Daily Diary Comics (CCS Graphic Memoir)
During our weeklong Graphic Memoir class at the Center for Cartoon Studies with Mel Gillman, we were assigned daily diary comics:
Draw a short, simple autobio comic strip based on a prompt
3 panel minimum
50 minutes to create, any format (on paper or digital)
30 min to share & discuss as a class
It was definitely a challenge for me since I don’t / hadn’t made comics beforehand. But I learned a lot from stumbling through and seeing what my classmates could do in just under an hour!
So here are my five comics from the week — I didn’t finish or fix any of these, just scanned (if needed) and formatted them so they’d all be digitized and fit within the same dimensions. (At the bottom of this post, I also shared a list of insights about comic-making from one of our discussions.)
Day 1: “Tell me about something you saw or did before class.”
Surprising no one, I tried to share *everything* I did before class (ha!). I also learned / remembered how hard it is for me to draw straight lines and measure evenly, albeit with the assistance of a ruler.
So while I think there are benefits to drawing on paper (for practice and aesthetics), for me, right now, it ends up being frustrating and I fixate on dumb minor details like failing to draw even boxes 🫠 so I think using my iPad to help me just MAKE IT and easily move, erase, rescale, use the ruler, draw squares, etc is really a good tool for me until my skills are less friction when I want to pull something out of my brain. 💭✏️
Day 2: “An outfit we loved or hated as a kid”
I thought of our costume suitcase and this specific blue dress I loved wearing. I even wore it in high school for a costume as… Cinderella, I think?
I texted the family chat during this exercise, and my mom replied that it was a L brand dress. I googled it and tried to see if I could find a photo, but the ones that showed up just looked similar — not exactly the same.
Day 3: Favorite or funny food incidents (?)
I don’t remember the prompt exactly and didn’t write it down (this is why I constantly take notes!!!), but it reminded me of a couple funny food incidents we still talk about in the family! Oops 🥧🧂🍫
Day 4: “Draw a comic about one of your own weird, funny, or ultra-specific fears (current or childhood).”
So I did this bizarre rule I had about fleeing after flushing… 🤷🏼♀️ no idea where it came from, but I ended up with this compulsion / fear that I had to run to my bed after flushing the toilet but I had ~3 seconds to make it safely before the creatures under my bed could attack my feet. Very generous of them.
Shoutout to our TA (ABCD = her actual initials!) who showed me how to draw myself cute and running!
Day 5: An early job (?)
Again, I forgot the assignment, but it made me think of learning how to make & use spreadsheets from my Dad as a teenager. I think even at the time, I knew it was going to be a useful skill, and my brain was immediately drawn to the way spreadsheets worked — the SUM formulas, “if/then” equations, tabs & tables… My mind does seem to operate as a kind of database, so this format resonated with me.
And learning it was really helpful for me — starting with managing my personal finances during college when I was living in NYC as an unpaid intern and making it work through waitressing jobs. I planned out and tracked my study abroad expenses during my semester in Italy, and I managed to afford a comfortable lifestyle in Morocco and then Bulgaria as a teacher at American schools after graduating, even though my salary was very low. All because of the planning and cash flow tables I learned from my dad (plus a more than healthy financial anxiety).
After that, my spreadsheets helped me get my first full-time job in NYC as a production coordinator at a design agency, and it’s helped me navigate a lifestyle of remote work and full-time travel since 2014. So I’m incredibly grateful that my dad gave me the foundation of spreadsheet skills early on, and I truly can’t imagine where I’d be without them.
Class Insights: Comics
After each daily diary comic work session (50 min), we spent about 30 minutes sharing & discussing each other’s comics as a class. Not everyone went everyday — it was on a volunteer-basis, but we still got to see a good mix of everyone’s work and I learned a lot from seeing other people’s interpretations & personal stories for each assignment as well as the group’s feedback. I also learned a lot of comic-specific terms & approaches!
Here are some of my notes from our discussions on Day 1:
Cute character designs = good to make them recognizable individuals
Variety of character shots / framing
Keep camera moving, different angles & shots, help vary & express emotions
Filmmaking 180 rule = keep characters on same side / consistent sides
Imagine comic as a theatre and reader is audience = always consistent perspective = staging can change but follow rules of physical space / movement
Foreshortening
“Spot blacks” = which “is the process of choosing what areas in an illustration should be solid black” – Big Time Attic (I googled it for both our sakes)
Expressive stylistic decisions vs literal representations
Cast shadows
Limited color palette
Decorative strip / details / elements for decor & pacing
Specificity of objects & details & small elements
Treatment & spacing of captions (and layout / angle / shape)
Direction of faces / characters move L to R and create movement & momentum
Use of texture & lines
First panel establishing shot with environmental details
What happens outside the gutters (gutters = not inside the comic panels)
POV shot