November 17th, 2009

Before this assignment I had previous experience using ToonDoo to create an online comic strip. I decided to use this technology again, instead of ComicLife, because I have very few pictures on this computer. I was then able to use the wide range of characters, backgrounds, and props that are available on the ToonDoo website.

I decided to create a comic strip that illustrates a section of Macbeth. This came from an assignment I gave out two years ago, before I know of ToonDoo. One of the creative project ideas was for my students to draw a comic strip that would retell a portion of Macbeth. I had one student complete this assignment, and her drawings were great. I think that having an online technology to use for the "drawing" would help draw more students to this particular assignment.

Creating the comic was fun. I liked looking around for the "perfect" character and "perfect" setting to illustrate my ideas. There is a bit of a drawback, however, in the amount of characters or settings you have to choose from. I felt that there should be more choices for how you wanted things to look. But again, there were more choices here than on my computer.

One thing I had to think about was how much information should go on each panel. It got pretty crowded when multiple characters talked in the same panel, therefore I settled on only one character speaking per pane. I would need to create quite the multitude of strips to illustrate, say, an entire scene of Macbeth. This is definitely something that is different from reading print texts. When reading print texts there can be so much information on one page, and it isn't distracting or information overload. That isn't true of comic books. You need to be careful of giving too much info on one page - it will either get skipped and your reader wont catch it all, or there will be that information overload.

I think I would like to try my assignment again, but this time instead of using paper and pen, I would allow the students to work on ToonDoo. I would have to adjust exactly how much of the novel/play I would want them to illustrate, however, since they wouldn't be doing it by hand.

Here is my comic.

For some reason the second panel of the strip isn't showing the words. I have saved and reedited three times, and I cannot make the words appear. I will have to fix it later.