Category Archives: Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground Check-In Part 3: Book Mock Up

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We are very pleased to introduce you to our BAB group project, Notes from US, based on the Great Work we are reading throughout this semester, Notes from Underground.

 

 

Book Modeling Runway Show

Front:

Back:

Inner Cover Pages:

Pages:

Our body of work:

 

Detailed Outline

Content Materials
  • Introduction to our book, where you will gather all the information you need as a reader first get around to this decently sophisticated book. It will include intro part about the original book, Notes from Underground, the analysis that dissects Dostoyevsky’s ideology and his attitude towards prevailing philosophical theories in the eighteenth century, the themes lying in our book, and how we are going to expand out.
  • A few, extremely brief poems inspired by the Underground Man
  • Formulas, Drawings of the Underground Man and other scenes contained in the original book
  • Essay-like analyses, which include the nuances of the character’s thoughts that happened in a repetitive pattern, our interpretive conversations within ourselves answering questions like why is this NFU great, what makes NFU a great work. These analyses arrive as a result of the thinking process associated in the above sections.
Formal Details
  • We will hand write every single letter for the first sample of our book, then scan copy and print out pages for the rest of the 9 copies. The handwriting will mimic the style back in the eighteenth century.
  • We will glue the parchment-pattern paper and the oak tag paper together once we finish handwriting on the parchment-pattern paper as a way to make the parchment-pattern paper durable and amplify the old paper texture, which eventually helps elevate readers’ haptic experience during their interaction with our books.
  • We will bind the book by using the linen threads which will make our books come off as fuzzy, messy, and disorganized as if it visualizes the Underground Man’s personalities. The binding method will also create a sense of vintage through which our readers will be transferred back to the European society back in the eighteenth century.
  • Some hand drawings will also be added to our books as part of the content.
  • We will play with the order to make each book has a completely different layout but the same content. We treat each book as an individual and show our respect to each of them. The purpose of doing so is to make it lively and fun! More importantly, we want to show readers the order of content matters because those pick different books will harvest different reading experience. By doing so, we will also create a distinguishing persona for each book thus providing high-quality and phenomenal experience for readers.

 

Important Dates

5/9  Cover Decorations Done for 10 Copies

Finish glueing and making title decorations for each copy. Cut oak tag paper and ancient-looking paper to prepare for the next step.

5/10 Content and Drawing Draft

Mark will give us the black and white drawings he has worked on. Media will give us black paint he obtained from his super and also the draft introduction.

5/10 Meeting with Prof. Curseen for Feedback

If we can find a good time to meet that works for all of us, we can meet the professor for feedback on Wednesday.

5/12 Content and Drawing Finalization

Handwrite the words onto each ancient paper and photocopy these handwritten pages to be used for the other 9 copies.

5/12 Bookbinding

Finish binding all the layers of the book together.

5/17  Show Time!

 

Notes from Underground Check-In Part 2: Beginning the Labor

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This past Saturday, I (Shannon) met up with Jia at the arts and crafts store, Michael’s, to purchase felt, string, and scraps of crinkle and gift wrapping paper in assorted shades of brown and black to achieve an authentic, “Underground”-feel. We have five black copies of the book that are brimming with crinkle paper to signify messiness and the wooden boards of the floor the Underground Man lives under. Then, we also made five brown felt covered copies of the book, which are neat and beautiful, to represent the ideals that the Underground Man believes in and attempts to pursue. All of the copies will be bound by twine-like string to capture the sense that we, too, were struggling underground while making these books and could only tie together our manuscripts with bits of string that we scrounged up. As we get into the actual labor of making our ten copies of the Book About a Book project, we are getting into a position where we are more informed and better able to answer the professor’s questions and delve into details.

 Our work at the library

The audience of our book will be art critics, art enthusiasts, and consumers of culture. This broad category includes students of this class and the professor, but also the greater art community that appreciates punk zines and grungy garage band style music. After all, Dostoevsky’s novel was published near the turn of the century, at the end of the Victorian era for many Western countries, where traditions were beginning to be questioned and subverted. Our book’s chosen format and methodology is reflective of those historical implications. This particular aesthetic of embracing free will and the tendency toward messiness and chaos is very popular amongst purveyors of modern art and the pioneers of the modernist art movement.

More specifically, our book is made by artists who wish to pay homage to the influence of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground by imitating the aesthetics of the period (as if our book is an artifact from the 1800’s that has only recently been unearthed) and the aesthetics of the ideals that the Underground Man is keen on pursuing. While paying tribute to Dostoevsky, we are at the same time analyzing the labors that his work involved and the discourse that he sparked on humankind’s free will and the pursuit of lofty ideals. We want our book to ask and answer several questions including why is Notes from Underground an influential and “great” text? Who said so? (To some extent, artistic community judged it to be so.)

As we finish up our book, we have made a series of changes and upgrades to our initial idea. We will order our copies of the book as one through ten. The second book and the fourth book will have a special connection (more details on this will be determined as we reach completion of the project) to reflect the prominence of the mathematical formula 2 x 2 = 4 in Dostoevsky’s novel. The order of the contents of our book will vary from copy to copy, thus giving each copy a distinct and unique feel. The reader will get a different experience and interpretation depending on which copy they read.

The text and graphic parts of our book will be photocopied and reproduced for each copy but each copy will come with its own unique short poem to give the copies its own bit of fresh content. The many poems will be reflective of the Underground Man’s garrulous tendencies and his ability to write on and on forever so much so that Dostoevsky, or the implied editor of the manuscript, had to cut him off at the end of the text. We really like the professor’s idea about making part of the text ask the reader to flip the book over and start reading in a different direction, but as we haven’t reached this step yet, we are unsure of if it would really look good and be effective upon execution.

 

A Hot Mess, What and Why –Notes from Underground

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The What

We’ve decided unanimously to create a series of black and white pencil sketches coupled with explanatory text and analytical details in a handmade collage and mishmash of pieces bound together by string and hole punched. These black and white pencil sketches will include etchings of the Underground Man and the various villainous characters he meets along his journey that eventually lead him to hide underground. The cheekbones of the Underground Man are very defined; this is one characteristic of his face that the readers can use to differentiate this character from the others. Additionally, his eyes have very dark circles, from the lack of sleep and heavy buildup of anxiety he suffers from. All of these elements have textual evidence to back them up. There will also be one sketch reflective of our field trips, most likely influenced by the anime event some of us attended. Our descriptions will include a few, extremely brief poems inspired by the Underground, essay-like analyses, and an introduction to our book. Unfortunately, with the formatting we’ve chosen, there can only be one true original and nine copies but even this too is significant.

The Why

I doubt the Underground Man was sitting in the underground handwriting dozens of copies of his manuscript. Of course, there was only one, original manuscript in the story. This manuscript will be represented by the Book About a Book that we formulate. Additionally, the Underground Man’s obsession with math, with his own appearance, and with the haven-like qualities of the Underground will all inspire the way we craft the Book About a Book. More specifically, we will include formulas, drawings of his face, and dark poems and sketches that reflect the romantic appeal of the Underground. Furthermore, this format best allows us to display what we’ve learned about the craft and labors that go into making a book, since we will be making everything from scratch, in collage form. The repetitive nature of our work will reflect the repetitive nuances of the Underground Man’s thoughts as he ponders humankind’s free will over and over throughout the text. All these darkly romantic and confused pieces will come together to form a somewhat incoherent whole that captures the essence of what makes Notes from Underground great. It is quite literally a text that is befuddled–that is precisely the point. It was written at a time when the world was feeling confused, when an author finally admitted to and encapsulated that feeling in a text for the world to behold, and it had never been done before. By taking bits and pieces from god knows where, we will form a Book About a Book that is the ultimate homage to Fyodor Dostoevsky.

What Really Matters?

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This comic tells a story about how the No-Face (a.k.a. Kaonashi) transforms himself from a socially isolated person into a popular star by effectively marketing himself on social medias but he still feels desolate. No-Face is a spirit in the famous Japanese animated film Spirited Away. He is a lonely spirit who begins to show emotions and compassion to other people after receiving a genuine care from Chihiro. Without too much knowledge about the society, No-Face learns by examples and adapts to his surroundings.

At the very beginning of this story, No-Face was still that lonely spirit, isolated by society, nobody cared. He was used to the life hiding behind the crowd and learned to be quite. He has always been needing attention and craves for someone who can truly understand him, however, facing people walking on the street with masks on and being indifferent to each other, he felt lost. No-Face wished to find love and care from the crowd, so he started to make the moves to blend in. No-Face learned by examples so he begins from becoming a smartphone user. He downloaded all the apps that are ranked the highest around his neighborhood and set up on all social media channels. He completed case studies about all the self-made YouTube star, people receives the most likes and followers on different channels. Then No-Face duplicated the model and started marketing himself on social medias. He gained more than enough exposures to the public and eventually became a self-made superstar. Regardless how famous and viral he becomes, he remains lonely and unhappy.

Resemble the underground man’s social isolation feature, No-Face is not accepted by the mainstream. In opposite to what the underground man’s reaction towards his self-isolation, NO-Face wants to step out of his comfort zones and seeks for the true love he is yearning for. Even though he was smart and tried hard on marketing himself and creating his self-image and finally he gained the attention that he was craving for, still he felt empty deep inside, because no one really knows who he is. So here lies some messages that I am trying to communicate with my readers through the slides: the quality of your social network is more important than the quantity. To start investing in the depth of your social life, people need to drag themselves away from the distracting screens that some of them are gluing onto day and night, peel off the filters the social apps make you comfortable using and seriously make the process of socialization personal and genuine.

Through the Dark Wood and Open Door…

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In the first panel, a man is struggling to climb out from the underground. This is represented by the many lines of the wooden panels inserted around his arm. We will know the man by his green shirt. Then, in the second panel, the man has emerged from the underground and into the house, which is pitch dark. He sees light streaming out from the doorway, so he decides to be brave and venture outside, since he is craving freedom. Outside, in the third panel, the biggest and most significant panel, it is revealed that there is only more wood on the ground. The lofty dreams and ideals he has are only in his mind. There is even a hideous cockroach laying near him, paying homage to Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”

These three panels are a reinterpretation of Dostoevsky’s philosophy mentioned in the text. While he wrote of a man hiding underground to express his free will, I re-imagined it to be a man escaping the underground, whether figuratively or literally, in hopes of finding something more beautiful outside. Both the novel and this comic panel end in disappointment.

This scene is a derivation, a riff, off of the original text. By making these three panels, I’ve given readers a small taste of the novel without them actually having to slog through the 136 pages of philosophy and whimsy. I’ve taken the core idea of the novel and found the easiest simplified example to convey it.

Graphic Narrative Assignment Due 4/12 (Plus Examples from Past Students)

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Hey Everyone.

Remember your graphic narratives are due, Wednesday April 12th by 5 pm.  Your narrative should add or revise some aspect of your final project book. Think about it like fan fiction.  You can add a deleted scene, or a piece of back story, or a memory, or add a minor character, or change an ending, etc.  Just make sure you have some reason for your choice and some main objective that you hope to accomplish by way of the choices you make for this revision.

Please upload your picture as a compressed, jpeg file to the site.  Remember to check all appropriate category boxes.  If you feel extremely shy about your graphic narrative, you may email it directly to me.  Please know that being a perfect or super-skilled artist isn’t necessary.   What I’m looking for is thoughtfulness about all your choices from  panel size and layout, to color, to inking, and dialogue.  I am also looking to see that the product looks complete and finished.  While it’s not required that you ink, inking does help give the graphic a sense of completion, so you should consider inking, or at least inking the panel frames.

Don’t be afraid to do more than one draft!

Click Here: We Monsters to see examples of students’ finished graphic narratives.   Please note in the past the graphic narrative workshop was part of my Young Adult Literature course (ENG 3045) and not Great Works, so their assignment was different.  Instead of creating a graphic related to their final project book, their assignment was to make a graphic that engaged the ideas of adolescence and monstrosity.    All the same, I hope these examples  give you a sense of the range of possibilities.

 

Graphic Novel Wkshp. – Bring Three Panel Graphic Strip Idea

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For next Wednesday you should come to class with an idea of what you want to represent in your three panel graphic.   Think about a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.  Having a beginning, middle, and end doesn’t necessarily mean you  have to squish a novel’s worth of action into three panel.  You can think about a scene or a moment.

Your moment, scene, panel should in some way engage the book which  your group is working on for the final book project. Think about the assignment as fan fiction in a a graphic art form.   So, for example, you might revise a scene in your primary text, or maybe you add an additional scene, or change the end or beginning.  Or perhaps your panel is something like a prequel, or the beginning of a spin off.  You can also insert  other characters from other stories, from  history, or your own life into the story.

While I hope you find the experience fun, you should also keep in mind how revision and adding and mixing can actually be a powerful way to make a point about  what a text is doing or about it’s limitations and possibilities.   Remember how in ABC the image of Chin-kee is a visual allusion and revision of the 1882 political cartoon in a way that calls forth so as to challenge and put pressure on the racist imagination at work in that image and how that racism persists even into the 20th and 21st century imagination of the Chinese/Asian other.  You might consider how your own graphic illustrations might engage something in the book you’re focusing on in such a way that helps make an argument or emphasize your interpretation of a key part of the novel.   Your group might decide to use some of the graphic illustrations in the final project.

one hundred bullies, phobias, and fears

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Barry faces her own demons when she first starts to illustrate her graphic novel. The illustration with demons that say “This is pointless!”,”what in the hell are you doing?!”, “Time Waster!”, ” Where’s this gonna get you?!”, What a waste of paper!!”, shows the demons of low self-esteem. Lynda was inspired and motivated by the painted hand scroll. She attempted to draw as well but her own self-doubt tried to discourage her. She made the choice to keep drawing. Soon she transformed these demons that stopped her from drawing into a way of mapping out and working out the different problems in her life. The creation of the graphic novel was therapeutic for her in my opinion. When Lynda started to invite the demons she faced her fears.

The entity of demons are used to in reference to things that bother and weaken us. There are phrases like “inner or personal demons”, or “demon in the bottle” when talking about alcoholism. Lynda Barry adds to this use of the word demon to mean things that plague many children. Children deal with bullies or abusive parents. Children also struggle with anxiety, depression, and stress. Young children that are not properly supported usually have low self-esteem and little to no confidence. this lack of belief in ones abilities and potential maybe the worst demon of all. All the self help seminars and karate lessons cannot save you from this. Turning to alcohol and drugs is a sign of defeat from these inner demons. Confidence, self respect , and a tenacious attitude that says “of course you can’ are fantastic to have, however finding this inner power is very difficult. These demons will fly around you choking you, not letting you take a free step in the direction of your choice. They will trap you and tighten around you like a boa constrictor. These demons grab you and push you into frozen waters. When these demons come for you, you must ask yourself if you are willing to let go of happiness? Do you give them control because that is the reality, you are giving them control. It only seems that they are taking it.  You must ask yourself if you will let yourself drown.

 

 

 

The Interplay of Head Lice and Demons

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In “One Hundred Demons,” the author uses “demons” to refer to a wide variety of childhood and adulthood plagues. Specifically in the segment about head lice, she takes “demons” to refer to the head lice but also to refer to her ex-boyfriend. Demons, therefore, take on multiple meanings: they can be muses, dark delights, pests, literal pests, and people who are unkind. As the author draws the demons from Japanese culture, she is giving her own Filipino American spin on the idea of one hundred demons.

Regarding the panel above, the author depicts her giving head lice to her ex-boyfriend and how he nags at her in retaliation. In this panel, the “demons” take on an ironic twist. Instead of the head lice being the expected antagonist, the “demon” is actually her ex-boyfriend. The head lice is actually a way to connect with her first love, the Professor. Then, the author delivers another twist: the head lice is the “demon” because her ex-boyfriend is a head lice! There is a lot of interplay between the idea of a head lice a neutral evil, and her ex-boyfriend’s shared characteristics of being a neutral evil, as shown by how he is nagging at her while they both have head lice, “You keep talking about things that have nothing to do with me! You talk talk talk…” The chattering of his lips is almost like the scuttling movement of head lice on their heads. The author makes light of both of these neutral evils by relating it back to how she was in the good graces of her first love due to head lice and white people head lice (her ex-boyfriend).