For this blog, I wanted to create my comic using Adobe Illustrator to see what I could create as opposed to using pen and paper like the comics I made in previous weeks. For this week, we were asked to express something about our individuality in reference to Scott McCloud’s quote “no other human being can ever know what it’s like to be you from the inside.” This prompt was a bit challenging for me because it was so broad, and I had to think of an aspect of my self that could be communicated briefly in only a few panels. I began to think of different things about myself and some strengths and weaknesses. Even though I’m pretty terrible at making comics on Illustrator, ironically, I chose to make a comic about a part of me that I like, my visual senses. More specifically, my eyes, and how grateful I am for them allowing me to see and design things accordingly. My work for this class is pretty different from the work I do for my major, Strategic Communication. In my major, I use the Adobe software to design things such as layouts, advertisements, wireframes, magazine ads, social media ads, all sorts of things. One strength of mine is my visual sense when it comes to designing things, seeing if something out of alignment, and attention to detail. I wanted to try to create a comic that would showcase that side of myself that tends to be pretty hard to communicate.

Therefore, in reference to the first step of Scott McCloud’s 6 steps to creating art, “Idea/Purpose”, I utilized this step by creating a comic about my appreciation for my visual senses. The second step, “Form”, was met by me choosing to create a comic in Adobe Illustrator. His third step, Idiom, which is essentially the genre that my work would fit in to, it’s hard to say. I wouldn’t classify it as comedy or anything like that. It’s basically a comic that showcases something about me at the end of the day, so maybe it could be classified as fitting in some sort of self-reflection genre. For Structure, I chose to compile it in a typical way that comics are made, side-by-side panels. For craft, I used a variety of tools in Illustrator. Some tools that I used heavily were the rectangular marquee tool, the elliptical marquee tool, and the pen tool. The pen tool was used heavily to create all of the complex shapes in my comic. I hope that for Surface, people that view it will be able to get just a little bit of a glimpse about how I view things and my appreciation for the visual senses when I make designs, but in a more general sense, my appreciation for all of the beauty that can be seen in the world.

The last panel is inspired by the Summer I spent in Maui, Hawaii with my best friend. I got to see and experience some amazing things that naturally occurs in nature. When I get to see more of the world, the more inspired I become and the more I appreciate the blessing of being able to see it with my own eyes.