​​​TashaDavis​

In my U.S. History class we were learning about the first documents that were written early on in America's history. We started with the Declaration of Independence which started the Revolutionary War. Then the Articles of Confederation which had some flaws because the states remained too separated. Finally it led to the Constitution we know now. That one STILL had a lot of problems and that's why we have the Amendments to the Constitution, which added individual liberties and freedoms. Mr. Anticoli told us how people like to poke fun at the fact that the Amendments have SO MANY flaws. He told us that it would be O.K. to poke some fun of our own in the form of a comic-strip.

 

First we all watched a video on how to draw comics and afterwards had a cartoon drawing contest. I drew Mr. Anitcoli very well. Mine won in that category of comic drawing. Next we paired up so that as we went along in our drafts, we would have somebody to get feedback from. My partner was Christiana. The partners both had to chose a different amendment to make fun of than the other. Christiana got the fourth amendment and I got the fifth. The Fifth Amendment is the right to remain silent and the characters I used were called mochi's which are riceballs with faces. It's sort of cute.

 

I think my biggest problem was I really didn't understand my storyline, plain and simple. It was hard to follow, even for me, the author. My comic was also very wordy. I had way too many lines in it to actually be pleasant to read.

 

I think that I overcame this by just sort of going with what I had, but I added dark lines in between the separate scenes and I tried hard to not use too many colors, and I labeled the differences with the charactars by the color of their flags. The storyline may have been hard to follow but it was sort of an insider's joke anyways for people who watch the anime Hetalia. The wordiness was something I could improve upon in future comics that I make. I'll learn to do things differently but it will be nice to be able to go back and say, “What was I even thinking! That speech bubble would look way better in the far right corner”!

 

I think that using inquiry, one of the things I learned is that I need to give myself room to write. In truth, I was trying to write a two to three page comic on one page. Sometimes you need to give yourself room. Don't try to cram everything on one page because most of your content is actually important. Also, don't make it too long because then you will lose the reader's interest. What I'm trying to say is to keep it short and to the point while enjoyable but also, give yourself room to breathe. You don't want it to sound like a lecture but at the same time you don't want it too short and not get the point or lose the readers' focus like I am with you right now.

 

Inquiry helped me in this process by helping me criticize my own work and ask myself what I can do better or change. From this experience, I believe that Inquiry is when you try to find something like the prefect balance between two things in hopes of getting better at a task or achieving a goal.