Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For this project, I knew I wanted it to be about my hometown of Seattle. I have been pretty homesick recently and it helped remind me of the things I love about my city. My original idea was to have each of my comic squares attached to a certain point of the Seattle skyline but I felt that it looked really scattered and disorganized which bothered me, so I ended up placing my squares at the bottom.

Seattle by Helena Matheson

There is no specific way that you need to read the comics but I think they’re naturally read in a left-to-right order. I think when you first look at my comic you see where it says “SEATTLE”, then the skyline, and then the comics at the bottom. I think some examples of closure are shown in a couple of my squares through Scott McCloud’s action-to-action. My favorite action comic is the one of the ice skate, because I think it plays in your mind the action of someone actually skating in a loop. I tried to use minimal words in this project because I didn’t think they were really necessary. The few words that I did use were for the title and then also for the Pikes Place comic and the 5th Avenue Theater, because it would be pretty hard to tell where exactly I was talking about if I hadn’t directly labeled them as such.

This was not my first time using Illustrator but I think that this project taught me a lot about it. I really enjoyed learning about the image trace capability because I have never used it before but I think that it added a lot to my project and makes it look higher quality. I think the skyline draws viewers through the Space Needle being such a well known icon. I’m glad that I was able to use the image trace for it because I fear my own drawing of the space needle would be harder to recognize. My favorite tool I used was the straight line tool, because it is very versatile snd helped create many of my items.

Final Poster “Dog’s Dream Day”

My inspiration for this poster came from me thinking about my dog back home. I was thinking about what he might enjoy doing, and decided to make my poster about thay. My comic breaks the timeline norm because it does not read in a determined consecutive order. My art inspiration came from looking at cartoons of dogs so I could see how to best draw them, and then I added different characteristics to my drawings. The reader can go in any order to see the comic, but I made the first scene (the dog sleeping) larger than most so the reader starts there. The comic shows what I would think my dog, and any dog, might be dreaming about when they sleep and what their perfect day would look like with a cartoony style. The passage of time did not really have a role in my comic because I wanted to show scenes that would be in a dog’s dream. I think my strategy is inventive because most comics have panels to follow, but my comic is more of a scatter of scenes with no real order.

This is not my first time using illustrator. I tried to make the scenes detailed with different colors and movements for the dog to do. I did have difficulty with he different angles of the dog’s face and that is something I wish I would have put more time into, and I feel that this was a limitation because it was difficult to make the dog look the exact same at different angles. I wanted to instill the feeling of a dream into the comic so I left a lot of white space, like the dog is in a clouded perspective.my iconography is only the title of the comic at the top, simply so the reader knows what is happening in the scenes. The tutorial techniques I used the most were distorting the shapes and creating curved lines with the pen tool. The thought bubbles on the outside of the scenes might guide the reader, but it would not make any difference if they read it in another order.

When I was at the art museum most of the stuff that I liked were ironically from the same artist, Mita Mahoto. I really liked her concepts and also her cute, bubbly designs. The one I chose in particular is called Unidentified Feeling Object. It was about a ufo that accidentally dropped a heart into the earth. It shows how love is something hard to explain scientifically or make sense out of, its just a feeling we can’t explain either if it’s the kind of love that you have for your friends and family or the type of love that you have towards a significant other.

In these pages you can see the horizontal lines on the left side of the ufo indicating that the ufo is flying by very fast and in a hurry. Also in these frames you can see that they are movement to movement which creates very little closure in between. I really liked how the artist used the two frames and made her comic more 3-D by having the heart get stuck in between one of the frames making the heart fall from the sky. I really think it’s clever how she did that. 

On this page you see the heart fall to the earth by following the squiggly line. You can tell that the heart is falling down and not up because of how we read comic, left to right, top to bottom. I think even without very many words it is a story that is easy to follow and I really liked how the artist kept it lighthearted while still creating a deep meaning to the story. I thought this was relatable and a really cute story that represents the mystery of love. 

Art has been something hasn’t done much for me. I’ve enjoyed landscapes and the vast beauty that the nature in Western Washington has, but non-natural art has never been something that has made sense nor spoken to me. Throughout my college experiences and growing as an individual, I’ve come to appreciate art and the many forms it comes in, especially the messages that these artists are trying to portray.

Out of all the art that we had the opportunity to observe this past Tuesday, Eroyn’s image of this fantastical home burning with the assumed family peacefully sitting in front of the destruction struck a cord with me. The intense blues, often signifying sadness and depression are interrupted with the calm orange of the family, sitting in the lawn staring at the blazing inferno. The scene is almost blissful admits the chaos. It seems as if the burning house brings calmness and freedom to the four individuals.

If I were the one living in this art, I would be terrified, calling the fire department and trying to salvage anything I could from the house. House fires are one of the most devastating things a family with a decent income can go through. Not only are those affected left with nowhere to stay, but a house represents family, and contains all those memories and belongings. By the house’s size you can determine whoever owned it was decently well off; Its not some shanty shack. But even then, the family isn’t panicking, and the smoke coming off the house reinforces that feeling.

The plain white smoke, in a singular white color. A sense of new begging as if the smoke is clearing the artist’s canvas for new and exciting things. This picture isn’t just depicting the end of a home, but the beginning of whats to come. The blue’s that cover the majority of the canvas are of varying shades and dimensions, bringing emotion and change to the situation, but the white is pure and clear. Time is frozen in this still art piece, but there isn’t panic or fear; freedom and tranquility are what overcome this tragic scene.

“Abruption” by Taylor Dow
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The work of art I chose to write my blog post about is called “Abruption”, by Taylor Dow. I chose this work of art because I related to it the most when we went on our visit to the WSU Art Museum Collection Study Center. To me, Taylor Dow is expressing a feeling that most people have experienced, one that I have experienced many times in my life.

In the work of art, there is a tall white figure that touches the tip of his finger to a floating bright ball of light. As the figure touches the ball of light, a shadowy figure slowly starts to appear. The shadowy figure is the same height and even has the same hairstyle as the white figure. As soon as the shadowy figure has fully appeared, it takes the floating ball of light with two hands and swallows it whole. With the ball of light shining bright within the shadowy figures stomach, he walks away with his head down, leaving the white figure alone and confused.

“Abruption” by Taylor Dow
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To me, this work of art expresses how quickly or “abrupt” negative thoughts or feelings can come up even after experiencing a tiny bit of happiness. I have had this happen to me many times before. I’ll experience a happy moment with friends or family, or I’ll accomplish a goal that I’ve set for myself, and immediately after having that happy moment negative feelings start to creep up, ultimately making me feel low for the remainder of the day or sometimes for even longer.

“Abruption” does an excellent job of showing the passing of time within the artwork. The image that does this the best is in the third panel of the second page. In this panel, Taylor Dow shows the shadowy figure slowly appearing by using small black dots to

“Abruption” by Taylor Dow
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represent the particles slowly coming together to form the shadowy figures hand.