Sunday, March 9, 2008

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Visual Essay: Reflection

When I first sat down to do this mini-project, I didn't do anything for about 10 minutes. I usually can just jump right into things, so that got me wondering-- why is this so hard? I thought I was starting to get the hang of this visual literacy stuff! But then it dawned on me: I didn't know what my essay was going to be about. Before I could search for images, I needed to know what I wanted to say. Once I pinned down what I wanted my essay to portray, I sprang into action. I'm curious how other people approached this assignment, though: what do people's "pre-writing" stages look like when working with visual texts?

However, once I decided on my essay, I think I may have gone about it in the wrong way, because I included words. I just didn't feel like the images were explicit about what they were portraying-- and, actually, I'm not sure it's any clearer with the added text, because I don't ever let the audience in on what inspired me in the first place. Creating this was actually kind of fun for me, but I think it was more of a personal experimentation more than anything else-- more attune to a diary entry than a 5-paragraph essay, you could say. I think it would've been helpful for me to view other examples of visual essays as I was creating my own, just because I wasn't sure what the end product could/should look like. More and more, I'm becoming convinced that literacy is interactive-- using examples of other peoples' texts as models, inspiration, and critical thinking adds so much to my personal experience with literacy.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Gracie the Cat: A Visual Essay









Prologue

Gracie is curious. “What’s to come?” she wonders.

She doesn’t know.




















Chapter 1

Gracie looks around. “Where am I?” she ponders.

The world looks different here.














Chapter 2

Gracie purrs from atop the table. “No, bad Gracie!”

That is
not where she belongs.
























Chapter 3


Gracie gets off the table. But where did she go?

The world looks different again.

















Chapter 4

Gracie sees her reflection. “Who are you?” they all want to know.

That is easy to ask.















Epilogue


Gracie decided. “But what is next?” she wonders.

The world will tell her.