Creating a Short Comic

Growing up, I was always socially awkward. Lack of eye contact and avoiding talking to others was a common thing for me. As i always find things like small talk to be uncomfortable, with me always feeling that the conversation can get too personal and me sometimes not knowing the lines of what questions to ask.

It inspired me to create a comic about a boy who is socially like me that has friends and family that acts as his cage, as being with them means that he doesn’t need to face and overcome his fears. So the main plot is to put him in a situation where he needs to break out of his cage.

I only do art and story making for a hobby and never put any real effort to pursue it, so I am still very much inexperienced in a lot of aspects, such as pacing and character designs. But I am willing to improve my skills so I will be able to capture the readers and to make them relate to the themes of my story.

Global Context

My project has the strongest connection to Identity and relationship. The story I'm telling hopefully is going to be inspiring because it deals with an issue most people deal with. As of now many people are having a hard time conducting small talks in person as they use the protection of anonymity in online conversations to feel comfortable.

Product

I created a personal rubric that will help me to better evaluate my product as the preexisting rubrik is not specific enough to accurately judge my product. The new rubric that I created is competent enough to evaluate my product accurately. In my rubric I put three criteria that will judge the different areas of my product. As my product mainly focuses on writing, art and design. These criteria could be measured by having peer reviews and making multiple copies of my product and a copy of my rubric and by me reading my own product.

Reflection

When I started the project I didn’t have anything in mind as I wasn’t decisive enough on a topic. After a few days I got the base of my project, which was creating a comic. At first my comic idea was to create a story that is about a coming of age but when developing the story I changed it into a story about how a person with anxiety learns to overcome their fears and finally learn to talk for themselves. I changed the theme of the story due to the reason that the first idea would’ve had taken too much time to make especially more when I had a 2 week hiatus on working on the project because I had to travel. This caused me to slightly rush the comic especially in the art department as the story was already finished when making the comic itself. This probably caused the rough looking piece in the final product. But it does help me improve my skills in digital art as when making the comic it help me more familiarise the shortcut keys and new technique that i didn’ know before. As when I was desperate for time I try my best to memorize and learn as many shortcuts as I can to spend as little time as I can even if it's just for a couple seconds.

IB Learner Reflection

The obvious one is both knowledgeable and communicators. As the basis of this project is to use prior knowledge on a subject and further deepen the knowledge of said subject through self research and communicating with experts. Risk-takers is a factor from the two weeks hiatus I went on that made me learn a new technique for digital art as while I will have less time to work on my product mastering the shortcuts would significantly lessen the time needed to work on my product. So by choosing the latter option I could work more efficiently when I get back into working on it. That takes to be an inquiry as I need the drive and curiosity to learn more to even finish my final product as without it I could have ended up with an unfinished product. This takes me to be open-minded because taking any and all sort of help I can get no matter how small would affect my work and it being a creative process having an open mind also helped me reach more deeper into more ideas. But to effectively change the concept into a workable story, I need the thinker as I have to find a way to make this mish mash of ideas and knowledge into a working and understandable story to be read. Reflective is also being used as im reflecting on previous experiences to better write the final product as best of my ability. Though this all work helped me to be more balanced as well as without it I could either procrastinate or overwork myself in this time, so finding some balance between work and break really helped.