Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For the first day I scanned, I brought in my denim jacket because I embroidered some of it and then there are also patches. I picked this as my first piece because there’s quite a bit of different texture and I thought it would be an interesting start.  A few other things I want to scan, some of my art, different cards, basically anything I can find that I think looks interesting. I don’t exactly have plans, I just look for stuff I find mildly interesting and then hope that they will juxtapose well in the final piece, if not I’ll hopefully have a lot to work with. 

Since I don’t exactly know what I’m doing with this project, I’m sort of just scanning things and see where inspirations strikes when I have all these things scanned. I really want things that show texture and color and make things pop out more with contrasting colors and to play with saturation levels. Because there’s no tactility to a physical piece, what I can, I want to have a lot of different variations of texture to be able to get through the digital aspect. 

I do have experience with Photoshop, so I’m pretty good with navigating the different tools and combining all these images together. The problem I’m still facing is figuring out what I’m going to do with them and what exactly kind of story I want to tell. However, because I plan to scan a lot more in the next week, I’ll have a lot of stuff to work with and it will end up being something I can create a story out of. I am planning to go the Lynda Barry style route, just because I feel like it allows me more freedom to mesh all the digitized sources together, and also because I think it could be aesthetically pleasing to see such a mixture of things. 

On the first day of class when we were in the CDSC, I brought a sticker from where I work at the Student Entertainment Board note written to me by one of my best friends Emily, a card my Nana sent me, a few backstage passes from different shows I have been to this past year, and my business cards. After practicing with the scanner, I hope to bring something that I write on a piece of paper. I think that if I bring in a poem that I wrote (I think I will be able to find one that I wrote out in high school), I will be able to showcase both the texture that I want my project to have and it will also bring in things from my upbringing, instead of just current things. I also want to find some old tickets (movie or concert) and maybe a few old pictures (that I don’t have digital copies of). I think that these things would add a lot of personality to my project that current objects could not bring.

I think that these are all objects that are interesting for my digital comics collage because they are all important aspects of who I am as an individual. After deciding to focus on things that are important to making up who I am, I was able to add more texture to the scan. I really think that the amount of details the scanner can pick up, especially regarding the texture of each piece that I plan on scanning, makes this project really interesting. Since a lot of the things I want to scan are pretty flat, but still have texture, I think that it will be interesting to see how the depth of things like a journal, or backstage passes (with the lanyard attached), or even something like a Rubik cube will add to the entire comic as a whole.

I collected several items from my dorm room like polaroid photographs, letters from home, and an image of my parents on their wedding day as a way to start telling a story of my life, a more in depth and personal introduction into my life . As we started the scanning process, I instantly had more ideas for items to scan that would add on nicely to my comic collage story, I had no idea how creative and broad we could get with our ideas and items for scanning so I immediately got excited about how intricate and creative I could get with this project.

I plan on telling a story of my life growing up, my family, and all the little factors in my life that have made me who I am today. So, in addition to the items I have already collected, I want to scan memorable items I have brought with me to collage that tell a little story of my childhood and can better explain how I have become the person I am today. Whether it be art pieces, pencils, items from my sport, and more. I have this specific idea of scanning logos, because I was a part of so many sport programs, or the logo of my schools growing up, I think these would be a cool way of showing the programs and organizations that shaped me into who I am today. Art is also a huge part of my life, so I would love to bring in some of my art works and scan those. And then add in parts of my family to make my story and images more personal and meaningful to me. While the photo collage comic is less traditional to what many way categorize as a “comic” it will be important that all my collage images can flow nicely together and tell a story.

I brought a few things to the CDSC for class to scan. I tried to bring things that represented things from my life. The first thing I brought to class was my WSU beanie. The reason why the beanie represents a part of my life is because I go to WSU and it gets cold here. The second thing I brought to class was my workout gloves. The workout gloves represent that I enjoy working out. I only use them when my wrists are sore, so I do not injure my wrists. The type of workout I enjoy is calisthenics. Calisthenics is like body weight exercises for example handstand pushups. The last things I brought were playing cards and UNO cards. The cards are supposed to represent that I like playing games. Even though I do not play many card games and I usually just play online games. I still think the cards can represent games and provide more texture than if I just took an image from the game I play. 

Some of the things I plan to bring to scan is one of my t-shirts, a piece of cardboard, and maybe something from outside like a leaf or something. The reason why I think a t-shirt and a piece of cardboard would be good is because it will provide more texture to the project. I will be able to use the cardboard as a background image. For my t-shirt I can use the lettering and the design on it in my project. The reason why I think these would be interesting is because they will provide more texture and depth to the comic. I can scan things from outside to show I enjoy the outside. The things I enjoy outside is walking around and hanging out with friends. 

For this Blog Post, I was not able to scan in the CDSC during class but when I did get the chance the scan my items, I found it very interesting. To be able to digitalize objects and logos to use in art is amazing. Of course you can probably find the design or picture online but it is not the same as scanning. I feel like scanning an item has more of a story behind it because you are able to see the wear and tearoom the object or design. Next time, I will be considering scanning things with more depth because I would like to see how the shadows of the object changes the way it looks once it is scanned.

Before going to the CDSC, I could not think of anything that I wanted to create the project around and I looked for anything around my room. The first day of scanning at the CDSC I brought as many things that I can find that were in my room. The items consisted of a piece of paper, a few stickers, and other random items. Over time I have collected a few stickers here and there and thought they would best fit for the project. I noticed that out of everything that I collected most of them were stickers, but the rest was just random items that I could find. If I could add more items to the scan, I would try to find more stickers with different textures that would help better paint the picture I am envisioning for the project.

I think that adding more stickers to the project would help shape the vision that I am trying to create. With the items that I have scanned, I will be attempting to create a page from a sticker book. The randomness of the stickers and their conditions best represent how the inside pages of a sticker book would look like. I enjoyed seeing how Lynda Barry would take the randomness in her book and create it into something meaningful. I plan to gather my stickers and present them in a way that would tell a story is the same way she does in her work.

One of the stickers that I scanned was this shoe brand named “Supra”. I remember wearing them all the time when I was in middle school and I used too think they were cool. The sticker has aged a bit so it has a wrinkly feel to it as well as a few smudges that will bring texture to the project.

Some of the materials that I brought to CDSC to scan were small and flatter items. This includes my older and newer writing journals as I figured scanning line paper would be easier. I had also brought some movie tickets from the past few months. This is for I had thought that items had to be flat in order to be scanned. I was also unsure what exactly to bring. However, after the first scanning day, I realized that items having to be flat wasn’t the case as well that I actually had so much more that I could bring to scan. So some digital items I now consider digitizing are food wrappers, notecards given to me by those close to me, completed Japanese homework, and my favorite patches and pins. I think they will be interesting to use for my digital comics collage as these items vary in color, may have smaller messages that only I understand, and are items I recognize that define my past three years here at Washington State University. Some of these items conclude me being a vegetarian, and attending my friend’s Senior Ball, both pictured below.

On the first day to the CDSC, I wasn’t sure what I would bring, and looked towards other people for inspiration. What I did have was the things in my pockets, and after giving it a couple days of thought, I think the things in my pockets are a great showcase of items to include in my digital collage. For one, I carry the same 4 items in my pockets every day, no matter what. Phone, wallet, keys, air pods. Those four items have been in my pockets for years now, with no change, no difference, plus my keychain has a couple cool and important objects to me. When thinking of things I can bring that are important to me, nothing is more important that the things I carry on me every single day.

I’ll probably bring a pair of jeans to scan and imitate the things flying out of them, making a narrative as well as a showcase of several items. The air pods could be out of the case, hurling in different directions. Since each of these objects are very small I’ll have to consider spacing to decide if it’s enough to look like a full collage, but I was thinking I might layer the background with different hoodies or shirts to give it a more personal feel. Even though I consider the things in my pockets very important they aren’t completely unique, so some different shirts may give it a more “me” feel. I also have some good doodles in my school journals, and I take notes in a unique way so if that turns out nice I also may include that in my collage. It’s difficult to find flat items to scan for this project, especially since I don’t have the comfort of home objects, but hopefully this will be a great start and I can figure out how to add onto it as needed.

For our first scanning day at the CDSC, I bought a couple of tools that I typically use when drafting as it was revolving around my theme for the project, which was Architecture (the career that I want to pursue in the future). Some of these items include:

• Architect ruler
• A regular 12 inch aluminum ruler
• Two drafting mechanical pencils
• Two drafting pens
• Two large isometric triangles
• A compass and protractor
• a crumbled up grid paper
• A drawing plan of a building
• And two polaroid photos

After attending the class and looking at what other people has brought, I wanted to add some more items into my collection of things to scan that would be most fitting to my theme. Some of these items included:

• Textile/color swatches sample cards:
  • To add more texture and color into the comic
  • To create a story of having to choose different materials and color when designing a building
• Adding drawings and writings into the crumbled up grid paper
  • To add some dimension within the paper
  • To make the paper look more interesting to look at, rather than just showing a blank, crumbled up grid paper
  • To add more details into the empty spaces within the paper