A lot can be said about a comic by the demographic the comic is created on. A printed comic, compared to a digital one, allows for a different spectrum of benefits and drawbacks. Textures, tools available, and spectrum of space all come together in creating the desired comic wanted by the creator.

My Amazing Life By: Grace Kannberg, August 2019

My printed comic, My Amazing Life, was the first-hand drawn comic I have ever created. When crafting this comic on paper I felt as though I was doodling and the gestural mode’s I was able to create turned out better than in my digital comic. I found it to be easy to add texture, smaller details, and creative text bubbles that conveyed the message I was trying to get across in each box. Although, I found that the resources I had available to me were limited. I had a mechanical pencil and six broken colored pencils I had found lying around the house (I am a broke college student). When creating my digital comic, The Kannberg Family,I found this to be the least of my problems. 

The Kannberg Family By: Grace Kannberg, August 2019

The digital comic I created had a completely different feel when compared to my printed comic. I was introduced to endless possibilities of digital tools and space needed to tell my story. The only problem is, I am not as informed on how to use these tools and space, so the creation of this comic was three times as slow compared to my hand-printed comic. In return though, my digital comic’s visual mode looking a lot more professional than my hand-drawn comic. 

During this experience I found it to be a lot easier to work with Print over Digital, I could add a lot of smaller details and texters to my drawings that I couldn’t (or I just didn’t know how to) with the digital comic. In practicality though, a digital comic offers more possibilities with the almost unlimited tools available through the digital platform. 

When reading a printed-out comic, compared to a digital comic, the difference between the two seems to be in how I retain the information. I retain information more when reading something in print form and find it hard to track material on a digital platform. Wither this is because of my dyslexia or not, I just find that there is something concrete about print. This is why I find comic theorist Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics easy to follow and apply. 

Before working on my digital comic, I read the first chapter from his book. This gave me a better understanding of what a comic is and how to use space in sequential art to show that time is passed. I applied this to The Kannberg Family by telling more of a story in comparted to my hand-drawn comic. This was done by using sequential art that showed time passing by a car moving and then arriving at a school.

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