Basically:  thou shalt draw a minicomic!  Even if thou art not so much with the drawing skillz.

Huzzah!

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. . . once that’s done, as a final wrap-up assignment, I’d like you to do a brief (~500 word, though it can certainly be longer if you have more to say) writeup of both your comic itself (product) and your experience creating it (process).

In terms of the product itself, how do you see it participating in what Jarod and I have described as the cultural space of minicomics (lower stakes than a full comic, more of a tendency towards the weird or experimental, often reacting against tendencies in mainstream comics)?  What formal tricks or experiments did you try?  What’s your favorite aspect of the minicomic you produced, the little touch you’re proudest of?  If you had to analyze it the way we’ve analyzed comics throughout the semester, what would you say about your minicomic—about its style, about its narrative (if there is one), about the relationship between text and image, about the relationship(s) between panels?  What would McCloud say?  Did it end up looking like anything we’ve read in class?

In terms of process, what did creating this particular minicomic reveal to you about comics (other than that they’re really bloody difficult)?  What was particularly easy or particularly hard for you?  How does having produced this minicomic affect the way you’ll read other comics from here on out?  Are there things you’re likely to be more attuned to in comics, now that you’ve had to produce one of your own?  Did going through the process give you any particular insights on comics as a medium, or on particular genres within comics?  How did you create your comic—did you draw it by hand, did you paint it digitally, did you pencil and then ink, did you storyboard, did you write the text first or last?  If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?  Are there things you wanted to do but didn’t have time or energy to pull off?

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Turning these in by email is fine.  I need them by 5:00pm on Friday, May 3rd in order to have time to get final grades in, though a day or two earlier would make my life a bit easier, if you can swing it.