Actūs I: Comic Strip Activity

It's an extension activity I regularly give to my classes after we have read a text: starting with a blank page of comic strips, students make their own retelling of the story. For Act I of Amphitryo, I gave myself the same assignment. And how daunting it was to be on the other side of those white boxes!

Gulp.

I noticed a few things during this process:

-It takes much longer to illustrate (even with stick figures!) than I thought. Oops, sorry for underestimating the homework time, discipuli!

-Although I frequently summarized the text in my comic strip, I honestly learned a lot from using the unadapted text in the comic as well. There's something about writing out a text verbatim that allows me (a proud but sometimes careless speed-reader) to slowwwwww down and actually check for comprehension.

-It surprised me that some interactions took several boxes to articulate, whereas others could really be summed up in one box because there weren't as many physical actions in the dialogue. Slapstick, for example, requires several slides whereas monologues often only require one.

-I promised myself I wouldn't use white-out... And I broke that promise. It just killed me to see such messy final products-- so I guess I'm a recovering perfectionist, not an entirely recovered one!

Behind the scenes of the drafting process...

The final product!

Pagina prima:

Pagina secunda:

Pagina tertia/ultima: