Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

In my collage, I wanted to express my identity through important items in my life. I chose items in my room that mean the most to me.

All of these images are deliberately placed and juxtaposed in a way to show that nothing in life is planned, and nothing happens for a reason. Spatially, I wanted to layer things on top of each other and randomly put things in random places to show that life is random. The best quality a person can have is to be adaptable to change, because life always changes. I used more linguistics when I used a book that reads, “Learn how to relax.” I used this book because nobody would spend money on a book about relaxing, but sometimes in life we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. The book represents self reflection.

The coaster of Rhode Island is very important to me because Rhode Island is like my second home, and I have a large amount of family members that live there. I chose to use words to clarify what the map was. I chose my high school I.D. card because it represents everything in my life before I came to college. The Julian Edelman player card is important to me since I am a huge New England Patriots fan. The hat placed on top of the world in the top right corner represents a side of me the loves adventure and travel. The picture in the picture depicts a king looking over a city and mountains, and can be interpreted in many ways. The Washington State football gloves represent a very important part of my life. It represents everything I have achieved, and all the hard work I have done in my life. The word “Shredla” with the picture in the letters is probably the most important aspect of the collage. Shredla is my whole world right now, and it is my brand. Some of the other items represent smaller things in my life. I put some small, less important items like the pen and chapstick to represent how the little things in life are important.

I am a beginner, but this is not my first time using photoshop. The best part of making my collage was when I used a clipping mask for the word “Shredla.” It was really cool being able to put my hand-made collage inside of a world. I do like composing a digital environment because it is easier to make things look specifically how you want them to look. However, there is something pretty cool about making a collage using glue sticks and magazines.

Motivations

For this project I wanted to create my digital comic using a bunch of things that have meaning to myself. I wanted to use things that have color and also texture. I think the reader will take away all the colors and how it is kind of chaotic with your eye catching something different every time you look at it. I used the shoes to convey the sequence and how they are almost walking across the page. I used the background to produce an aesthetic response for the reader. I think the Lynda Barry reading inspired me to use images and object that have meaning to me. Also while creating this project one of my influences was an iSpy book. I used to have a bunch of iSpy books as a kid and loved looking through them at all the different objects, having to find specific ones. When finding objects to scan for this project I tried to find objects that represented myself as well as having texture or cool aspects tot he object. I Think the textures in the leather of the baseball glove and the corduroy of the shoe helped the image a lot with appealing textures.

Photoshop experience

This was not my first time using Photoshop, I took a class in high school about digital design. I haven’t used Photoshop since then so I definitely forgot a lot about the program. Something I learned that was new is using a layer mask. I never knew about the layer mask and I think it is really useful because you are able to go back and make adjustments to your selection instead of erasing the pixels. This tool helped me a lot with refining my selections throughout the project. For all of the images I used a layer mask so that I could go back and bring back or take away pixels when needed. This was probably the tool I used most along with the quick selection tool. I used to only use the magnetic lasso tool when making selections but learning how to use the quick selection tool has been much easier. The magnetic lasso takes a lot longer that the quick selection tool especially if you have a contrasting background because the quick selection tool does a pretty good job selecting the object with a contrasting background. I do like composing in a digital environment. I think it is fun to create projects in a digital platform because there is so much you can do with these adobe programs and our eyes now a day are more attracted to a project made in digital rather than by hand.

For my project, I wanted to emphasize the intention to “convey information” aspect of Scott McCloud’s definition of juxtaposition. Part of my major is to recognize the impact of all of these new digital technologies on our culture. Recently, I learned about a concept called “The Internet of Things”, which is essentially an industry that creates products based on the idea that they’re all connected to each other through the internet. Examples of these devices include smart TVs, Alexa, Ring doorbells and more. All of these devices are created to interact with one another in a sort of harmonious ecosystem of the internet. Your doorbell sends a live stream to your phone, which connects to your TV, which all link to and can be controlled by Alexa.

I used a rope to represent this concept of connectivity between the devices. I also included scanned pieces of newspaper articles I could find on the topic, which helps to represent the fact that this technological shift is somewhat controversial. There seem to be polarizing opinions on the matter. All of these are laid over a woven pattern because a weave is a good representation of tight-connectivity.

This project was great because it taught me how to use layer masks as a better method for editing layers without permanence. It has been extremely helpful with other projects I’ve been working on in my free time because it offers much more flexibility in terms of adding or removing elements of layers. I really enjoy improving my skills in photoshop, because it allows me to better harness my creativity. I look forward to improving throughout the semester!

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.

Scott McCloud’s defines juxtaposition as “pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the view”. For my project I wanted to put emphasis on “The blessed life”. To me everything I chose to scan are the things in my life that I am personally blessed for. The quote I used “Count your blessings, Every Opportunity, Every Dream, Every Goal” I feel fits the mood of my picture collage. A lot of the items I chose are bookmarks in my life that I feel helped shaped me to who I am today, while some of the items are things that have a deeper meaning to it that you may only know if you personally know me. To me, being able to emphasize my blessings in my life, not only give me the opportunity to show others what I am grateful for but it also gave me the opportunity to realize that even the smallest things in my life are blessings. 

This is one the very first times I have used photoshop. Before this project I was very unfamiliar with photoshop and hardly used it, I mostly edit and modify videos rather than pictures. But getting the chance to learn what photoshop can do has opened a new outlet for me to be able to express myself. The tools I utilized the most were the quick selection tool and the different blending options. I mostly used the quick selection tool to isolate my object and to cut out the background or other objects that surrounded the object I wanted to use. As for the bending options, I used a lot of different gradients and used color burn the most. The reason I chose to use color burn is because I wanted to give the illusion that the different objects were imprinted onto the background and looked like they were supposed to be there. I personally like composing in a digital environment because I get the opportunity to edit things as well as manipulate them in any way I see fit. I also have the ability to switch up the mood of the thing that I am working one based on how I want the viewer to see it.

The creative route I took for my digital comic collage was to have a pretty linear story line so those who look at it may be able to understand the story the best they can without a lot of words explaining why I used the images I did. With exception of my title of “A Life Story”, my letter from home, and the ominous “and beyond..” at the end, the rest of the images are simply placed in a way where I hope to convey they tell a story of my life so far. I follow Scott McCloud’s definition of a comic pretty straight forward, it is possible to be even more abstract with the photo placement, but again, I wanted the story was telling to be fairly easy to process and understand. Linda Barry’s work definitely changed my idea on how a comic should look, after looking at her word, I understood how much more abstract a comic story may be. Besides, regardless of how the author intended the work to appear, it is all about how the reader interprets it. And even as I continued to work during class time, scanning images and discussing creative options in class, I realized I could get a lot more creative with this project that I would have thought at the beginning of the semester.

With this, I was more thoughtful in the items I chose to scan to include in my collage, the picture of my parents on their wedding day, some sketches of my artwork, and the letter from home are all things that I hold dear to my heart. The collage was supposed to depict the life of two loving parents, having a happy family, and their daughter growing up, learning her passions, and accepting growing up and finding her way in life. The wording I chose whether it was something I scanned, or my title of the collage, was placed there to help the reader understand what exactly my purpose behind this collage really was. My ending message, “and beyond…” was to show that the story is still going as I continue to grow and learn.

In regards to photoshop, this class is the first time I have ever used photoshop. It is all very new to me and I have gotten quite confused and frustrated at times, but that is all part of the learning process. Since I am so new to photoshop, I tried to make this first project fairly simple in how I placed my images in my collage, I used the crop tool religiously to chose the part of the image I wanted to focus on and then laid that image on top of the background I chose. I would then rotate and place the images as wanted to lay them out in the order I wanted to tell my story. I personally do not like composing in a digital environment, I have always worked with my hands to form sculptures, draw, paint, and more. I felt a barrier between me and my work because I had to view it all through a computer screen.

My post follows Scott McClouds version of “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” by using a way of different images that I scanned to make a comic. For my comic I was depicting an FBI agents desk at work. It has everything you would see as an agent in a POV style. In class I really had no idea on what I wanted to do. I originally came into it a little confused on what to bring to scan. So I brought an FBI agent card, a flash drive and a key all not knowing what I should do with it. While we were talking in class Kristin brought up that we shouldn’t scan dollar bills and that gave me the idea to work on something with the government which later sparked an idea in my head. Right then and there I decided I would make a FBI agents POV of his desk and make a comic out of it. The materials I used helped explain my comic I used. For example, the FBI agent card helps show who is involved in this and the phone and coffee help depict that it is early and they are working. The top of the paper that was sketched by hand shows that they are working on a case. The picture of the two boys show who are the culprits.

I have used photoshop a few times about a year ago. It was for some photography and I didn’t really know how to use it at all. So far my experience with photoshop has been good. I have been having fun learning how to use it although it has its downfalls to it. Photoshop is very hard at times. When I am in a rush to finish and I don’t know how to do something it can be really frustrating. The biggest thing I sed for these scans was how to crop. I learned a lot how to get every detail when cropping and I have found it very important. The most confusing thing for me on photoshop is how to find the right tutorial when I don’t know how to do a certain action. Overall, I enjoyed this project and have always loved making something digital.