Web Comic

For this remake option, you will translate the passage of non-fiction prose into a web comic of at least three panels. The point of this remake is to capture some key idea or tension in the passage, to experience the challenges involved with writing in images and text, and to develop a sense of how aspects of style hold up in different presentational modes. You can develop your web comic using ink and paper or using any of the resources available to you online, including:

Flickr creative commons
Comic life
Scribbles
Inkscape
Gimp
Bubblr
Creating comics in Inkscape (Park 1 of 4)
Paper and pencil/pen/marker

For additional examples of web comics, check out the these:
xkcd.com
Dinosaur Comics
Achewood
Top Shelf 2.0

Example:
I produced this example using a free trial version of Comic Life (available on PC and Mac), a couple of photos from Flickr Creative Commons, and a character I drew in Inkscape, a free, open source drawing application.

Remake note: With this web comic, "Industrial Organic," I sought to amplify the tension Michael Pollan alerts us to between the ideals of the organic movement and the expansion of industrial-scale "organic farms." This tension manifests most conspicuously in the aisles of every Whole Foods Market, where Pollan tells us out-dated images of local farmers humanize the mass produced products, adding the lore of "human touch" to everything on the shelves. In the comic, two nameless shoppers engage in an unlikely conversation about the awe-inspiring produce in a Whole Foods. Non-seasonal, non-local produce, Pollan reminds us, might be appealing, but it must travel many, many miles. Problems like these complicate the pastoral ideals evoked in loose labels such as "organic."

 

Additional example:

The following three-panel comic was sketched in class on Monday, November 9. After class, I scanned the image so I could sharpen the lines and render it more clearly in Inkscape.

I downloaded and installed a free copy of Inkscape. Next, I opened the scanned image and placed it in a background layer (following the guidance of the tutorial here). Inkscape uses vector-based graphics, which are easy to manipulate (i.e., a crooked line is easy to adjust). After I reproduced the images in Inkscape, I imported the panels into Comic Life, added word bubbles, and output the strip you see here. The most tedious step in the process was reproducing the artwork in Inkscape, and this is a step you can by-pass if you 1) use images from Flickr Creative Commons or 2.) use the original hand-drawn artwork in your comic.