Hey could people start posting their assignments for the Und. Comics here? Or even start claiming that you are working on them? I don't know what to start looking over, because I'm not sure what chapters others have already claimed. --Jamie

http://pbl.ist.psu.edu/cgi-bin/analog.pl?MccloudChapterseven Here's a link to a McCloud assignment for chapter 7. (Octavio, Rebecca, and Jessica)

For Chapter 3 of McCloud, in their blog space, the students identified the key terms that McCloud used, defined them, and discussed how they were relevant to their own writing.

After reading chapter 6 (particularly relevant if ch.6 is assigned during evaluative arguments),

Split students into groups and have each group tell a story that contains an implied value judgement (for instance, "I had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast this morning after a late night of studying chemistry and they were the best pancakes I have ever had"). After they are done telling their stories, the other groups will have to construct a comic out of the story, converting it into a form of pictoral rhetoric.

(Sarah, Katherine, Lauren)

An idea for an in-class writing assignment for Chapter 5: after discussing the importance of line quality to comics and how this relates to writing (ie, tone), hand out the same paragraph to each small group (from some work with longer paragraphs, All the Kings Men or Ellison's Invisible Man would work well) and have each group rewrite the paragraph in a different style/tone. Tone examples: authoritative, preaching, conversational, surreal, disapproving, enthusiastic, non-judgemental, etc. (Stephanie)

Another idea for Chapter 5: This chapter explains the expressiveness of line as a function of tone, so both a writer's tone and an illustrator's tone can be (literally) described by a line. Have the students exchange rough drafts and comment on their fellow students' tone: humorous, serious, didactic, detached, urgent, etc. After they have analyzed the tone of the essay, tell them to draw a line that represents the essay's tone. Use the lines in Chapter 5 (particularly pp125) for examples and models. (Laura and Shawna)