Mindset

As the years go by, I find myself struggling with facing problems alone and the things that I have experienced during hard times in my teenage years have caused a pessimistic mindset that makes hard times harder to deal with. I realize that I may be projecting my gloom onto others which radiates negativity and increases the problem. I come to understand that each negative experience and other teenage problems that I have encountered could instead become something that I could use to bring positivity and self improvement through the decisions that I make in handling hard times, meaning that if we have to face our problems alone, we must become our own solution.

I realize that these are common challenges that other people my age had or would experience and it is likely that they would struggle in dealing with hard times on their own. Which is why I decided to create an online comic series showing my personal experiences and the way I faced my problems with a positive mindset and deciding to use the experience as a lesson to improve myself in hopes of being able to guide other teenagers dealing with problems usually experienced at this age while growing up and becoming their own solution when they have to face problems on their own. In the form of a comic book, my project would draw the attention of my target audience and could be easily understood as the message would be conveyed through simple cartoons and minimal words.

Though I have been creating comics ever since I was younger, this project would be highly challenging as I still lack skills in literature, specifically story writing as I have never created a proper plot or storyline when creating a comic. The most challenging part would be my minimal knowledge in psychology and sociology. My hobby in drawing has brought some experience and art skills but would still call for improvement, while learning how to format the drawings into a comic.

Global Context

My project centers around the global context Identities and Relationships as human relationships affect one’s mental health and identity. Improving ourselves and deciding on the choices we make is a part of exploring our identity as it involves exploring who we are and what kind of person we want to be to bring self improvement. Social health and human relationships would also be focused on as improving and maintaining good mental health and making right decisions while facing problems would affect them.

Product

As creating a comic was only a personal interest of mine and I had minimal knowledge on it in the past, I would say I am impressed by the outcome of my own comic book ‘Mindset’. Combining my hobby of reading comics and creating digital art, I created a comic with the story being based on my personal experiences with problems I encountered as a teenager and how I coped with them on my own. Made for teenagers to relate to, I designed authentic characters that I believe would draw readers to read the comic and perhaps become characters that they themselves could relate to. The characters are designed with specific features made to radiate their personality that would be easily understood by the readers, and taking inspirations from real life people and experiences helped in making characters and the situations relatable to my audience of teenagers.

The comic book is short and concise but successfully achieves my goal of inspiring other teenagers to face their problems by changing their mindset and being more optimistic. The usage of many symbolisms allows the message of the book to be conveyed inexplicitly, as well as giving the readers multiple ways to analyse the message on their own based on what they interpret from the story. The character’s choices and actions could hopefully inspire readers to deal with their issues in a similar way by thinking more positively.

Reflection

Initially, the topic of creating comics was just another one of my interests that I did just for fun and the only skills and information regarding comic making were all gained through experience. Going into this project I was unsure of what to expect as I realised my personal knowledge was still lacking, but through this project I was able to elevate my knowledge in creating comics. What I used to think was just drawing on a piece of paper actually turned out to comprise multiple branches. One of them being writing, and as something I was usually not too skilled at, it came across as a challenge at first. The thought of having to create a story outline seemed dreadful, but through personal research and consultations with a fellow writer, it seemed a lot easier when the process is broken down into multiple smaller tasks. I went from having to create complex graphs and tables, to just easily jotting down ideas on notes. As for the art aspect of my project, designing characters always seemed difficult as the thought of creating an entirely new person is nerve wracking, but with learning how to turn real life people such as myself into a character shows the endless possibilities there is when it comes to art and has made me enjoy creating characters a lot more.

IB Learner Reflection

Being an IB student, the word global context and the many types have always surrounded me without me fully understanding it and its importance. During the beginning of this project, I chose out whichever global context fit the goal statement of my project the post, never fully understanding the meaning of it. But doing the personal project allowed me to explore the global context of identities and relationships by associating it to real life situations. The process of conceptualising my project and the product allowed me to delve deeper into what the global context actually meant. And as I related the global context to my project, I understood the meaning of the phrase ‘what it means to be human’. I became more interested in understanding what it is being humans, learning how our relationships with others would affect ourselves and our identities.

But more than the rest, as an IB learner I have found myself implementing IB learner profiles in my everyday life recently throughout the project. Whether it be for conceptualising the idea of the product, creating the actual product itself, or even solving a problem, I found myself being more of a thinker than usual. I used to just take the easy route, but as this project is a big part of this school year, I knew that extra measures should be taken. Whenever I encounter a problem, and in this case there were a lot, I would always try to find the best solution even if it is inconvenient in order to get the work done. I found myself researching more often than I usually would, and I realize how much I have grown as an inquirer and I always strive to become more knowledgeable as this new knowledge ends up being beneficial for creating my comic.

I have always struggled with time management as one of my common habits is procrastinating. Knowing that this project would be time consuming, I have become a lot more balanced as a student by applying my organisation skills in my everyday life by creating schedules and to-do lists everyday to always keep myself on track and to balance my school and personal life well. There were a lot of flaws in my method of working and time management which was why I always tried to be reflective to bring self improvement. For example, if I realised that I did not do anything productive one day, I would remind myself the next day to do twice as much work as usual in order to make up for my lack thereof the day prior.