My digital collage conveys the definition of McCloud’s definition of a comic in the aesthetic sense. I wanted my comic to have somewhat cohesive colors and themes. The comic is meant to show who I am. I included items that represent things I like to do, things that are important to me, and a couple things that have happened to me in my first year of college. The collage has different components that tell different stories about me. It includes some cameras and photos I have taken of my best friends from home and my best friends from school. It also includes trinkets I have collected or kept to show some things I have done this year. In the center of the collage is a lanyard that I wore when our soccer team went to the 2019 College Cup for the first time in school history. The Hawaii keychain is placed on top of a photo of my teammate and I when we traveled to Hawaii this season for a soccer tournament. The colorful cards at the top left of the collage were sent to me by my sister after I got ankle surgery after the soccer season was over. I wanted to convey a story of my year so far, while following a pleasing aesthetic. I chose to make the background of my collage be some textured pieces of fabric to juxtapose that texture with that of the photos and pieces of paper. I also include some jewelry to show more depth in texture as well as a shiny effect.

The collage uses more of the visual mode rather than the linguistic. I did not want to overcomplicate my message by adding in words, and felt that the story was better presented visually.

This was not my first time using photoshop, though the last time I used it was in high school. I definitely needed to watch the photoshop tutorials to help me remember how to use certain tools and such. I learned about how to make clipping masks, how to organize my layers, and how to adjust the quality and effects of images. The most useful tools I used in my collage were the magic wand tool and the eraser. I used those tools the most frequently because I was mostly importing the images and organizing them how I wanted to. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast on a couple of items to make them pop more in the collage. I enjoyed working in photoshop and look forward to learning how to use all of the different tools and ways you can manipulate images.