Flow chart

            The goal of the flow chart was to attempt to create a comprehensive “map” that would make it as easy as possible for freshmen to be able to follow it in order to understand the advising process. The flow chart focuses on the general tasks that need to be performed in the advising process as opposed to the more detailed tasks that the freshmen would not necessarily need to worry about in their advising process. Knowing what to include in the flow chart was the hardest aspect of the project. It was difficult to decide how much to put into the flow chart and what I should infer that the freshmen already knew about the process. It was also difficult to attempt to fit everything that I believed should be included into the flow chart without making the flowchart too big or too complicated. I solved this problem by creating multiple iterations of the flow chart until I could make a concise flow chart that still fit all of the necessary information for the freshmen. My AHA moment came at the time that I was able to add in and cut enough out, that the flow chart was able to follow a specific pathway that made sense and was able to be followed no matter the answers to the questions. I still had to change a few things after making a cohesive flow chart, but actually being able to make a chart that was comprehensive made it easier to make further iterations. The creation of a flow chart helped to combine what we had been learning about communication using images and integrate words into what we had already been learning. If I had more time or resources I would have spent more time making the flow chart more detailed. If I had a program that made it easier to make flow charts or that had more space to add more steps to the flow chart, I would have included more sub-steps. I found it difficult to include any more steps in my chart because then I would have to make the font of the words too small for them to be able to read by the audience. Also with the way that the program formatted the flow chart it was hard to add many more steps to the flow chart. Another thing that I would have done if I had more horizontal space is try harder to make sure that the question diamonds had the proper format with the yes arrow facing to the right and the no arrow facing downwards. I was not able to fit the final question diamond in with the proper format, leading to the need to deviate from the standard format. Another thing that I would do if I had more time is ask the advisors that have the most experience with advising if they had any tips for what else I should have included in the flow chart in order to make it as detailed as possible.

Storyboards

The transitions that I used on the first storyboard varied from scene to scene. The first transition was aspect-to-aspect, because it shifted from different aspects of the same larger scene at the same time. It follows McCloud’s idea of a “wandering eye” showing the different parts of the larger picture. The second transition was subject-to-subject because it showed two different subjects of the same scene within a timeframe. It shows the man responding in a way to what was happening in the scene shown in the frame before. The final transition was also a subject-to-subject transition for similar reasons. It shows what subjects are doing in response to what happened in an earlier frame.

There was the same kind of transition shown in all transitions for the second storyboard. The storyboard showed a progression of one area of land over a period of time. It shows actions over the time that are all happening within the same place. The place is the subject of the storyboard, and it shows how the subject is changing over time.

From completing this assignment I found out the importance of steady transitions between frames in a storyboard, or in other contexts that follow this same setup. Without steady transitions the scenes would look sporadic and could confuse the audience who the project is directed towards. From doing this assignment I also was able to see that there are different kinds of transitions. I generally only thought of transitions showing a difference in time, but from doing this assignment I realized that there were many more ways to transition between different aspects that I never previously thought about. The hardest part of the assignment for me was attempting to find a way to fit two of the chosen images together in a way that would make sense in a storyboard. Another challenge in the project was being able to find pictures that fit the image that I had in my mind for how I wanted my storyboard to develop. In order to meet that challenge, I ended up slightly varying what I wanted in my storyboard in order to make a story that made sense from images that I was able to find. My AHA moment came when I had finished actually making my story and when I had to start figuring out what kind of transitions I used in the storyboard. I realized that McCloud’s descriptions of transitions actually did make sense when I had to apply them to my own personal storyboard. If I had more time I would have used the extra time to make detailed drawings to use in the storyboard instead of using photographs from the internet. If I was able to draw my own images, my storyboard would have more closely resembled what I had imagined in my head wanting my storyboard to be like. Also, if I did end up using photographs anyways, I wish I had more print resources or specific websites to use in finding the photographs as opposed to just relying on Google image searches.

“How To” Graphic

First Iteration

Second Iteration

I was trying to find the best way to draw the “How To” graphic for how to make English muffin pizza, using the least amount of images and frames in order to decrease the amount of confusion for the young viewers. The greatest struggle that I faced with this project was being able to articulate all the messages that I wanted to get across to the viewer without any words in the instructions process. In my first iteration I started off with putting words in that I went ahead and turned into visuals in my later iterations. I realized that with the simple drawings and the well-known brands that I was hopefully able to get my message across to the viewer about the products that they should be using. Another change that I made between the iterations was the switch from the circular borders to the square borders. I believed that the circular borders would be more comfortable to look at after we spent time in class talking about how circles were a major part of developments in drawing for younger children, but then I found that they were too distracting and actually took away from the pictures that I was trying to draw so I ended up changing the drawings the squares. I also played with the idea of going from left to right on each row since that is the way that we naturally read in this culture, but I found that the “arrow” showing which way that the viewer should see the figures seemed more confusing that way, so I instead drew it more like a board game in which the line connecting the boxes just went down and left instead of restarting at the beginning of the page. The transition between each of the boxes shows an action-to-action transition. This is because the subject and the scene remains the same, but what is being done to the subject in the picture changes between each of the boxes. I also attempted to use colors that were far from each other in the color wheel when doing the colors of the arbitrary parts of the page in order to make them all “pop” in color in order to draw the viewer’s eye to the page. My “AHA” moment came when I realized that I was capable of putting everything that I needed to get across to the viewer in only four squares. I realized that I only needed to use one square for each of the three different actions of the sequence and one square showing the finished product. In order to be able to do this I put the three ingredients for the recipe at the top of the page for the viewer to see before they even started looking through the directions for how to make the English muffin pizza. If I had more time I would probably put more effort into making sure that my drawings were less likely to be misconstrued for something else. Also, if I had the resources I would probably make the recipe myself with the specifications that I listed for the toaster oven in order to ensure that they were the correct temperature and time in order to make sure that the recipe worked.

Final Iteration