When I began on my digital comic collage, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to portray my idea, but I did know that I wanted to use items from my everyday life, whether that be a hair scarf, lip balm, or small signs and prints that I have hanging in my room to always remind me to stay positive. I placed each of my scans/selections into my collage in a way that makes the eye wander through the juxtaposed images. This makes my collage look as though there is a kind of sequence even when it might look random. This follows along with Scott McCloud’s definition of comics because there are juxtaposed images placed in a way that shows my message of self-care and self-love. I also used the design elements of texture, color and shape along with the design principles of movement, variety, and harmony, mentioned in John Lovette’s “Design Overview.” Each of these helped me make my collage look balanced and clear to the viewer.

Digital Comic Collage: By Cierra Haken. Fall 2019

The items that I ended up using for my background consisted of my crumpled-up tracing paper, and two images from a book of artist, Harry Bertioa’s works. These images layered well as a nice black background that had interesting details but was not too distracting. I then used objects such as my lip balm, hair scarf, beauty bag, and fake plants to add texture and contrast to the black background. I then used 4 scans of images with small quotes that added some context to my other scans. Each of the quotes had to do with staying positive and always looking up. These, along with my simple Beauty items shows my message of how I partake in self-care and self-love. I also took the “smile often” scan and brought out the yellow lines to the edges of the page to add an idea of defined areas in my collage.

This was not my first time using Photoshop. I am in a design communication class for interior Design, and we have done 5 big projects so far using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, so I have learned how to use each of these programs fairly quickly in the past 7 weeks. One thing I did learn while creating this collage was how to use the stamp tool. When continuing on with the yellow line from the “smile often,” I used the stamp tool to get the pattern of the background to make the lines blend together without having an awkward corner from my line showing. Other tools I found useful, included the quick selection tool, the polygonal selection tool, and blending between layers tool, to make some of the effects. Because I had used each of these tools before for my 5 previous projects in ID 197, I had little confusion, and the project came together fairly easy. I really enjoy creating digital art, and I think if I were to do this project again, I would like to go a little more complex, but all while using Illustrator or InDesign which I find easier to use while creating projects like this with many layers.