Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For my comic, I wanted to create one that was very short but to the point, similar to the examples that Scott McCloud included in his book. For each panel, both the pictures and the words both depend on one another to covey the full meaning of the comic.

This comic is an exaggerated illustration of how I feel during the quarantine. Every day, the news media are always filled with bad news regarding coronavirus getting worse. It’s easy to pay attention to that but sometimes we all need a break.

The words at the bottom of the panels are a narrative of what the person is feeling. They’ve obviously grown tired of hearing the news. The “tick tock” around the clock depicts the passage of time and the clock functioning. While the words underneath guide the narrative, the words and the clock help illustrate the overall idea of the panel.

Then, I used a calendar to illustrate the passage of time on an even longer scale. While the months are still just words, it’s used positioned to reference a calendar. Also, the year shows just how long this person has been dealing with Covid-19 and has been in social distancing measures for.

In regard to McCloud’s word-picture combinations, I’d categorize this comic as duo-specific word-picture combination. This is because both the words and the pictures both work in conjunction with one-another without focusing predominantly on one or the other. Both the words and the pictures are inter-dependent on one another and both separately do not convey the entire message/meaning.

I used pen and paper again for this comic. Using these tools helped me depict a bit more of my personal way of drawing, rough around the edges while still communicating the message.

Working with this medium again, I noticed that little-by-little I’m getting slightly faster with my drawings. However, I need more practice to make the illustrations look cleaner.

For my comic this week, I created a scene where a car drives from Wyoming to Colorado. I used techniques from Scott McCloud’s, Understanding Comics. I used the additive combination of words and pictures and the interdependent technique in the first panel. The first panel is additive because the words add information to the image and the story. It is also interdependent because the words and pictures go hand in hand. The second panel uses the interdependent combination as well because the picture and the words go together to set the location. The second panel also could be considered a montage because the word is integrated into the image. The third panel uses the additive combination method because the words do not do anything except add information to the image. The fourth panel uses additive, montage, and interdependent. It is montage because the words in the sign are a part of the image. It is interdependent because both sentences go hand in hand with the image. It is additive because the words add information to the image to set the scene and describe the story. I used an app called sketchbook to create my comic. I assume it is very similar to illustrator but much more simple. I like using apps like sketchbook because it can make it really easy to create perfect shapes. It is especially easy to create the panels using a software, versus hand drawing the whole thing. I used a really long panel of the landscape to show that the car is driving for a long time. The only closure in the story is at the end when the car arrives at the destination. The viewer has no closure and has to assume what the reason is for the trip and who is in the car. I never put a person in my comic to make it more universal.

In this comic I decided to portray my idea of what I think everyone will be doing during the summer while we are quarantined. The comic shows a person with a long list of nothing to do for his day in quarantine. The man decides to lounge in the pool for the remainder of his day to relax.

This comic is more picture specific, as it shows words that go with the sequence of events displayed by the images. Scott McCloud explains the picture specific combination as a way to “ass a soundtrack to a visually told sequence” (McCloud, 153). To showcase this idea I drew a sequence of events and added some sound components as well as speech. Throughout this comic the use of words do a couple different things to add to the visual storyline. In the beginning the To-Do list gives the reader a glimpse into the storyline as well as the speech bubble above it, narrating the events. The use of time is also shown through time stamps at the top of each panel to indicate time passing as well as a following of the aforementioned schedule. The words also indicate sound when the phrases “aaaahhh” and “sluuurp” are used. These words alone can mean different things but when put into the context of these visual images, it creates a sense of relaxation. The use of these sound phrases with the images is an example of duo-specific. When alone, these words do not necessarily fit into the story or can be interpreted in different ways, but when paired with the images, the story makes better sense. This idea also relates to McCloud’s definition of interdependent word combinations because the words and images go together to convey the story, and neither of them could effectively do that alone.

For this comic I chose to work with pens, markers, and paper. I prefer this medium more than Illustrator because I feel I am able to control how I want the images to look better. When I am drawing I feel as though I have more control over my strokes, placement of images and words, and layout. I found it more difficult to control the way I drew in Illustrator and preferred this method more.

For this week I decided to make a comic or collage type of deal that depicts several different types of flowers and the point of it because I drew it in black and white was to imagine the colors each flower would have. While there is a title added to my drawing, “Find the Red Flower”, I still know that when someone where to look at the image and know the rose was the red flower. Why? Because roses are red, violets are blue and so on. While the wording itself works independently as instructions or a title, the images themselves act independently simply as what they are. Flowers, displayed across a page drawn by a simple graphite pencil. I feel that I used the word picture combination duo specific because without my instructions those looking at my writing may not understand what the point of the drawings are or what you are exactly supposed to do with it.  The tools and techniques that I used to create this comic was just a simple graphite pencil and my sketchbook. It had simplicity and detail to it all at once. My placement was very specific of each flower as well. I made sure the rose was the one to be full center of the page so that was hopefully the first thing many drew their eyes to. I know that this class is based on photoshop, but whenever I am given the chance to pick up my sketchbook and draw, I make sure to fully take on that opportunity. I love how I can draw lines on a page with no specific ending point and just see what my outcome will be. When making cartoons, especially ones accompanied by words, I try and keep them as simple as possible. Sure I could spend two hours drawing a beautiful realistic flower, but I love how simple some sketches can be but anyone who looks at the image will know exactly what the drawing is supposed to be. 

So for my comic I used 4 different squares to make a quick an easy flow of how to read my comic. 2 boxes on the top and two below. For my comic the first square is a person at the store asking to see who the owner is. In the next box to the right is a stinky old man who smells and has lots of flies around him. The third box is a guy who looks like a felon and is all chained up and dirty. The last image is a guy in a suit with money floating around him. The last box is intended to make it look like he is for sure the owner of the company based entirely off of his looks and the money floating around. The comic uses interdependent word picture images by detailing the looks and conveying text through image which h helps you answer the original question which is, who is the owner of the company. The other word picture combinations in the image is the text over each image of potential business owners and it says “are you” over every single box. The specific tools I used was shading, details, and a lot of interdependent word picture combinations. I accomplished all of this by using paper and a pencil. The closure between each box was very minimal as all the boxes were placed directly next to each other giving it no room which kind of caused you to move to the next three boxes a lot quicker. I would say with this comic I used all of the tools I have learned over this year and combined them all to create this comic. With the comic I thoroughly enjoyed making this comic and being able to test out the characteristics of interdependent word picture combinations.

For my weekly comic, I decided to pick a topic everyone can relate to. I chose to depict the work / school week in the three phases that I and most people use to judge the status of their work / school week. For me it comes in the form of Mondays, which are always the slowest day of the week as it comes off the heels of the weekend where everyone was having fun without priorities. It also marks the longest point of the week from being care free again. Wednesdays are always that halfway point which aren’t the worst and are signs of things to come. On Wednesdays I usually start making plans for the upcoming weekend and the end is in sight. Fridays are usually a vacation day in that the whole day doesn’t seem like any other day of the week. Everyone is usually more laid back and care free and is looking forward to getting out of class. It’s hard to be in a bad mood on a Friday.

I used my typical 3 frame layout to draw this one where each frame is representative of one of the aforementioned days. Mondays are the worst. Wednesdays (hump days) aren’t so bad, and Fridays are the bee’s knees! I found this to be a good example of interdependent word picture combinations as without the text to label the days and talk about them, the comic would have an entirely different meaning and probably wouldn’t even make sense. I found the two to be very intertwined needing one another to give the full effect. Similarly, the text bubbles make the relationships and juxtapositions between each frame blatantly obvious as they were meant to. Once again, I used Photoshop as my primary tool to draw as illustrator was still being glitchy on my MacBook.