During the spring exhibition 2024 we made Comic books, that were a historical fiction based off an event we were given. This blog post will follow the creation of the comic, and the night of the exhibition. The first step of the comic creation was the research about ww1. We did a lot of in class work, one of our main sources of information was a video called “Canada, the story of us”. At the same time as our note taking. We learned about comic creation, and the type of frames that good comics have. Some of those frames included long shots, close ups, bleed panels and reverse. After we had completed all of our research, we were prepared to start creating our storyboards. My storyboards had very basic drawings, but did show the story, and plan out what images I would need. Once I had completed the storyboard, I started the creation of my comic. As I am not talented at drawing whatsoever I opted for tracing instead. I used an AI comic generator for base images which I would trace, and then alter. While this did make it a lot easier, I still had put 30+ hours of work into this comic. In total I had 20 frames and every single type of panel that I needed. My comic was in a 1950s style, which made it harder to try make all the drawings look like they had the same style. Once I had some of the images finished, I started the process of colouring. Once all of my images were completed, and put in the comic with captions and extra effects, it was two days before the exhibition. The day of the exhibition, we spent the class making cardboard trench paneling and preparing small other things for the exhibition. 

Once school had finished, we prepared to setup the exhibition. We were located in the cafeteria, and had from under the stair all the way to the stairs by the gymnasium. In that area we had tables set up, and decorated them with some coloured paper and some plants and sticks. Once our area were set up, we were given some time to eat, and then the chaos began at five. It was a very slow start, but it was consistently going increasing. Once we had open the gates It felt as if most of the crowd was quite impressed by all of our comics. This led to some nice conversations about the production process of these comics. After a the guest had left, we started the takedown process. It was a relatively fast clean up, which led to end of this exhibtion

“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Throughout both the first and second semester we had projects ranging from a futuristic ww1 book, and Frankenstuffies to our trip to Alberta, looking for reason for travel and tourism. We have had a range of projects, but there were a few projects that I enjoyed more, and found that I learned and grew the most on. One of the projects that I would like to highlight is our joint Maker and Humanities project, Rocky Mountain field school. This project was during our trip to Alberta, where we looked at the impact of geography on how we live. On the maker side of this projects, we made multiple videos. 

The first video I was our Alberta TikTok, where we had to make a TikTok trend video, that fit in to the trip. The second video we made was our at home video about what inspires us. The third video we had was the silent video that we made at the three valley gap ghost town. We made this video in one day at the three valley gap, where we had lots of old western themed building to choose from. Our final and largest video was the investigative video. This video was our answer want the allure of the Rockies was for tourism. We were to interview 3 people about why they travelled to the Rockies. On the humanities side of the project, we were to make a comic about the five themes of geography, being movement, location, region, place, and human environment. I enjoyed this project because it was awesome learning about Canadian geography, and because it was part of an awesome trip.

 The next project that I want to about was our revolutions project. This project was our winter exhibition project during this project we had to make a Rube Goldberg 

machine that correlated with the revolution we were assigned. My group wads the Irish revolution. Our machine was built on a piece of wood, painted like the Irish flag. Our machine used lots of different parts to achieve the goal of a total run through. I enjoyed this project because there was a massive creative element, and a making element which I enjoyed. I also found this project great because I learned a lot about the Irish revolution itself and the massive effect that it had on Ireland and England. 

The another project that I would like to show is the frakenstuffies project. This project was recent, and started with us reading a book called leviathan about a different version of ww1, with Austria-Hungary having massive mechanical beasts called clankers, and the English allied forces having beasties, which were genetically modified beasts, that were created for all sorts of purposes. After that book, we made our own Frankenstuffies, using parts of multiple stuffies, and then made a story about our stuffy, and then turned it into a short video. I enjoyed this project because we had a component of creativity, technical skills, but also a chance to make something physical. I chose this project because it was fun, but it also taught us the proper way to set up stories, and the heroes journey. It also taught us to use real world creation in videos which I also found awesome.

The Final projects that I would like to show off is our winter exhibition and the comic that went along with it. I feel that this project deserves the final slot in my Tpol, as it was very recent, and a project that made us put lots of time and effort in. This project tasked us with learning about the First World War, and Canada’s contributions. We watched a few videos on the Canadian contributions, and learned about how to make comics, and what kind of things we should add. After that was completed, we jumped straight into the planning of our comics. The planning faze would start with us getting our topics, and then starting the character creation. After we had our characters created, we started on our storyboards. My storyboard had very basic drawings, but Planned out my comic well. It was a total of 20 frames, and set me up for creation well. In total my comic had taken me over 25 hours to complete, but was something that I was very proud of.

Once the comic was completed, we had arrived at exhibition. After one or two mishaps, we had our comics printed out, and were starting to set our areas up. Once we had set up, the gates were opened and we the parents were let loose. This was one of my favourite exhibitions that I was a part of, because I enjoyed and was proud of the work that I had done. While we might not have had the most time to work on this project, or had other parts to prepare for the exhibiton, i will always be able to be proud of the work I had done

until next time, Jannik