For my first project I wanted to be more creative than I have ever been, considering we had the opportunities to use the scanners in the CDSC, I wanted to take full advantage. I feel I did just that, by using my own sketches in my notebook I was able to make a scenario straight from my imagination. And with a little help from a snickers bar wrapper I told a story about needing a reminder of who you truly are, which I’m sure we have all needed at times. My comic collage falls under the McCloud’s definition of a comic in many different areas. Some examples of these areas include, successfully getting a response from the viewer by them being able to connect to the situation, and using images created by hand and drawing universal shapes and objects like tomatoes. My comic collage also has a sequence, being viewed from left to right you can see progression in my comic and in the story that is being told. With the final scene leaving the viewers not knowing what happens next, this adds the effect of curiosity and desire of wanting more. But Scott McCloud wasn’t the only artist that helped me justify my work as a comic, he had help. Linda Berry a well-known graphic novel author who we have studied in class, she also helped me by giving me inspiration to turn my physical sketches into a digital art piece. Referencing sections of Linda Berry’s book What It Is, it inspired me to make a scenario that was out of the box, but simple at the same time. By using physical objects like the snickers bar wrapper and the pencils it gave the comic a feeling of reality. But even after all this there was still something missing, after careful and long thought I decided to use another idea from Linda Berry’s book and add words. But these words wont just be text bubbles like traditional comics, instead they will be simple paragraphs and free hanging sentences throughout the piece itself in order to help tell the story.  

The process I went through for making this Comic I enjoyed very much, as I was able to use my favorite software and sit in silence and create my own story. Photoshop is something I have been using since about the age of 15, I had multiple high school classes that taught me basic and intermediate skills. But once I started using it outside of class these past 2 years, I have learned more than I ever have. As I continue to learn new tools or find out new ways to alter images in photoshop, it acts like gas for my brain, the possibilities are endless. As for this project though I used mostly basic to intermediate skills to create my comic, layer masking and the brush tool were my best friends. For using the layer masking, I mainly used it to get rid of things outside of my notebook sketches and other scans. While the brush tool was used on almost every part of my drawings, I threw a filter on top on my coloring to add a more texturized feel. Out of all of the work I did what I find funny is that I learned one new thing during the process. This new skill was being able to right click on a part of your image to click onto that layer instead of searching for it through the layer tab. Little knowledge picked up like this helps tremendously in the efforts of making my projects as easy as possible. It is one of the many reasons I love doing graphic design work and being able to compose in a digital environment, there is no limitations for your works.