Seeking Answers From Animals
Adapted from an exercise by Chantelle Cortez Maglalang, and Inspired by the work of Pascal Campion.
You will need:
Paper
Post-It Notes
A pen or something like that
A spirit animal or animal companion
Instructions:
Make a list of things you worry about.
Pick one and write candidly about it, get all those uncomfortable truths out in the open.
Pick an animal to voice your concerns to. The animal can be an existing pet you have, or an animal you wish you could talk to. Imagine you and your chosen animal are old friends having a conversation. This comic can take place anywhere, real or imagined.
Create a one or two page comic of this exchange. Try to give yourself genuinely good advice, advice you need to hear. Doing so can make this exercise oddly therapeutic.
It can be fun to play with the voice of the animal! When do they respond like a thoughtful friend? When do they respond like an animal? How might your animal surprise you?
Example:
Thoughts:
In my comics class, we do an exercise where all the students pick a cartoonist they love, and deep dive into their work. They look at style, how their stories work, composition, layout, etc…, and come up with an exercise for themselves to help them capture one particular quality they love about their chosen cartoonist’s work. They then make a comic based on their exercise, and present it as a live reading (along with their research) to the class. Then, the students spend the rest of the week trying out each other’s exercises.
I think that activity might be the thing I’m most proud of creating for that class. I learn a ton from those presentations (hopefully the students do too) and, when the presentations are done, we all get to make comics together and listen to music.
It’s really fun.
This is a comic that Chantelle came up with as a part of that assignment. I’ve done this exercise a number of times and it never fails to make me feel better. It’s wild that having an excuse to give myself comfort in a comic actually results in comfort!
I just love this exercise. Thanks Chantelle!
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