Me, Alan and Pauline decided to make a story about the bird Western tanager called Tweety. This bird has a long migration journey and we decided to show it. She will travel from Canada to Mexica via the US and visit a number of beautiful and diverse places. Sometimes she will eat, relax or meet other birds. Our idea is that for each of these locations, there Tweety will be flying against the backdrop of whichever location she’s at. Hence, the background will match where she is and the weather conditions will change too. We created storyboards below with detailed description for each of the parts of her journey, such as departure, journey, conflict and arrival. For the conflict part we included a bit of political humour, when Tweety bumps into the wall between the US and Mexico. Then she will be saved by an eagle which in normal circumstance is supposed to eat her but will show her mercy instead. We are still deciding on the style and there’s a possibility that we will make the story shorter and cut out some of the parts depending on our abilities.
Tweety's preparation for the journey
Map of the journey
Conflict part
Tweety's arrival
My reflection on the Understanding Comics:
I was actually surprised that I liked it, as it’s not something that I usually enjoy reading. When I was young, I was into comics, but this interest ended a long time ago. I frankly considered it the most childish form of art after cartoons. However, I learned a lot of interesting facts about the differences between western and eastern manner of drawing comics. I was also surprised to learn how gestalt psychology principles of perception are implemented there. For instance, closure, figure-ground and negative space. Overall, this book changed my perception on comics as a form of art and I realized that it is so much more than just pictures put in a right order. The author’s style was also incredible to me because he was able to mix knowledge, humour and philosophy in a perfect balance.