Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Digital Comics Collage

In this post, I pay homage to my inspirations through digitizing physical materials and curating graphic art in a Digital Comics Collage. Clothing brands, sports teams, musicians, and movies are all inspirations of mine that are present in this collage. The images of these influences are not alone, however, as they are all connected to each other and to words to create one coherent product. I think that Scott McCloud would agree that this collage fits under his definition of comics, as the two panels are juxtaposed not only to each other, but the city skyline background as well. In addition, this fits the definition because these graphics are all intended to “produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” Utilizing concepts like balance, color contrast, and direction from John Lovett’s Design Overview helps to keep the comic visually interesting and to define layers and flow. Balancing this collage are the two panels boarded by pink and blue in the top left and bottom right, respectively. This allows the viewer to give their attention to the comic in a way they naturally would, rather than having their attention be pulled to the blue panel if the pink panel wasn’t there.

As far as making the composition of these materials and images mean something, they each in someway inspire or have inspired me. One of the heavy influences for this collage is the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I talked about briefly before in my digital comic. It contributes to the comic collage through a couple quotes, the background, the character at the center of the page, and the colorful “glitched” clouds. In addition, at the bottom of the blue panel, there is a row of small Oscar Award-like figures. That figure is from the cover of the album DiCaprio 2 by JID, which is what I listened to for most of the time I created this project. The words in this comic that stand out to me are the two yellow dialogue boxes because of how they feel to me as a viewer. Because these boxes are not constrained to a panel, it allows the words to live in the city skyline and take up more “space” in the viewer. The words feel alive this way, like the character is yelling as they are falling up the page.

Screenshot from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse showing Spider-Man “glitching”

Creating this Digital Comics Collage was the first time that I had sued Adobe Photoshop since about 2012 when I was in 6^th grade, but I feel as though I have been able to adapt to it quickly. The tutorials in general were a big help because it took things very step-by-step and it was east to follow. As expected, I had to make many selections, but I think one of things that was more important than I thought was being able to layer things effectively. Fortunately, I think I did a good job of figuring out the nuances of those mechanics. Overall, I really enjoyed creating this poster, especially in a digital environment. One of the main advantages of creating in a digital environment is that you have more freedom to try things that may otherwise seems too hard or too risky to try with physical creations. For example, I was able to adjust the hue and saturation of the clouds in the background to make an Into the Spider-Verse reference. That reference is that the “glitched” clouds are influenced by when Spider-Man “glitches” in the movie creating a similar feel. All in all, I am very please with the finished product of my Digital Comics Collage.

Created by Joseph Alonso, September 2019

The first thing that I scanned when preparing for this project was a piece of duct-tape.  I didn’t even know what I was going to go for in my final project.  The second thing I scanned was the chain on a Chain Chomp plushie that I keep in my dorm.  I started thinking about what makes these things special and why I should use them, then it hit me.  I would make my collage based on things that are important to me.  I first decided to use the chain and duct-tape to reference connections between different images, one of the images being of myself.  I would have the chains connecting images to me to show that they are important to me, and the duct-tape to connect similar things.

The first thing I connected to myself was my BSA wallet emblem, to show my connection to Scouting.  I have been a Boy Scout since I was in middle school, starting in the Bear rank, and working my way up to Eagle.  The next item I connected to myself was the green jeep and snake that I got off an Indiana Jones FastPass ticket.  I also stuck two googly eyes from my Chain Chomp plushie to it.  This represents my love for adventure stories, along with a healthy dose of comedy.  The googly eyes are also supposed to be a subtle nod to the Banjo-Kazooie series, which fits the description of a comedic adventure.

The next thing I connected to myself was an image of a badger that I got from a Northwest Trek ticket.  This represents my love for animals and going to the zoo, though my favorite zoo to visit is Point Defiance.  The final images that I connected to myself was a simple drawing of a game controller and a person doing some platforming, held together by duct-tape to represent my love for games that have a basis in platforming.  The background of the collage is a small section taken from my phone case to represent my affinity for technology.

This was my first time ever using Photoshop.  The most important tool that I used was the background eraser tool, which helped me isolate the chains from their white backgrounds, along with the Chain Chomp eyes from their surrounding colors. Learning how layers worked was also important in making sure the chains did not cover up the images connected to mine, as well as me.

“Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”. Scott McCloud’s definition of a comic in his book, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art can fit a wide variety of artistic work and personally broadened my understanding of what a comic is, and what a comic could be. When beginning this project, I instantly knew what I wanted to make based on McCloud’s definition of a comic. I decided to make a collage comic to summarize the experiences and adventures me and my girlfriend, Tabby, have made over the last 3.5 years. Most of these items are very specific to the experiences we had together, and the audience is the two of us and those where were there along the way. This comic is something that I would post on a blog or print out and hang on my wall, and not something that would go into a newspaper as a conventional ‘comic’.

Each item in the comic portrays our relationships’ journey through the years, from high school sweethearts to our junior year at university. The comic is split up in four sections, each representing a year of our relationship. The first (top left) quadrant depicts our fall semester of our senior year (2016) at Lake Stevens High School. The second quadrant (top right) is our final semester of high school and the senior dinner dance and prom that are some of the peaks of our high school years, as well as the first semester of school at WSU (2017). The bottom left quadrant is our first ‘real’ year at WSU, 2018, when we started making college friends, I joined a fraternity and we still had money to spare. The bottom right quadrant (2019) is a bit more ‘controlled’ than the rest of the quadrants, as we are entering our junior year of college and becoming adults. The black jersey as the backdrop is Gardner Minshew II’s Jaguars jersey that we both purchased after his performances last year at WSU and his journey to a starting QB in the NFL. The playing cards were a fun way to show what year the comic was made, spelling out ‘2019’ with the joker as the 0. The card ‘3’ at the bottom is meant to depict how many years we’ve been together. While there are 4 quadrants, we haven’t yet celebrated our 4^th anniversary. These playing cards, along with everything else in the comic, were little parts from our biggest adventures that I’ve kept in a memory box.

This comic is amazing to me; being able to put these items together and tell our story with snapshots of our past. The separate quadrants, each with their own aura, show the juxtaposition under McCloud’s definition of a comic and are ordered by year, a deliberate sequence. To follow some of John Lovett’s Design Overview information, I made sure to keep the colors different, but also avoided keeping all of one color within a single quadrant. The WSU jersey is the background for quadrant 3 but the ticket stub and the pamphlet are in quadrant 4, to keep a flow to the comic. I did not add a linguistic mode to my comic, but within most of the pieces are written information giving context to when, where and what each item describes.

As for my experience in Photoshop, I have taken a photography class and a digital technology class where we primarily used Photoshop for editing. The tutorials taught me new ways to make selections that allowed me to alter pictures in a more realistic fashion. I thought about using masks and shadowing but decided not to, as the comic is supposed to have a more realistic feel, as if this could be pinned on a wall. I love the wide variety of uses that a digital landscape has to offer and creating this on bulletin board would have been far more difficult and not as polished as my digital final product.

I made my collage with items that I find dear to me and convey stories and information about me. Each item says something about my background even though

A collage telling my interests and stories about me. (Edward Bernays, 1923) (Gesta Hungarorum, by: Anonymous,~1200AD)

the meaning may not be obvious. I hope that my collage can be an interesting piece for viewers to grow their curiosity about me and possibly draw their own judgement and stories about me, before having them dispelled or reaffirmed from reading this blog post.

I purposely put each item in its position next to more relevant items to achieve harmony and follow an overall message of introducing myself through showing different aspects of myself. The top is politics related which shows my love of studying politics. It shows my background with the Romanian revolutionary flag from 1989 anti-Ceausescu protests which my family fled to the America to avoid. I replaced the normally hollow center with the mechanism from a watch to reflect that the overthrow of Ceausescu still impacts Romania and its people today. I also have a page from Gesta Hungarorum, that chronicles the Hungarian history by an anonymous writer which I am very proud of as I am related to the Arpad Dynasty. I am Hungarian from my fathers side, and Romanian from my mothers side of the family. While I was born In the USA. I put a book in the political upper section on the left side as my Hungarian side of the family was always more analytical while the Romanian side was more emotional. The book “Crystallizing Public Opinion” is very valuable for me as it not only opened my view on politics but gave me the inspiration to go back to college and pursue my Marketing bachelors.

The Lower Section I used a leather passport case as the background. This was a gift from my girlfriend and I especially use it in this collage not only because it has a more sentimental value but because I use to do leather work as a meditative hobby. It was very relaxing for me, which is why I chose to use it to be the background for another interest of mine which is world religions. The icon in the bottom left is a gift from my mother who would often go to different churches and try to bring back icons for my brother and I. The Buddha also reflects my explorations of other religions, although i do not have any symbols from other religions that I could have put into my collage.

Tying all these things together is my passport along with some Thai coins (which are oriented to the bottom of the collage as it is more sentimental). The Thai 10 baht coins are from my recent trip to Thailand with my girlfriend. The passports center orientation is to reflect my love of studying and experiencing cultures, politics, religion and business of different countries.

I also put the watch mechanism and the icon on separate corners of the collage so that they do not seem like they are 1 item at a quick glance. Their contrast to the colors around them keeps them meaning something quite separate, where as if they where near viewers might associate them easily because of their similar color. I followed John Lovett’s “Design Overview” in terms of size as I aimed to make the coins seem more “real” as they are pretty accurately proportional to an US passport.

This was my first time using Photoshop. I have used a free equivalent called “Gimp” before, and some of that know-how transferred over. I am still very new to image editing as I don’t even use filters for any social media. I had very many Geometric shapes that could be easily selected using the Marquee selection tool so that was by far the most useful tool. Despite the simplicity I still had to go back and re watch tutorials and do many quick google searches to find how to do things. Since I feel I am still not skilled enough I do not really enjoy nor dislike using Photoshop. I am neutral but probably will not delve into it much on my own.

Digital Comic Collage by Eddie Abellar, Fall 2019.

My digital comic collage fits Scott McCloud’s definition of a comic because it produces an aesthetic for the viewer to respond to. Although there is no specific sequence to view the collage, the images that were used work together to form a comprehensible work of art. While I was creating this comic collage the principles and elements of design I made sure to focus on were shape, contrast, and repetition with variation. The images that were used to create the collage were random things that I found in my room and kitchen. I juxtaposed these images to create a person out of them. The idea behind creating a person out of random objects that I scanned is to help the viewer relate to the collage by using certain objects that the viewer may have used in the past such as a fork or a quarter.

This was not my first time using Photoshop but I would still consider myself a beginner because this was my first big project done using Photoshop. I learned a lot from watching the tutorials in class. One new thing that I learned in photoshop was the select and mask space when making selections. This space was really good for fine tuning selections in the overlay view. I used the select and mask space a lot when creating this collage. Other tools I used to create this collage were the quick selection tool, lasso tool, magnifier tool, brush tool, elliptical marquee and rectangular marquee tools. All of these tools were essential to creating the necessary body parts to create a person out of the random objects I scanned. I really enjoyed working on this project and working in Photoshop. Working in Photoshop felt like digital arts and crafts which was a lot of fun.