audience: incoming first year students (students that have already submitted their deposit and will be registering for classes soon).
  • Purpose: to explain what the requirement is, how to fulfill the requirement, example registration panhel, what the goal of the requirement is
  • Star of the comic: Gompei the goat.
    • Frame 1/2: Hey, my name is Gompei, welcome to WPI! Background: Seal, him under the Earl Bridge
    • Next frame: There are a few graduation requirements you must fulfill at WPI. Background: MQP! IQP! 
    • Next frame: One of those is the Humanities and Arts requirement, Gompei hold HUA in shiny letters, background: picture of the humanities and arts requirement page with gompei pointing at title
    • Next frame: General goal of the humanities and arts requirement
    • Next frame: A popular way to fulfill this is through the breadth and depth option - scale with depth on heavier side and breadth on lighter side
    • Next frame: Your "depth" is one of five disciplines that you choose as your main concentration. Background: Five different areas
    • Next frame: During your time at WPI, you will take 3 or 4 classes within your depth; background, one depth area with classes
    • Next frame (maybe): choose something you're interested in!
    • Next frame: As a goat, I am very interested in philosophy and like to ponder Plato as I chew on my grass in the morning, Background: Gompei on the grass.
    • Next frame: Your breadth consists of one or two courses outside of your depth area. Try to choose courses that interest you in different subject areas. 
    • Next frame: I love WPI's fight song, and I wanted to learn how to make music just like it, so I took a music course!
    • Next frame: I also wanted to complete my IQP in Paraguay, so I decided to take an introductory Spanish class! Picture of Gompei in Paraguay.
    • Next frame: After you've completed both your breadth and depth requirements, you get choose a culminating humanities seminar or practicum. Pic of gompei with seminar or practium in either hand
    • Next frame: The seminar allows students to dive deeper into their depth area by looking at a complex, humanistic problem or theme. Gompei in dive gear with Sebastian the crab from Ariel 
    • Next frame: Students with their depth in writing, music, and drama/theater can do their capstone project as a practicum, a hands-on project where students will be involved in the production of something, such as a play, a piece of music, or a book. Gompei at a theater.
We will be meeting again tomorrow to discuss graphics and continue to brainstorm our ideas.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 29, 2017 at 5:08 AM

    I absolutely love how you developed a script. It makes the planning process go so much more smoothly and I can really see the direction you're going to take your comic! As McCloud discusses in his comic, there are many ways to balance words and images and I was wondering where you think your comic will fall on that scale. In other words, are you planning on using the words to explain the project with the images supporting, vice versa or some other combination? So far from reading your script it seems that you have a lot of options. For example, you could depend on the dialogue with Gompei to provide the information (this is something similar to what my group is doing) or you could use the images to better explain the requirement with the dialog guiding the story aspect. Overall, I'm really excited to see where you guys take this and turn this script into a comic!

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    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 4, 2017 at 11:22 AM

      Creating a script before designing the comic really ended up helping us. The storyboard reminded me of those brainstorming diagrams you got when you were in elementary school (like I think I had one in the shape of a hamburger to help me learn to write paragraphs) since it gave a simple means to develop the story before creating any imagery. At first we were planning to use a combination of call out text as well as comics, as our original means of publication were going to be on the WPI HUA website page. After creating our first draft, we are debating between an actual comic book to be handed out at NSO or at Accepted Student Days or if it could also be posted online as well.

      Delete
  2. BenjiboyNovember 30, 2017 at 10:06 AM

    I agree with Jessica that your script is really going to help once you start drawing your comic. After reading through it seems like the images are leaning towards an additive function. As discussed in Understanding Comics, the most effective combination of images and words is an interdependent one. Obviously it's kind of early to critique your drawings when there is non, but I think that's a good thing to keep in mind.
    We've had to rethink some of our frames to refocus on the images. It's much easier to just let the text convey the message, but a comic that can speak through the images has a unique feeling.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 4, 2017 at 11:24 AM

      Thank you so much for reminding us of the strength of the interdependent approach to comics! Like I mentioned to Jess, we were originally going to combine pull out paragraph text with comics, but seeing your comment made us rethink our design choice. Using the interdependent method also seemed to aid the flow of our design in the end.

      Delete
  3. UnknownDecember 4, 2017 at 11:02 AM

    Seconding ("thirding?") what others have said, I definitely think that planning out a full script along with visuals as you have done will be incredibly helpful. I know when I was first thinking about how to organize the comic I was initially at a bit of a loss for how to even begin the process laying it out, and having a very concrete plan should help alleviate that.

    Your almost multimedia approach, combining characters with scenes or even images of websites of varying abstractness, is interesting and should help keep the comic engaging by adding a degree of visual variety. It could also run the risk of having characters feel very out of place or making the comic feel a bit disorganized, but it would definitely still be worth a shot. In fact, Jessica and I are trying a somewhat similar approach with ours, overlaying cartoony characters on actual photos. It should be interesting to see how they develop and differ.

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