When I was working on the hand-drawn comic I used several references in my editor screen and of images online. Although I was following those guidelines I felt free to change the look how I wanted it as I went. This was the hardest transition to get a hod of when jumping to the digital comic. I do not yet have the proficiency in Photoshop to feel as comfortable as I do in physical hand-drawn art. I started making the digital comic by trying to recreate my hand-drawn in photo editing software. Although I just tried to use those images that I had referenced the image looked detached and bland in comparison to my drawing by hand. Instead of using Photoshop I tried to move the project to Sketchpad because I had worked with that previously and it has a simpler design that doesn’t overwhelm me, but the process was similar. I instead opted to do this comic:

Because I had to add words to improve my previous comic anyway. Although I couldn’t do what I had truly wanted to in the beginning I am still happy with this result because it is a lot cleaner then my original try. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics changed what I was going to do because I originally wasn’t going to add words to my comics, but I understand that sometimes words are necessary even if I don’t require them to interpret my own comics. This lack of words can be seen in the convoluted tangent my first comic is in.

I can’t wait until I understand the intricacies in Photoshop so that I am comfortable to make more detailed and unique projects in my vision. I want to make a really cool story-based comic this semester because those are the ones that I am most used to seeing and consuming.