Monthly Archives: January 2024

Wisdom Tales Comic

I have never thought of myself as a good artist. At least, not if we aren’t drawing Minecraft grass blocks or the Chick-Fil-A logo (my ERB drawings were the best I’d ever made). Naturally I wasn’t exactly thrilled when we were told we were making a comic. You know, it was actually pretty fun! The story doesn’t start there, though. It goes way back to September, 2024. 

If you were there, you would think the two things were completely different, but just wait. We started when this whole thing was just disguised as ‘The History of Stories’. Like I said, what in the world does the history of stories have to do with a comic, other than language arts. Just you wait! 

Then we start getting into types of stories. Okay. Still not related as long as a comic isn’t considered a type of story. Spoiler Alert: It isn’t. Then we started reading stories (fables, parables, legends, etc…  turns out, they’re called wisdom tales because they have morals. Who knew?) and wrote down the morals and the summaries. Yes, I know, it’s sort of a long story, but stay with me here. This is when we were told we were making a comic, early December. We listened to a presentation on comics (Though I wasn’t able to be there). We chose a story to base it off of and got to work. 

So yeah. That’s how we got into making comics. Well, one page.

I chose The Smuggler, which is about a border inspector who meets a person (he is a smuggler) crossing the border with a donkey and a cart full of hay and is instantly suspicious. The man crosses the border every day and the inspector is sure he is smuggling something, but doesn’t have any evidence. He thinks about the man, even after retiring, until one day he sees the man at the market. He asks what the man was smuggling and the man says “donkeys”.

The moral of the story is that, sometimes, the hardest thing to see is the one that is right in front of you.

I chose this story because I found it hilarious, and completely agree with the moral. My grandfather knows this, so he always wins at Hide-and-Seek. One time in Mexico, he climbed up an umbrella. Many times, he has put a lampshade on his head and completely won. 

The art was pretty easy, actually. I used Sketchbook for the majority of my comic, but I put it all together in Comic Life 3. Sketchbook is my personal favorite of the drawing apps, but I have to warn you, Sketchbook colors are bright! Like, melt your eyes bright. I like bright colors, so I’m used to the eye melting by now. However, if you prefer to have your drawings look even semi-realistic, I do not suggest Sketchbook. However, there is a 60% chance that I am simply using Sketchbook wrong (wouldn’t be the first time), in which case, you should not be reading this. 

This was my first time using Comic Life 3 because, as I said, I don’t draw comics. Or, I didn’t. Anyway, Comic Life 3 is a great app! I have no regrets. The text bubbles and boxes make it easy to customize, and the backgrounds are awesome. 

As I have clearly stated, I prefer Sketchbook much more than Comic Life 3.

If you happen to know of any apps that are less eye-melty, please let me know in the comments below (not that I don’t like it when my eyes melt). Also, if you’ve never made a comic before, you should try it. You might enjoy it. I know I certainly did. Thank you for reading my blog!

Until next time!…

Habits

Daily habits can make a difference in everyday life. I should know, I’ve done one before. My challenge was a plank challenge: 30 seconds of plank. That was easy. The next week: 45 seconds of plank. That was easy. Two weeks pass, now we are doing 1 minute 15 seconds. That was easy actually kind of hard. The differences were clear, though. Two mins 30 secs at the end felt like 1 min 15 secs did at the start. See, big difference. It wasn’t hard to stay with the habit, when you were constantly being reminded, but I only did one plank over Thanksgiving break! I would say the planks were a big success!


Sometimes when the weather was dull and drab outside and everyone was tired, a plank was something no one wanted to do. At least we could all agree! Having a habit really helped me in many ways, so I am going to have another one. I am going to try to get at least 30 minutes of exercise every day!


Oh, yes (scratches head) I guess I should mention THE PLANK CHALLENGE. It was your basic “whoever lasts longer” competition. Near the beginning, it was all pretty easy, and no one dropped out before 2 minutes 30 seconds. Then it started to get really hard once we were past what we had done before, and I dropped out 6th at 3 minutes 55 seconds; right before my friend, victor dropped (after celebrating when I dropped out). After a few minutes, it was down to the final four. Then, around the 6 minute mark, 4th place dropped out, and then there were three. We were at 9 minutes 30 seconds when I got to help. One of the contestants was going to drop out at 10 minutes and wanted me to tell them when that happened. Of course, I wasn’t going to let them just quit at ten. When there were 10 seconds left, I announced that there were 20 and when it had been ten minutes, I had him stay up till 10 mins 15 secs. Luckily, he wasn’t mad.


The Plank Challenge was down to the wire and there were only 2 contestants left, but they were still going strong at the 15 minute mark. One was jamming to music. I needed to know what that playlist was. They lasted so long, the period had ended and we still didn’t have a winner, so our teacher decided a tie was best (there had been 1 other call for a tie at 20 mins but it was rejected by the contestants). However, we had all survived past the 2 mins 30 secs mark, so you can see it had a big impact. Do you have any habits that you either practice currently or just ideas for one.