Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

I created two comics, one hand drawn, and the other using Adobe Illustrator. The first comic I made is the hand drawn comic. In the hand drawn comic I made it about myself and some of the things that go on in my life. I started in my home town of Kirkland, Washington and went from there. I mainly just used some of the things I do during my time at WSU like, living in a fraternity, working for Athletic Marketing, and watching the Seahawks. There was a big difference when creating the comics. When I was making the hand drawn comic I just used paper and pencil. This makes it easier to drawn what you are thinking, but it doesn’t look as good as a digital comic. The benefits for creating a hand drawn comic are that you can use your drawing skills to create the image you want for your comic, and you can easily make changes to your work. The drawbacks to creating a comic by hand are that if you don’t try your hardest it wont look as good as a digital comic, also you can’t be as precise when making lines and colors.

The second comic I created was the digital comic through Adobe Illustrator. In this comic I just made the first thing to pop in my head which ended up being a comic about trees having a baby tree and regretting it. The comic that I made is very simple yet visually appealing. I think that the simplicity of the comic helps it look better. Sometimes less is more. When I was making this comic it definitely took longer than the hand drawn comic because I had to re-learn how to use adobe illustrator. In this case the hand drawn comic was easier but I think in the end the digital comic turned out nicer and better looking. In all both ways of making a comic are effective in their own ways and it just depends on which kind of look you are going for. You can make a hand drawn comic look better than a digital one if you really try and vice versa. Both ways of a comic can work for your idea as long as you are able to share your message.

By: Daniel Blanchard

For my first DTC 201 project, I was prompted to create 2 separate comics, one by hand and one digital drawn. the comic above is the first one I created by hand with a pencil and hints of a marker. This hand-drawn comic was a challenge for me because as you can see I am not the best drawer. In each one of the boxes, there is a different important scenario or place that express who I am and how I spend my time. I am a perfectionist, so a stick figure comic wouldn’t be enough for me, this is why I tried my best at attempting drawing non-stick figure characters. It worked out well but I feel that the more I practice the more I will improve my freehand skills. For this particular comic, I started by expressing my love for music, I am an artist and have been making music for a little over a year now. This is something I enjoy doing in my free time and is what actually got me interested in being a DTC major. I make all of my album/single covers and have been using photoshop and other programs for a while so I am able to not only express myself through music but also my artwork. for the next box, I drew a picture of the I-5 bridge that connects Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR. This is just a big landmark where I’m from and thought it’d be the best one to show for Vancouver. The third box is a picture I redrew of my baby sister and puppy. And the last box is a representation of where my Girlfriend goes to college, I showed this because I spend most of my time with her.

The Benefit of drawing a comic by hand is the fact that you can draw what is in your head with no limitations. Also, you are able to draw you comic by hand wherever and essentially whenever you want too, no limitations to a computer/device.

This comic above is my digital comic, made with photoshop, believe it or not, this took me less time to make than my hand-drawn comic. This comic is made with images taken of me from a couple nights out, once I added the images I threw a filter on them and added text bubbles, a gun, and blood splatter. i then put all of the images and inserts together and added text. This was very enjoyable to make because you are able to add images or draw something digitally and add effects and filters you could not show in hand-drawn comics.

Doing the digital comic compared to the hand-drawn was very different but both were enjoyable to make. having the convenience to draw whatever you are imagining with a pencil is a feeling that every artist or creative thinker loves. But the things you can do to alter images or create certain animated characters is something special that I think more and more people are beginning to appreciate.

The first comic I made for this class was the hand drawn comic. I think that I was able to made the hand drawn comic more detailed and it meant more to me compared to when I made the online comic. First of all, for the hand drawn comic all I used was a pencil and paper. It was super easy to use and I was able to do whatever I wanted, whatever my drawing skills would allow me to do. For the webcomic I used Microsoft Paint. I used this because I have never made art online and I had no idea what I was doing. Going into both of these comics I had no artistic skill and I didn’t know what I was doing. In the end I think that the hand drawn comic is better visually, but I think that my webcomic is better for a story that I wanted to be told. Some benefits when I made the hand comic was that I was able to do whatever I wanted, there was no restrictions to what I could and couldn’t do. One of the drawbacks when I was making my hand drawn comic was that I wasn’t able to duplicate frames. For example, if I had to draw the same thing for multiple frames, I would have to redraw every one of them and they wouldn’t look the same. A benefit for when I made the webcomic was that it was easy to use and I had a variety of tools that I otherwise wouldn’t have. A con to the webcomic was that because I was new at making an online comic, it was really hard to figure out how to use all the tools and I wasn’t able to get what I wanted onto the screen. It felt more precise and artificial than if I just drew it on paper. A difference between reading a comic on paper versus online is that the online comic lacks a bit more detail than a paper comic. The online comic I wasn’t really able to see all the smaller details and the paper one I was able to see all the different marks and the smaller techniques that were using in order to get the comic to look the way it does. When I read the first chapter of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”, it did give me a few ideas. My first comic didn’t tell a story and it was more of a collage of what I like and liked to do. I read the chapter and afterwards I really liked how he could tell a story within a few pictures. It wouldn’t matter how precise and how detailed the comic was, as long as it made sense it was fine. So, for my second comic I told the story of how my first Dungeons and Dragons session went. It wasn’t pretty, but it told a story.

I think drawing my comic was easier and faster because it was hand drawn. I got to draw what I wanted and I also got to choose how much detail I wanted to put in. The only bad thing about hand drawn is that my art skills are not the best and it’s hard to draw people. I like doing a digital comic because it is colorful, organized and I didn’t have to draw the images so they look very well. I think people can tell what is what and what s going on in my digital comic because of the images. The thing I didn’t like about doing the comic digital is that it took longer to make. Having to find the perfect images on google and then making the boxes on word. Both my comic don’t have words, just pictures. But I think they are easy to read in both hand drawn and digital because it is a very simple comic. Reading the first chapter did help me create my digital comic.

Hand-drawn comics are open to so much creativity. When making a hand-drawn comic, you do not have to worry about being limited to a lack of knowledge about using computer softwares. With colored pencils, you are free to do whatever you want and you are only limited by your own imagination. Anything I wanted to make happen would happen on this piece of paper. It can, however, be tedious work having to color in all the backgrounds and hand draw all the objects and people.

Digital comics are a lot quicker to make. Software tools allow you to make perfect shapes and sizes that can be adjusted at any time if you make a mistake. Digital comics allow for someone to create much quicker than they would be able to with hand-drawn comics. I was limited to the software I had access to and the limit of my knowledge using that software. This limited my ability to create a digital comic and with more practice my digital comics would improve. I believe that digital comics express less creativity than traditional hand-drawn comics because traditional comics possess more natural artistic ability and a higher degree a variability or uniqueness.

To be honest, my drawing skills are definitely not as developed as I’d like them to be. As you can see, my original hand-drawn comic looks pretty terrible. However, my best work usually doesn’t come from sketching things in less than two-minutes. But in the interest of time, it was more of a rough draft/means of getting the idea out on paper.

Drawing by Hand

Drawing by hand has a lot of benefits for the creator. The freedom that comes with picking up a marker, pen, pencil, etc. and freely drawing on a page is something that can be pretty hard to replicate using a digital tool. There are a lot of programs and tools available to artists that combine both the freedom of hand drawing and the benefits and flexibility of creating vector-based graphics. However, without a ruler or a steady hand, drawing can be pretty difficult for those of us that do not practice as often–as with any craft. Personally, drawing/sketching works for me in terms of getting an idea out on the page.

Digital Tools

Using Digital Tools, in this case Adobe Illustrator, was a lot more intuitive for me when creating my comic. This is due to my prior experience with Illustrator and other Adobe software.

Illustrator allows you to edit any portion of the comic at any time and allows you organize your layers and vectors in ways that makes sense to each individual user. Being able to create straight lines, shapes, and colors for every aspect of the comic, including writing text directly onto the comic, makes it very easy to use.

Drawbacks

Reading a comic digitally vs on a page is quite a different experience. Being able to physically hold a comic in your hands and see how an artist designed each page in relation to the next one doesn’t translate as easily on a digital platform.

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud opened up my mind when it came to creating a comic. He conveyed his lessons and key takeaways in creative ways that traditional textbooks and other forms of media cannot explore. The biggest takeaway for me is understanding that there are no rules to creating comics and what you can do. Outside of his definition of Comics, everything is what you make of it.

For the blog, I designed two comics that tell both a short story and a brief introduction about who I am.

The first comic is a drawn comic that focuses on a narrator’s perspective. By having two different fonts, it enables the viewers to easily differentiate the narrator’s voice versus my voice. The tools that I used when creating this comic is a fine black gel pen, a flat black calligraphy pen, and a white cardstock paper. Rather than using different colored pens, I varied the pressure of my pen to add shadow and depth to each character and object.

In the comic, my character is being introduced as a person whose hobby consists of arts and crafts. It also briefly depicts how despite my being bilingual, I don’t exactly enjoy socializing much with others.

For my second comic, I used the tools found on canva.com. With this free software, I was able to search up “stickers” and shapes and combine them together to form each character/object. Not only that, I was able to copy and paste the characters and objects to the next panel.

In the comic, the story is about me and my cat. Whenever she is sleeping, I would always try to sneak my way up to her to snuggle with her. Most of the time, she would wake up, ignore me, and just leave. She also really like sitting on my head or even my face when I am laying down.

When making the two comics, based on my previous skills, I personally find it much easier to create a drawn comic than a digital one. I have used digital tools to design posters and flyers before, however, I feel more comfortable when I have a pen/pencil in my hand than a mouse. With digital tools, it’s typically manipulating shapes and you are able to easily move/cut/change the design easily without a mess. When doing it right, I am able to keep the size of the character(s)/object(s) consistent. But with pen and paper, I can freely draw out certain lines and shapes that I am unable to draw out with the digital tool.

The benefits of a digital comic is that it allows me to make more mistakes and I can experiment more. It allows me to adjust sizes and ratios and to edit as I go. Digital also allows me to play with my colors more and allows me to give my work a more complete look. I could also copy and paste my work for the different panels, like for example my bear character, I could copy and paste and adjust the character as needed for my panel. The drawbacks of digital is that I have to rely on technology, it can malfunction and not save my progress. The program could also crash or the device I am working on could die if I am not paying attention.

The benefits of a hand drawn comic is that it allows for more critical thinking. For hand drawn I really had to think through placement and my color scheme, even though I went monochromatic. The drawbacks of hand drawn is that there is little room for error , there is no undo button and when I erase you can still faintly see what was there before. There is also the risk of losing my work or forgetting to bring it to work/class, if i had digital I could have multiple backups and not worry.

As I was reading the first chapter it didn’t really give me ideas for creating my comic, it just reaffirmed the basic ideas I had of comics. For example Scott McCloud stated that I don’t necessarily need to use words, but for both comics I decided to use captions/words because I felt that some of my panels needed it. However the reading did make me think about the use of color. Scott made it seem that comics don’t need to be fully flourished and that I could do a more simple color blocking over being super detailed with adding shadows and highlights.