Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

This project was tough for me because it was hard for me to find items to scan because for the items I bring to college, I don’t have too much of. The reason for this is because I am a minimalist and I only bring items that have true meaning in my life. My original plan with this blog post was to talk about the items I chose and why I decided to choose them, but I wanted to start on a different approach. Lynda Barry’s What It Is, I noticed that the object that popped out the most was octopuses in the illustrations. I felt like she featured octopuses in her illustrations because she wanted to hook the reader in a different approach. I really liked that idea and decided to grasp it. My original thought for this project is to make it relative about me and I decided to keep on with that same idea. I knew I wanted to involve high jump because high jump is essentially the main reason why I am at Washington State University. High jump made an impact on my life and I can only thank my family for helping me get that far. I wanted to feature the Golden Gate Bridge because California is where I’m from. The next plan I wanted to do for this project is make me jump over Golden Gate Bridge. The reason for this is to show my creativity and how the two topics of high jump and my hometown in California align together. The vinyl from James Blake album “the Colour in Anything” was important for me to feature because it is an album that impacted me throughout high school and even now in college.The important thing I wanted to feature is layers for my pictures. Starting off this project was tough to add especially with the Golden Gate Bridge because I wanted to make my pictures as visible as possible. For this project, I found that clipping masking was a very helpful tool to use. For my WSU ID, I had information I did not want to feature so adding that on helped achieve the goal of me adding my ID easier. I believe that my project fits into Scott McCloud’s definition of a comic; “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (McCloud pg. 9). The best example for this is bring up my bib from my collegiate track meet. It provides the reader with detail showing that I am a track athlete and providing how far it took me to get to this level. To be honest, this project was long and stressful because of how long the process took. I struggled in the beginning because as I stated in the beginning sentence, I did not bring too much stuff with me for college and the stuff that I had, I did not want to use for this project because it provided no meaning. At the end of this project however, I felt proud of my work. I felt like I represented myself in that image and the things that I scanned also helped describe who I am. This project was the first time that I used Photoshop ever and I did receive help to make sure this project was from my vision.

When creating my comic, I knew that I wanted to create something that really represented me and who I am as an individual. Throughout my life, my mom has regularly made memory boxes that focus on specific years in my life. These are filled with everything from school work and crafts to pictures. While I do not have access to one of these boxes at school, I have access to a lot of the items that I know I would put into a box. What I ultimately put together fits into McCloud’s definition of a comic because it is images of things deliberately put together to look like someone pulled things out of a box and spread them out to look at them. By providing context with the words “My Memory Box” the whole comic takes on a new meaning to the viewer, making it clear that all of the pieces in it mean something to the owner (me). By knowing this information, the images convey a sense of nostalgia and memory to the audience. I think that both McCloud and Lynda Barry helped me think about my work the most because they both placed strong emphasis on how the written word can impact the way a comic is perceived. If I took off the words “My Memory Box” I think the entire meaning of the comic would become really unclear. I also really liked Barry’s style of comic, where she just stacked things on top of each other, added lots of texture, and mostly worked in the collage style. This inspired my actual creation of my comic. When picking out the different items that I wanted to use in my comic, I focused on things that could add both texture but also had strong personal meaning to me. While I was held back by the fact that I only have the items that I have at school, I was still able to easily find things that have important meaning to me. There are some cutouts from my favorite coloring book, which I use to relax after crazy times during my life. These helped bring a pattern to the background of the comic. I left them uncolored because the colored ones were kind of distracting, and I mainly wanted the coloring patterns to fade to the background. I included some passes that I have kept from this year. The first was from the AC Slater concert that occurred at the beginning of the year, which was the first time I was an acting executive member with the Student Entertainment Board. The other was from the Klay Thompson basketball game. Sports are a really big part of my life here at WSU, so it was important for me to include an aspect of this in my comic. Both of these have the cool aspect of the lanyards, which I was sure to include in my scans. I also have some pictures that mean a lot to me as they have important people in them. I included a cutout from a card my grandma got me, which I liked because it added both texture (from the jewels) and personal meaning (as our family name is Peacock). I also have a sticker from the SEB, which I liked because there is texture from the tear of the paper. It has a lot of personal meaning, along with the business card because both relate to my Student Entertainment Board job which is really important to me and definitely defines who I am as a person. I used only three words in my comic because I felt that it made the comic the most clear that way. I picked a simple font that was in all black because I wanted the words to add to the story of the pictures, not distract from it. I just allowed the words to fit into the space that the images had left on the page.

This is not my first time using Photoshop but my previous experience is fairly limited. I am a communications major, and I had to take a class called COM210, which helps teach students how to use a variety of technology. In this class, the 2 week section for Photoshop was the only time that I used Photoshop before. Because of this, despite my previous experience, pretty much everything that we learned (past the very basics of operating the system) was new to me. I think that the most useful tools that we learned were the clipping masks and the quick mask mode. I knew nothing about masks before we started so learning how to be able to individually edit pictures and then bring them all together (without losing my edits) was super beneficial. I used these skills to be able to cut out my scans, from their backgrounds, and also to make sure that I got all the details of the scan in. Things like the lanyards (and the twisting parts) were made super easily by the masks. The most confusing part about all of these things was the details. Making sure that I clicked the right buttons in the right order to get to the right end goal was honestly the hardest aspect of learning Photoshop for me. A lot of times, I had to go back and figure out what order I needed to go in so that I did not mess anything up. After I did this a few times, it became significantly easier. I am surprised by how much I liked composing in the digital environment. I thought that I would feel held back by my lack of abilities to do what I wanted, but after watching the tutorials and just playing around, I found that I had more skills than I originally thought that I did. Being able to compose digitally also gave me a lot of power over the final product and the quality of the product that working in person would not allow me to do. All of the images were clear, focused, and super easy to manipulate. I also liked how easy it was to fix my mistakes! Being able to go back and see no repercussions for making a cut wrong or changing my mind about the size of something is a powerful tool that I didn’t realize I liked having a lot, but now that I know, it will be hard to go back.

My creative motivations came from working with the first piece that was an aluminum cutout and was the springboard for my idea of using the texture of this metal to be seen as armor. The aesthetic experience I was looking to create and convey to the audience was that of a foreign landscape with beings that are both familiar and not. All while looming in the distance there appears to be a planetoid that is expelling a crystal structure that seems to act as the planets “ocean”. Off to one side you see what you wish to believe is a familiar shape of a “quarter?” that is the size of a dinner plate.
One aesthetic that I wanted to be sure to convey was that of definition in terms of utilizing the different layers to allow the layers to overlap. This was achieved via slits cut out of the original images and then the object that was to be placed was sandwiched in between the different layers. The different textures that i had implemented such as the aluminum and the crystal background allowed for the segway into the larger crystals in the foreground.

I believe My collage comic fits in with Scott McCloud’s definition “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”. In terms that the collage draws an audience’s vision towards objects that continue to appear as continue to look on. Another meaning is that the collage is a combinational work of images that were deliberately placed in a very specific and finite order to provide both enough information to the viewer that they can gather the essence of the story that the overall piece is attempting to convey. 

I had used more over the visual mode over the other modes as for me the visual mode allows for the viewer to engage more with their imagination. However as I continued on with the collage i discovered that i even added the linguistic with the “icebreaker” on the ball in the foreground giving the reader a semi direction that they can use to interpret with the surroundings.

This is my first time producing a product from scratch. I have learned a lot during this project such as layer masks. Before this I would always just use the eraser tool to clean images with the risk of erasing the wrong portion and not being able to go back because I had run out of history in the edits. By using this method I have been able to save countless efforts from failing. Another tool that was new to me and That i had found very useful was the ability to clip layers to become filters and effects. This was a big help in adding textures to the images while as to not loose the original texture.
I really love composing in a digital environment, because it allows me to correct mistakes at a much cleaner level than that of in real life. Another reason is that I am able to make precision working such as making perfect curves and cuts at the flick of a wrist.

My comic fits into the Scott McCloud’s definition of a comic because it shows a set of images that I use to try and describe myself, which would cover the part in Scott McCloud’s definition of “conveying information”. My hope for this comic was to share a little bit of myself with images that represent me. The readings and class discussions we had in class inspired me to think about different ideas that can help get the viewer to think more in depth about what my comic may represent, versus the actual meaning behind the comic. The materials I used help me make meaning through my collage process by each having a different meaning behind it. For example, the name tag I used as the center of attention for my collage was made in a workshop that was meant for women of color. This workshop help us understand how to navigate in a place where we are the minority, and how we can use our voice to help ourselves and others. The only word I used was my name. I decided to only use my name because I feel like since the collage was about myself, it helped to only use my name as a way to bring attention to the main focus in my collage, which was me.

To begin with, I had a really hard time trying to come up with a theme or topic for my comic. I feel like I couldn’t find the materials necessary for my collage which caused me to take longer than I should have. Before turning in my final comic collage, I was working on a different one, but I did not feel satisfied with my work, so I decided to start a new one. This collage was also not what I expected since I decided to change it last minute, but I think it has a better meaning than the first one. Since I had never used Photoshop, I struggled so much trying to use the tools. Although I kept going back to the tutorials for help, it was just so confusing when I would accidentally press something or do something that I didn’t know how to fix. My favorite part about making this collage was using the brush to erase or add parts to an image. I enjoyed working in a digital environment, even though I faced a lot of challenges.