Happy midterm and Halloween!

Reminders:

1. During class Tuesday, November 1st we will take a little time to revisit your Student Inventories and reflect on how things are progressing towards your goals. Please bring to class November 1st your Student Inventory that you filled out in our first class.
2. Remember the resources Mazzy provided for Halloween and as support at the UO all the time:
   • Duck Rides: 541-346-7433
     • Duck rides services anywhere within a five mile radius of campus, so if you guys get lost or just end up far for campus, make sure you have checked out their website and saved their number beforehand.
   • Protection Connection
     • Convenient way to get resources for safe sex (they even offer delivery!)
     • STI Screenings, and $25 Plan B without a prescription.
     • Anonymous question submission
   • Care and Advocacy Program
     • If you see or experience anything that worries you call 541-346-3216 and ask to speak to a confidential advocate.
3. Fun Halloween event! Halloween Downtown
   • Pet parade at 2PM on 10/29!
4. Keep working on your comics!  Use Journal #2 to help get you to where we feel everyone should be at next week.  At this stage you should have most, if not all your panels and pages drafted out.  It is time to start working your text (lettering) and images into your panel designs so you can soon work on inking and coloring your final work.

We will be sending your Achievement progress sheets later this week, so keep an eye on your email.

As always let us know if you have any questions.  You can contact either one us at any time.

Best,

Robert and Mazzy

Hi!

Okay, we are moving quickly into midterms (and sounds like some already happening)!

Some reminders from Mazzy!  Remember to save the number for Eugene CAHOOTS! (541) 682-5111.  Also, we will be meeting Thursday at 5:30 for our ice cream social on the FIG! More instructions were sent in the weekly email.  Hope to see you all there!

Keep working on your comics, and especially start getting your pages designed out.

For inspiration see these online examples of various dynamic comic work:

• Zoe Thorogood’s online portfolio and wonderful use of dynamic panel designs and perspectives within the panels!: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XAD33 (the image on the right is from this link)
•  ‘Classic’ Watchmen nine to a page panels by Dave Gibbons, notice the movement of time and action throughout the entire page that occurs within the panels: https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1822831
• Marvel superhero work done by Adrian Alphona, this is a review with page examples of one of my favorite series of recent years, Ms Marvel: https://comicstoread.net/tag/adrian-alphona/
• Frank Miller’s amazing Dark Knight Returns work where he uses multiple panel designs with overlapping of panels/images to create a dynamic narrative: https://worldofcartoonsandcomics.blogspot.com/2011/03/batman-dark-knight-returns-comic-page_14.html
• Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam work previewed, and love the use of light and shadow to create wonderful time and action flow in fairly traditional panel designs: https://www.brokenfrontier.com/sunbeam-ingnatz-awards-tillie-walden/

Additionally as we move from this week (Week 4) into the midterm weeks (5 & 6), we will take a little time to revisit your Student Inventories and reflect on how things are going towards your goals. A heads up request and be ready to bring to class November 1st your Student Inventory that you filled out in our first class.

AND, remember next week is our Museum of Art visit, Museum field trip redux.  We did our “practice run” 😉 of where and when to meet, so just do the same thing next Tuesday and please bring the Museum purple header worksheet.

See the Week Three: Images, Panels, and Pages! posting for the Museum visit details (remember to read these guidelines before we visit: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/myvisualstory/files/2022/10/JSMA-Visitor-Guidelines.pdf).

Best,

Robert and Mazzy

Hi everyone!

First from Mazzy, and remember I will be at the ASUO Street Fair on Friday from 12-2!! Text me and find me to attend our social event!

W enjoyed our class this Tuesday.  Great energy and focus on drawing!  Thank you Madi for your help!

Keep thinking about the ways in which the powerful visuals you create in your comics influence how your themes come across to the readers.  In what ways can you use visuals from our history and culture to make your messages even more powerful?  Think about how you need to be careful having your images read the wrong way because the viewer/reader has their own cultural and historical ‘baggage’ they carry into their reading experience.

Here are the slides from the presentation about the power of images ( PDF File).

Additionally remember to think about the power of images when we visit the Museum of Art next week!  And on that note here are the details about our Museum visit:

• • We will be visiting the UO Museum of Art next Tuesday (Oct. 18th).
  • We will be meeting in the round courtyard area to the side of the Museum and next to Tykeson Hall.
  • It is important to be there no later than 1:55 (we will NOT meet at the classroom, go straight to the courtyard by the Museum).
• • Here are the visitor guidelines (please review before we meet at the Museum): https://blogs.uoregon.edu/myvisualstory/files/2022/10/JSMA-Visitor-Guidelines.pdf

Tykeson and courtyard: meet here

Important next steps for your comic book work!  Start to design out your panel and page layouts, and also start to think about what action will happen inside your panels.  As a head start here is Journal #2 (paper copies will be made available at next class, Oct. 18th): https://blogs.uoregon.edu/myvisualstory/files/2022/10/My-Visual-Story-Creative-Journal-Two.pdf

A last thought and as you move through your work as an academic here at the UO, and beyond into all of your creative and work endeavors, continue to think about different ways to visualize your ideas.  Think about ways to use visualizations to help you write papers and reports, draft out workflows, and help you through all kinds of moments where you need to think about creative, intellectual, and work challenges.  In many ways this is what this FIG is all about!  And as we talked about in class ways in which to build your visual critical thinking skills and your creative processing skills.

Best,

Robert and Mazzy

Happy week two! 🙂

We are fast working through the first stages of drafting out your comic book ideas.  By the end of this week we expect you to have the following finalized:

1. Your comic social issue theme (topic),
2. Your main characters (you should have a good idea of who the main actors of your story will be and a list of possible minor characters),
3. Some basic “action” bits (what are some major actions that will happen in your story),
4. Basic sketches of your character designs and some rough draft page layouts (we will start to work on panel and page design next week).

A couple notes for upcoming items:  First, after next week’s class you will receive an individual email with your course Achievement progress, the email will come to your uoregon account.  Second, we have a Museum of Art visit scheduled for Week 4, October 18th (more details forthcoming).

Remember those who haven’t to show up to your one on one’s with Mazzy! And on Thursday I will be outside of Knight Library from 12-4 for the drawing together social event! Please feel free to show up at any point in that time window and stay as long as you can!

And here is Mazzy’s UO Libraries Presentation: October 4, 2022 ( PDF File)

Oh, and this week’s manga recs from Robert and Mazzy!

Robert = Blue Period: https://kodansha.us/series/blue-period/ Above image

Mazzy = Princess Jellyfish: https://kodansha.us/series/princess-jellyfish/ Image to the right

As always if you have questions please let us know!

Best,

Robert and Mazzy