Although the two types of comic strips are very similar, out of the two, I prefer doing print comic strips because I feel limited whenever I make comics on my PC due to not having the correct resources I need to make them how I truly want them to look like. I

Print comic of a conversation with my brother; a typical day at my house. (Photo by Isaiah Wilkerson, September 2019)

have all the freedom I want whenever I can draw on paper with pencil. In my art, I can easily use something like symbolic expression like I used in my print comic. I could also use long-shot panels if I really wanted to really get in detail of my surroundings and show my audience my art skills. I listen to my music whenever I draw and it really inspires me to start drawing what I feel. Whenever I draw, whether it’s for a grade or not, it never feels like “work” because of how much I enjoy drawing. I start my drawings very light so I can erase easily whenever I make a mistake. Sometimes, I make so many that I feel like giving up. So I take a break and start from scratch. Once I feel like my drawing came out good, then I start outlining my work and add more detail to it such as shading. This causes my only draw back about drawing rather than using technology: it takes a long time to finish. It doesn’t help that I am a perfectionist when it comes to my art, so it takes way longer than most because of how good I want my art to come out.

Now with my digital comic, I am kind of uncertain about the whole process of making this. As I’ve said before, I do not have the resources to create the comic strip that I wanted to make and because of this, I find this being more difficult than my print comic.

Digital comic of a description of my print comic’s storyline. (Designed by Isaiah Wilkerson, September 2019)

I completed my digital comic on Word Document, so I had little editing tools to make my comic as creative as my print comic. All I could do is copy and paste certain images that matched up with what my comic was describing. If I were to do this on Photoshop, due to the fact that I do not have on on my personal computer, I believed I could’ve created a more creative piece of work for my digital comic. The only good thing about this comic was that it didn’t take long for me to finish it.

With that being said, I also prefer to read a comic digitally rather than paper and pencil because it’s more clean and easier to read digitally while the print comic is very rough and super noticeable with the erase marks and the line marks when filling in something with either color or regular pencil. After reading chapter 1, I didn’t really have any new ideas for my digital comic but I did use symbolic expressions for my print copy to show my audience the tone of my comic strip.

The first one that I created was handwritten and for the digital comic I used photoshop. The pro about the handwritten comic is that you have the freedom to do whatever you want. I personally felt as though it was easier to think outside the box. In photoshop it was harder to figure out the the tools at first and I feel as though if you don’t know all the tool work it can feel like your work is limited. The con about handwritten comics was the spacing of it. It was hard to space it evenly or the way that I wanted to. When it came to spacing, doing it digitally was easier in that aspect. Another pro with digital comic was the fact that it made it easier to perfect circles because there were on photoshop that allowed me to do so.

From reading Scott McClouds, “Understanding Comics”, it helped me realize that comics are not just a story like a book. Understanding the meaning of what a comic is made me think more creatively, visually and also have a better understanding of juxtaposition in comics and making sure that the order makes sense.

When making my hand drawn comic I had no idea what type of story or message I wanted to tell. I ended up doodling cats and decided to create a dynamic between two cats that live in the same house. They are roughly based off of my own cats, one of them is very overweight which is where I got the idea from. In my hand drawn comic I started out very simple with little dialogue or story, but in my second digital comic I decided to give them much more of a personality and dynamic between the two. I used the same characters both times because I felt that with hand drawn media I couldn’t really be as creative as I wanted to be. Im not the best at drawing so it was really hard for me to make them appear the way I wanted them to and I ended up making the comic as simple as I could because of this. In the digital comic I let myself run with the idea because graphic design such as this is something I really enjoy doing and have a bit more experience with than hand drawn. I used photoshop. For me it was much easier to tell the story that I wanted to tell, and make the characters look the way I wanted them to (even though they’re silhouettes). The only thing from hand drawn that I would say I prefer is the text bubbles. Handwriting for me has much more personality than typed text does, and I feel like the words fit into the comic more, especially with how dark my digital comic was. As far as paper as opposed to a screen I still prefer to read off of paper, it seems much more interactive and visually appealing.

Digital Comic by Hyelim Min

When I compare drawing a comic by hand and digitally, I would prefer to hand draw all of the comics. While they both have their own benefits and drawbacks, what hand drawing provides outweighs the benefits of digital. The benefits of drawing a comic by hand is when an idea or an imagination comes to mind I don’t have to worry about how the outcome is going to be and I can keep sketching them whereas when it comes to digital drawing it takes a lot of time and once I am not satisfied I feel like I wasted my time. Also, when it comes to describing the comics facial features or scenario when I draw them by hand, I am able to express emotions better. The only drawback I would say I have with drawing comics by hand is that when I am close to finishing and make a mistake whether its coloring in the wrong color or if I drew a picture unevenly it is hard to fix whereas on digital you can control it whenever you want to make the picture come out evenly and clear.

Whether it’s the news, books, magazines, or comics I personally think that the best way to understand the drawers/editor’s story is by reading them on paper. While drawing digitally can be just as stressful or even more stressful then drawing comics I think that the images come more to life and can even relate emotionally.

Hand Drawn Comic by Hyelim Min

Before purchasing the textbook “Understanding Comics” I completed my comics. However, I do believe that if I was to purchase the textbook before I finished drawing then it could of helped me out but overall I am satisfied with my drawing and feel that what I would of gotten from “Understanding Comics” is shown in my comics.

I found this comic displayed in Bookpeople in Moscow, ID in Fall 2018.

This is a demo post about how I would like you to display image-based media in your posts for this class. Looking at images, deciphering their meaning, and writing about them is a big part of what we do in this course. Good graphic design allows a viewer/reader to both see an image and read about it at the same time if possible. The visual mode and spatial modes of communication we discussed in week 1 of class apply here, as does the concept of juxtaposition that we read about in Chapter 1 of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics.” These concepts are important for words and the images that relate to them on websites. Due to the way websites are structured, there are some limitations to how we can arrange images within browser windows, especially when using software like WordPress. Please follow my tutorial so you know how to display your media for this class.

This is a frame from page 22 of Scott McCloud‘s book “Understanding Comics.”

I found this comic displayed in Bookpeople in Moscow, ID in Fall 2018.

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This is my digital comic that I created using adobe illustrator

I sketched the comic on the left by hand while I created the comic on the right using Adobe Illustrator. Hand drawing enables an artist to customize their artwork with their own unique style which is harder to accomplish in illustrator. Also there is no skills needed other than drawing and sketching necessary to hand draw a comic. However, Illustrator enabled me to use precise line work and with a little bit of experience it enables anyone to create good artwork with out major artistic talent. I’m not a very talented artist so I had more fun making the comic through illustrator. Personally I like reading printed comics because it feels different when I have something physical in front of me rather than my computer. This also eliminates distractions that come with technology. Reading the first chapter of understanding comics helped

This is my hand drawn comic.

me better understand alignment and sequence which I utilized in my digital comic strip.

DTC

8/29/19

Using an old-fashioned pencil and paper making my hand-drawn comic took longer and felt a bit more stressful than when I used a software application to make my comic. I felt as though I had the more creative freedom to make an out of the box comic topic using software than I did with the hand-drawn comic that’s partly because the benefits with the software I used which was powerpoint I was mainly putting images together and creating a story. It was more like positioning the right objects in the right sequence to create a storyline that was easy to follow. With my hand dawn comic, however, the drawback was that I couldn’t decide what to draw and how to draw it this can be due to the fact that I am not a great artistic person when it comes to hand drawing anything. The difference between reading a comic on-screen as opposed to paper is that it’s more authentic to read a comic on paper than it is to read it digitally, however, I will say that if someone is not artistically gifted (like me) then digitalized comics might be a better option to read then paper. Reading the first chapter allowed me to think outside of the box with my digital comic because Scott McCloud said that basically a comic a sequence of images based that have a narrative and a direction. So, taking these points into consideration I broadened my horizon and realized that Microsoft powerpoint software has an animation tool so I created a storyline with that and added text bubbles to create dialogue. Overall between the two different routes of creating a comic, I felt the proudest of my digital comic because it didn’t have to do with my artistic skills but it did challenge enough to come up with a creative concept using a simple tool used usually for slides and presentations.

Hand drawn comic by Patrick Istvan

Digital Comic by Patrick Istvan

While making a comic by hand I noticed it was easier to just grab a pencil and draw rather then having to figure out what program I would use and the actual logistics of creating an idea. I do not know how to use Photoshop nor am I skilled with any other image editing software so I chose to use Microsoft Paint. Even though Paint is incredibly easy to use I still had to look up how to put multiple images that I individually drew on one image, where as with drawing by hand it was allot simpler.

Reading a comic on screen seems more fleeting. The chances of me opening the same comic twice to look at and reminisce are very slim. Where as with paper I definitely look at my own comic allot more.

Hand Drawing comic by Phuc Tran. September 2019

I had a fun time drawing these two comics. The biggest different when creating it for me is the digital way does not offer any material. In that way I do not need to worry about buying color or any medium plus the digital way can erase my mistakes without leaving any trail or smudges. Another thing is with basic shape like circle, square in character and environment creation or the line to separate between each frame are the things that I can do better in the digital way. The reason for that is because the program can offer those more perfect than me.

The way of how the audience see the comic can also be different. The paper comic is only available to anyone get the chance to get the paper while the digital one can be seen by anyone

DIgital Comic by Phuc Tran, September 2019

who have a digital device which is a common thing nowadays. For that reason, it is easier to spread and share the digital comic to anyone. In addition, I can see that some people prefer a hard copy on their hand including me. It is the feeling of own the comics is more satisfied and it also does not hurt my eyes when I read the paper for a long time.

The first chapter of “Understandings Comics” is basically talks about the definition of comics. It gives me some interesting facts about comics with some unexpected things that can be considered as comics surprised me. For that reason, it did not really give any ideas to create the comics.