Remember my comic from a month ago, “The Blank Canvas”? Our final project for creative writing class is to revise a story we wrote during the quarter, so I took on the challenge of revising “Blank Canvas.” I read Scott McCloud’s brilliant Making Comics for inspiration, and I’m immensely pleased with how the images came out. I’m extremely displeased with the story, however, especially the ending and the characterization of the parents. It’s hard enough putting ambiguities and subtleties into prose; I’ve discovered that I really have no idea how to do it in a comic. I’ll have to work on that.
I also found out that I really want digital images to play with when I’m revising a graphic story.
Here’s the extended, revised story. You can see it’s a lot more visually sophisticated than last time’s straight six-panel page.
Ooh my poor hand. I’ve got a very busy few days coming up, what with various obligations and finishing up a paper I wanted to have finished by today but which will now be due on Wednesday. After that, though — yay done! And I have been wanting for weeks to write on the subject of community and relationships, so I’m still hoping to get to that soon.
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
this is REALLY wonderful. I am so proud of you, it’s hard to get a comic completed out there and all the steps of the way. I’m a lousy scripter too.
I will say one thing though, I love it when stories turn out differently than you expect. You know everyone’s thinking, oh she’s going to be great, she’s going to totally show her parents up…and that doens’t happen. In fact, it doesn’t even get the chance, because of the panel botch-up. Awesome twist.
Might be missing something (I think we’re in the same boat about the parental characterization and the ending), but you really achieved something here.
Thank you!!!
It’s been a couple of weeks now since this posting, but thank you so much for the support! I really appreciate it, especially coming from you as a fellow artist. 🙂
I’m taking a sequential art course through UCLA Extension starting two weeks from now. Should be interesting, and hopefully give me a chance to get more practice trying comics out on a live audience.
I didn’t get a chance to call you while we were in San Jose (obviously). 😦 I can’t believe how fast time flies every time I’m there. Did you have fun in Carlsbad?
This new version is great. I still want Taryn to have a happy ending…but of course yours is much more interesting:) I hope your classmates will respond to it well.