Over the year the class become accustomed to the google doc, to the idea of real time collaboration for group projects, real time collaboration that the various comic creating software did not allow for. Thus it was difficult to see where we were in the project as a group and where we needed to go, even if we were all working simultaneously in the same room. Everyone’s job then became editor and collaborator, we all had to have an idea of what we wanted, what would be the most beneficial for the group’s project as a whole, and we had to execute it and then collectively review it. It was exhausting.
The project that really stood out to me was the 10,000 hour comic, whose style of hand-drawings and photographs helped engage me more and effectively brought out the point of the argument through fun and cartoony vignettes. I felt this focus on light-lightheartedness expressed through their artistic style further aided in creating a fun and casual read, whereas some of the other comics were pretty dark and didactic
Due to limitations of the software, we did end up creating some pages of collages that were evocative of certain pages of G.B Tran’s work, Vietnamerica. Ultimately we found that creating a comic is really, really hard, what with the pictures having to match a story, the story having to match the pictures, and both mediums (text and picture) having to tell a coherent tale.