Our task in this project was to recreate a scene from the book Brave New World in a graphic novel form. Most students were paired into teams of authors and artists, though several worked alone and handled both aspects of the task. The authors wrote a paper analyzing one of the main characters in the novel and used noun-phrase apposites and concessive theses to make their arguments. Artists focused on key choices of moment, frame, image, word,and flow in creating a graphic novel about the chosen scene. Our exhibition featured both an art show of our graphic novels, and a seminar discussion about Brave New World.
Brave New World: The Conditioning
Brianna Garcia Mark Laffaye 1/30/15 Dooley, Humanities
Brave New World Artist/Author statements Brave New World, a dystopian novel, describes how some react to its complex society.
Just before the scene we chose, the director is showing Alpha students around the conditioning center, and he describes the embryos to the students. The director explains to a student that they give the embryo’s typhoid and sleeping sickness. In the scene we chose, the director shows the students the “shock treatment” that is used on the young children in society. He explains that this is done to make the babies associate books and flowers, (the things that shock the children when they touch them) with pain and formulate a hatred towards them. They do this so that the children will not want to educate themselves so they will stay in their place in society. For choice of moment the slide where the babies are in the middle of being shocked is a good example because it displays that interesting moment very well. For frame, the panel where the D.H.C. is looking at all of the babies is a perfect example because of how it is an over the shoulder type panel which looks really nice and also how it is very interesting to look at because of how detailed it is. For image, the panel showing all of the babies crawling towards the flowers and booms is very good because it shows a lot of area in the picture and is zoomed out to show just how many children there are being socialized at once. For choice of word, the panel where the D.H.C. states, “Bring out the children!” is good because of how the D.H.C’s forceful tone captivates the reader and makes them interested in what he is talking about and his facial expression can make you see and feel the anger in his voice. For flow, the panels where the D.H.C. motions to the head nurse, and she flips the switch which then sets off an alarm is very good because of how all of the shots are related and in order so well its sort of like a movie with the reader just skimming through all three quickly. All of these aspects together create a very good graphic novel by adding complexity, depth, and excitement to the novel.
As an artist it was difficult to display what was in my head into a drawing on paper. Once I figured out how to do that I went to work and had so much fun making my comic strip. Our scene was very graphic so I had to show the pain in the babies eyes without making it too sad. As an artist I developed skills; how to display character in each person, how to use space, clarity, character movement, etc. I loved walking into class and going straight to work and getting into the flow mindset. I hope to use my artist skills again in the future.
As the author I learned a lot about writing and grammar in our group lessons, but the two bigger things I learned were what comma splices where and how to avoid them, and also how to use semicolons. Even though I did not know how to use a semicolon before this project and it is a very useful skill, I found the comma splices lesson more important. I found it more important because I now realize that I used to create comma splices all of the time without ever noticing my mistake, but now I’ll never make that mistake again.