Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

My experience while I was creating my comic on print was a completely different experience versus creating my comic on a computer. The comic that I created was just a short introduction of myself to the class. I created four separate panels with the first one just about where I am at in the school year. The next was about my future goals, the third was my hobbies, and finally, the last one was a short fun fact that I love pugs. As I was creating the print comic I found it very relaxing due to the fact that I love to doodle and make art by hand. I didn’t seem to run into many issues except for the more artistic ones such as getting the right perspective and such. Also, I just felt like I had more control over what I was able to draw on a piece of print rather than a computer. 

The digital comic I created was just a recreation of the print comic. As I created the digital comic, I knew I had to dumb down the art style a bit because of how I was completely inexperienced with photoshop tools. I looked up tutorials in order to get the basics of a comic down such as making boxes for the images and circles for faces. There were just too many functions in photoshop that it took me almost twenty minutes just to make the boxes for the comic. I will say that when comparing them side by side, I enjoy the clean look that the digital piece has over the print. Overall I did have a better experience working on print than digitally, but hopefully, with more practice and tutorials, I should have an easier time working on comics in the future. 

I found that my comic gave more gestural mode through the panels showing me hitting a tennis ball, thinking about my future, and holding the pug up in praise. I, unfortunately, could not express much visual mode, especially in the digital comic as it didn’t contain any color or special handwriting in the speech bubbles. I didn’t have much aural mode as well due to the fact that there weren’t any sound effects. If I were to redo it right now I would give the pug a noise and the tennis ball a bouncing effect. After reading chapter one of “Understanding Comics” I was shown many different styles and forms that comics could take. The layouts where one box could go on to be two pages, speech bubbles can carry on to the next panel, etc. I hope to incorporate more of these styles into my future works.

I drew two comics, but I had trouble thinking about what I wanted to make for the comics. The reason why I was having trouble is because I am not very creative, and I am not very good at drawing/creating things. But after a while of thinking for the hand drawn comic I decided on doing an introduction for myself. So, I drew a stick figure of myself for the first frame saying my name to introduce myself. In the second frame I said something I like which is handstands. In the last frame I drew myself again but in a handstand.

I came up with the idea of my second comic because I was procrastinating on doing a writing assignment because I do not enjoy writing. The comic has two frames. The first frame is me saying “Oof I have to write” with the laptop open to a word document. For the second frame it is me saying “I will just do it later :)” which is showing that I was procrastinating on writing.

For the hand drawn comic, it felt like I had more freedom hand drawing the comic than it did when I used Paint on my computer. But I think the comic I made on the computer looked better than the hand drawn one.

The difference from reading a comic from online and on paper is that reading a comic online can take away from the sequence the frames are put in. The sequence of the frames can affect how you decide to read the comic.

I made my digital comic before reading the first chapter of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”. But I can see how reading it first can help getting ideas. The first gives examples of different comics and defines what a comic is.

Making a comic was something new to me. I have never made a comic before so this was all a learning experience. The first comic was my hand drawn comic. I had fun with this one. I was able to draw what I wanted and work on all the details. I used paper, markers, and colored pencils. Then I made a digital comic. This was much harder for me, I wasn’t able to get everything the same way I wanted. This was all brand new. I am not used to working on a computer so I had to take time to figure it out, unlike drawing where I was able to just get started. I used google slides to make a table and then I spent about an hour and a half playing with the tools to start my comic. I had to make a much simpler comic due to not having the skills. I still created a comic that I am extremely proud of. Both comics show different sides of my not only in the comic itself but in the process of making them as well.

When reading a comic I find it very different between paper and digital. With paper you have more of a chance to look at all the fine details and it can be made with many more techniques. With the digital comics I feel it is easier to just rush through them. I don’t feel that I read them at the same rate. Print helps me focus more on the artwork, I feel.

As for the reading from Scott McCloud I don’t really think I changed my comic. I think it only made me think me about what a comic is and how it goes together. I was more aware of my sequential art and the information being convey but it did not change my artwork or form.

In drawing theses two comics I personally found it to be easier to draw on paper rather than online. I found it more challenging to use programs to draw digitally because I do not have as much experience using a digital tool. I found that with drawing on paper, it was easier to make mistakes and I had more freedom in making artistic decisions. Reading a comic on paper feels more personable to me, rather than a digitized version. In creating my hand-drawn comic, I tried to show different types of frames. I used stick figures to keep my design simple, but the message is still clear enough. I found it harder to convey more complex images using a digital media tool.

Creating a printed comic, which was our first project was a very easy assignment because of the freedom of expression and how easy it is to draw a simple comic. Making a small four slide comic about myself was both easy, and turned out how I wanted. Creating a digital comic was a little bit more difficult because of a few factors. I am not as efficient with digital tools, the one I used being Illustrator, so the freedom that I have is limited to my abilities. The benefits of making a printed comic was that it was fast and easy to make, I could draw nearly anything I wanted, and I could easily manage how it was organized. A few drawbacks for the printed comic was that the quality is not as good as something printed. The benefits of creating a digital comic were being able to have a structured and organized digital work space, and having a high quality product at the end of the creation process. The drawbacks of making the digital comic was that my skills are limited, therefore what ever I create has to be fairly simple to construct. Reading the first chapter of “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud helped paint a more vivid picture of what comics are and what you can express through it. Most people have a very narrow view of what comics are and what kind of messages are passed through them. For my comics, I shared pieces of my life in artistic ways to create meaning in my comics.

I have a small bit of experience trying to draw comics — most of the time they don’t go anywhere. Both my hand drawn and my digital comic were styled quite similarly with panels and varying text boxes. In drawing the digital comic, I used Photoshop which I have very beginner experience with. In general, I would rather draw by hand because there is a pretty big learning curve when translating it digitally — at least in my experience. There is a little more room to make mistakes in digital drawing because at least you won’t leave eraser and old pencil marks in the space. However, I feel like there’s less control in digital drawing.

In reading comics on paper versus digitally, I don’t find much of a difference. The only major difference to me is preference. I’m not much a fan of reading things on a computer, I’d rather have a physical copy in my hands to read from. My brain just process is a bit better than having something on a screen. Personally though, reading is reading and while I prefer to read a hard copy, I think there is little difference in the two. But I also don’t happen to give myself a lot opportunities where I read with a screen.

My hand-drawn comic, I feel, played a lot more into the descriptions of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” because it uses more of the “sequential art” than my digital comic. Although, I would say it was just cause I ran out of ideas and had used my good ones for my hand-drawn comic. If anything though, I was very interested in his art style and the mix of cartoon with others as well.

For the two different Comics I decided to go with different formats to express different styles. The hand drawn comic is more personal and is something I can relate to being a college student. We talked about the difference between a comic that is made by hand with pencil, that is what I went for with the hand drawn comic. The format of the hand drawn comic is just a one image. there is only one panel or frame and it expresses an overall opinion towards the comic’s subject.

For the Digital comic I went with something a bit more typical. I decided to go with a four panel comic. The comic uses the frame to display two different images: the table with the pile of money and the cupcake, and the image of the man who is observing the table. I used some effect that i saw from McCloud’s text where I use the second frame of the man to get more personal and deliver some effect to the twist of the comic.

Personally, at this point in time I preferred the hand drawn approach to creating my comic because I feel that it was easier to plan out and more accessible than using a digitized software. Everyone at some point in their life has picked up a paper and pen and drawn, wrote, doodled, colored, scribbled, etc. Even though I am not a great artist, I felt I had more freedom with the paper. However, I feel as though as I learn more about digital softwares I will prefer to create comics in that form. The reason being is that I have never been an advanced artist by hand, and that is something that I have struggled with. If I can learn how to create art digitally where I am not relying on the steadiness of my hand, or ability to create a recognizable image, I would succeed and enjoy the work far more. Attached are each of my comics. You will notice that neither comic is very advanced. I found an online comic generator that used clip art of already created characters that I thought could represent me.

For both comic strips I used mostly linguistic and visual mode. In both of my comics, there is an image of what is supposed to represent me. I am explaining that I am not very artistic, however I am excited to learn more and build my skill base during the class. There are speech bubbles with words that represent the linguistic mode, and images of me, a computer and a plant that are the visual mode.

I think that this will be a good “before” image for my digital technology “before and after” on my journey to learn more about comics, designing creative works digitally and becoming more educated on tips and tricks.

When comparing drawing digitally versus drawing by hand there is a distinct difference between how precise each line done when drawing for example curves or straighter lines. There is also the difference of being able to have cleaner work digitally versus hand-drawn because you can work without the worry of messing up your drawing by drawing a line you don’t wish to put making it more carefree. The benefit of handwriting is you have more freedom and ability to examine your work from all angles when compared to the to the restrained digital versions. Reading the first chapter of the text and giving me the idea of using panels to the best express my progression of my artwork over the years.