Experiments in Visual Writing

Tracing Persepolis was a long journey, in that the majority of my time was on finding the right pages and tracing them. This part took the longest because I was torn on which panels to select. The actual synthesis did not take too long because I was constantly thinking about what the panels mean as I was tracing them. Furthermore, I believe that I better understand the time and effort that it takes to write/draw this type of book after this assignment.

My main goals for this project were to find the best two pages possible that I could manage to draw without butchering MarJane Satrapi’s work. I also wanted to find two distinctively different pages as mentioned in the assignment. I found this one of the hardest tasks in the preliminary stages. Another challenge that I had was tracing the pages. I went through about 2 mechanical pencils and 4 regular pencils until completion. I also experience a severe wrist pain for a period of time. Additionally, I found some difficulty with comparing the flow and panel arrangement between the two pages. I thought the project was interesting and very unique all together.

When we originally discussed the project in class, I underestimated how long the process would take. The most difficult part for me was putting it on the domain. I did not know how to make subpages and the hyperlink process was annoying. I really enjoyed the tracing and annotating part, even though it was tedious. In order to appeal to readers of my domain, I realized that in order for my project to flow I needed to have a theme and a metaphorical representation of the pages that I annotated. This assignment forced me to think critically and I am actually proud that I overcame challenges of the process.

I traced and annotated two pages with similar themes in order to focus on how the features of a panel can affect the tone of the pages. I metaphorically related the theme to a storm in order to make it more relatable to readers and to create a deeper meaning of the text. In my analysis, I argue that the facial expression, arrangement of panels and the shading are effective in the way they can convey a message to the reader. These features reflect the tone of the page from panel to panel. I connected my pages with lead paragraphs before my next point in order to make my project easy to digest. Although the project was frustrating at times, I am proud of myself and I am happy to share my first draft of Tracing Persepolis.

Comments are always welcome

In my Tracing Persepolis Project, I focused on two particular pages that I traced individually. Because Persepolis is a graphic novel, I made sure to keep the majority of the focus on what the drawings depict than the text. Although, I made sure to connect what I saw from the drawing to the content.

While taking a moment to concentrate examining the uniqueness of the pages that I traced, I found that they gave so much more significance than from reading it for the first time. The use of graphics, had much more expression to get her meaning across than if it were completely in text. Initially I chose the pages that I would later draw, because I knew that they were distinctly contrasting events from the story but it had soon started to unfold after tracing that their were unique differences in the how the panels were designed and structured to get the message across. The facial expressions of the characters, size and structure of the panel(s), and the styles of the settings’ designs all offer aid in better comprehending her story which were goals I got out of doing the assignment.

Work Cited: Satrapi, Marjane, and Marjane Satrapi. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007. Print.