Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

I tried to convey two different emotions without using visible senses. The way I did that was I started with the human figure. I was going to put some emotions on his face but I remembered that in the reading in chapter five, McCloud talks about how there is not always going to be a face to convey the feeling that the reader should fee. Therefore, I left the facial features off of the character. Next, I worked on what I wanted to convey. I knew that I wanted to work with what the book explained to see if I could recreate the things from the reading because that is the best way, I learn is by doing what we learn. Therefore, I chose to do an image that felt loud by using thick lines with drastic color changes. To create this is used the brush tool in a
thick setting to make the explosion looking shape. With a dark black background, the loud looking shape looks more drastic making it the first thing that someone looks at when they see my comic. They then should move to the next box on my picture that has the character’s head and a ton of swirls. The reason I used the swirl tool was to make the reader see that the character was confused and or startled. The way that I made the character was also with the brush tool but with a less thick brush mode. As for closure that is taking place in my comic I think that the only part would be that you can tell that the character is human but you can’t see his facial features, therefore, you have to imply that this is either the back of their head or that they are human because of the shape of the character. I don’t think that I used time inventively except for that I did not have any time between the two frames. In chapter four McCloud talks about how if the author is meaning for there to be a lot of time between frames, they can add multiple frames of the same image. However, I wanted things to feel like they were going fast and so I went right from the loud shape to the confusion and startled character.

In the comics of the thirteenth week, I want to convey the appearance of many students around me online classes, they often make a perfect plan but ignore the homework due to sufficient time. They are gradually lazy. The first picture I want to show is that this person has particularly sufficient time and perfect schedule to complete all his homework, but in the next three pictures, he chooses to play, choose to sleep and go out to relax. When I finally found out that there was not enough time, I was anxious and annoyed.

The tools I chose this time were pencil and sketch paper because I took an art class this year and wanted to practice drawing techniques. The comics drawn with the pen will give people a simple sense of happiness and familiarity, and it is very convenient to watch. In a comic, I indicated the passage of time and the choices made by students by a wall clock. The reason why I did not use Illustrator for this assignment is that I am not skilled enough to use Illustrator. I think I may not be able to make comics that I think are good. Although the comics that I drew by hand are also not very nice.

For this week’s comic I portrayed the struggle of procrastination that I typically go through with most of my assignments. Starting off with a plan and schedule to falling down a rabbit hole of the internet to then resorting to immense panic and attempting to race the clock to finish whatever assignment that I had spent the day trying to work on. I chose to do this comic because I was able to portray the anxiety that I experience while procrastinating. By using jagged lines like McCloud in chapter 5 I was able to show the steady growth of anxiety as time passes and the due date draws closer. I was also able to use line to create more movement, when the person in the comic is typing you can see movement lines around their hands on the keyboard, and in the panel where the person is vacuuming there are suction lines in going into the vacuum as well as push lines behind it to show its movement forward. Knowing which shape of lines show what made creating movement and feeling much easier. 

Between the panels there are also big leaps in time but not much story is lost in the gutter, for example when the person starts to vacuum you are able to tell that it is the same character who was just on the computer getting up to do something else more productive than simply watching youtube at their computer. I mapped out the time until the assignment that my character had an assignment due at the top of each panel so the comic has its own sense of time in it and the reader can be aware of the rate that things are occuring in the comic. Lastly I chose to use color very minimally in this, I chose to stick to black and white because I felt it was easier to add more detail without the comic quickly becoming overly busy and difficult to process. I only used color in the eyes when the character is watching youtube and I did this to show what they were watching on their screen in a way that was able to stand out to the reader. 

For my weekly comic this week I chose use Illustrator to create and tell the story about a bug. The bug is relaxing in a warm bowl of soup and has just made a new friend; however, they are quickly separated! The bug meets (what the reader thinks) to be an unfortunate fate. Luckily, it is the bug’s lucky day as he escapes from the mouth of the human. I convey a lot of different components from various chapters into my first weekly comic. From chapter 3 I used closure in the panels where we see the human holding the spoon with soup and the bug, then in the next panel over the spoon is empty and the human’s mouth is full. This type of closure is action-to-action. In addition to chapter 3 knowledge, I worked with the ideas learned in chapter 4 about time frames. In the long bottom panel, the bug is being spat out by the human. We see droplets of the soup and the bug in a curled up position, bracing for impact with the table. Since this is a long panel I was able to convey that this scene was to be viewed in slow motion for a dramatic effect. With these two chapters under my belt, I additionally thought about how I could incorporate lines into my comic. I use lines in the first panel as heat. The steam from the soup is in a different pen stroke than any other stroke seen in the comic to give the effect of warmth. In addition to the meaning of lines in this panel, I also use lines to convey motion later on. As seen in the third-panel lines are being used to show the spoon (and new friend of the bug) is rising away from the bowl. While the reader could most likely put together what is happening with the bug’s speech bubble the lines help solidify the movement. Seen again in the last panel is movement. The bug is being spat out by the human and having the soup droplets and lines help solidify the idea that the bug has been removed from the human’s mouth. In this week’s comic, I focused on using different ellipses. I varied my strokes throughout and shifted the anchor points so that I was able to obtain the shapes I desired. This strategy makes the bug seem friendly, a rounded bug-like character portrays a kinder appearance rather than one with many sharp edges and spikes. Along with the ellipses I used many pen marks that were rounded. This helped with my friendly emotions. With thought put into every shape I created I am quite proud of my first weekly comic as I think I have accurately portrayed the emotions, movement, and senses I aimed to show.