Substantive Post

One thing that really jumped out to me when thinking about how to successfully create a comic is how important it is not overload the learners, as this might cause them to disengage and completely miss the main idea that the comic is trying to address. It’s very important to make sure each individual frame is just presenting one idea because too man ideas presented at once is just going to overload the reader. This could even mean leaving some whitespace within each frame to allow the reader some breathing space to process what they are looking at. But in saying that, each frame shouldn’t necessarily be repetitive in nature, but rather continue to flow and present new ideas. Visuals to go along with the text to represent these ideas will go a long ways in accomplishing that, but the visuals should serve a purpose not just be filling the space. Each frame should be progressing the story, with the ideas continuing to build upon each other as you move through each frame. The pacing of that is very important as well, as the progression should be steady with a flow to it that follows along the path of the overarching story.

Additionally, the comic should be designed with a purpose, not just to look aesthetically pleasing. Some of the ways that I found in my research to be helpful with are creating visual cues such as arrows or framing in the form of speech bubbles for example that direct the readers attention to a certain place. Even things like the color schemes or the fonts and layout of the text are important to focus on what the overall big idea is. I also found that if the comic follows a good sequence like I mentioned earlier even if the reader were to skip or miss a frame they should still be able to follow along, it should be easy to understand and follow.