Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

The example that I have chosen from our visit to the library archives comes from a 15^th century book. This Book is titled “Legenda aurea sanctorum sive Lombaridica historia” A German book written in 1488. The main elements in this book are the text, hand colored illustrations, and illuminated lettering. These illustrations were created by someone placing blobs of color on the page and then using a woodblock or some other printmaking device to create a layer that is the outlines that form the image. You can tell this by how the colors bleed out and are not as uniform as the black outlines. The image in this example is of an angel that is aligned to the left of the page raising its sword about to strike some sort of demon whose bright red contrasting color and center alignment cause it to stand out vs the other demon whose brown coloring causes it to blend into the ground. The other important elements of this piece are the text and illuminated lettering. The illuminated lettering compliments the image nicely because it follows a similar color palette, this is a nice element because it ties the image and text together in another way. Using similar artistic style and color is something that I will use in my poster so that the elements in my poster appear more cohesive and not just cut and pasted on. Another thing that this example has made me think about in my poster in the use of layering, Layering will be important for me because the image I am creating has depth and dimension that layering is essential too. Aside from what I will use in my poster I also simply appreciate the craftsmanship of this book. It’s amazing the level of detail that was captured in this 14^th century book and how it continues to inspire mine and others work today.

Page 2 from James Neel’s comic, The Wishbone (Published in 1985)

In his comic, The Wishbone, James Neel uses a variety of different design concepts that we have been learning over the course of the semester. The comic is rather short, eight full 8.5″ x 11″ printer pages to be exact, and he published this comic in 1985.

This comic stood out to me from the rest of the comics that I looked at during our visit to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections because all of the drawings in the comic are made up of points, lines, and planes, but when you look closely, it just looks like a bunch of lines scribbled together to form shapes. The different shades of lines provide the comic with different visual textures. I believe that the comic was based on the movie, The Gremlins, which was released in 1984, one year prior to the release of this comic. The gremlin also appeared in comic books shortly before this, but Gizmo was one of the gremlins that I remember from the movie and the gremlins were stirring up ingredients in order for their species to multiply. The comic is supposed to be read from top to bottom and left to right similar to a normal page from a book. However, the biggest image on page 2 of the comic is in the bottom left corner, and although that’s probably the first thing that you see when glancing at this page, that is not where the page actually begins. James Neel uses visual hierarchy to tell a narrative by placing the images on the page in the order of their importance and making sure that there is a clear separation between each of the layers on the page. He uses frames around some of the images as well as implied frames around some of the other images. These are all some of the things that have influenced my poster comic. I will be using hierarchy to tell a story from top to bottom and left to right, but there are going to be other images on the page that will catch your eye before reading the beginning of the narrative in the top left corner. I will also be using a variety of different textures while layering different images and text over each other. I also like the idea of implied frames, as well as regular frames around some of the images, so I am going to try and incorporate that into my comic as well.

As one could imagine, the visit to the library’s archives provided a smorgasbord of material to digest and process, especially having been given the chance to use our immediate inspirations in our poster comic. The first comic that I sat in front of upon entering the room was The Sojourn, which had different authors with different comics within, but

The Sojourn, Vol. 1, featuring the likes of “Tor” by Joe Kubert, and “The Smooth” by Dick Giordano (1977).

what drew me in was the character Tor by Joe Kubert, and how reminiscent he was of old Tarzan comics. My father used to read Tarzan comics when he was younger, and when I was really young, he brought his old comics for me to read, so having Tor jump out to me wasn’t a big surprise. It inspired me to make the character I was planning to portray even more attune with wildlife. After all, the character is vegan, so naturally he would be… well, nature-inclined. Another thing that inspired me to incorporate into my poster comic was the strong use of vibrant colors, and the power-poses done by characters like Dick Giordano’s The Smooth. While I’m not at all tempted to give my character a goofy costume, billowy sleeves and all, I am wanting to give him a powerful, almost anti-hero stance and more contrasted colors. Originally, I was going to use hues of brown and green, but I feel like that is too expected from the subject matter I’m dealing with. I’ve always been a supporter of using a lot of color, so I’m upping the use of blues, yellows, reds, oranges, etc., as seen in The Sojourn, as well as Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Other examples I really wanted to incorporate were the indelible use of texture within this mini-comic,

“Valentine” by A. Freeman (2005).

“Beware of the Hole in the Ozone” from Maximum Traffic, Issue #1 (1990).

and the weaponry and sheer-awesomeness of the character portrayed in the spread to the right. I know I want to use a lot of color, so I wouldn’t copy the black and white format they have, and I think, given the size we’re dealing with for our poster comics, I want to use a lot of textures to fill the space to its maximum potential. I think texture, color, and scaling are the three main components I’m working with for my poster comic, and I’ve been finding that they will be crucial for the size of the poster itself. Without texture, things will appear flat or uninteresting to me, and the colors will give more life to the piece, which is a proponent I want to convey, given that the character is a hero for the life of animals and the earth.

“Cross Currents” Comic from out visit to the archives and special collections.

This particular example really caught my eye when we visited the archives last Thursday. I liked how it looked like someone physically cut out different pieces from other comics to make a new one. I think this is an excellent way to have a lot of texture in our own works. The use of cut out text was the most unique to me, no other comic in the archives had this.

Hierarchy is really important in this particular comic book cover, there is a lot going on so the creator needed to emphasize the right parts so the reader does not feel overwhelmed. I will try to do the same by adding some depth to my comic by adding small drop shadows to each layer.