500 words

So far for my project I have learned a little bit about writing.  I have learned that there are different forms of writing then just writing papers or essays.  I learned that it is important to be able to use different forms of writing to fit your audience.  Also, I have learned that developing a script or outline involves writing.  I have been developing a different attitude toward writing through this project.  This project has shown me that writing can be fun, and funny.  Also, I like that we get to work with cartoons and comics.  I have learned that if you write about something you really enjoy that it is easier and you are more willing to put more effort into your work then the bare minimal.  Being able to work with what we want has really helped us to get creative with our project.  I think this project has made all the kids in class like english a little more.  Most of us were probably   expecting to have to write a bunch of papers, and now that we learned that there is more to english then just papers we have all began to have more fun in class.  

There are a few different conventions that go into our project.  We are using parody as our main convention.  Parody is when you take something that may be serious or have a different kind of message, and turn it to mean something else.  Parody can also be funny.  We are going for a funny parody of picking a college.    Seeing as we are doing a comic strip we need to keep our images kind of informal.  What I mean by that is we need to stay simple enough with our drawings.  We need to try and make the images clear using our drawings and words.  With the words you do not want to get too long or the audience might get lost or just loose interest.  The biggest part of using a comic is to make it humorous.  We are not trying to make people fall over laughing, that is not the point of humor.  We are just trying to get a little silent laugh or a smile out of our readers.  I feel that a smile is just as good as a laugh.  We portray, or express, our humor by using irony.  Irony is when you use words or images to convey a different idea of what something usually means.  For example, the idea of picking a college is pretty serious and usually means a lot to a person.  Our charter decides on what college to attend by picking out of a hat, which no one would do, at least I don’t think they would.  We also use irony in the college he ends up picking.  He chooses Illinois State, which according to all of us who are students at Illinois State would be a good choice.  However, our charter seems to show serious disappointment in his choice.  I think our audience will really enjoy our comic.