Comics Are Hard

Things I’ve Learned/Things to Steal

While I didn’t partially enjoy Hawaii, I can appreciate the artistic style. The use of pencil that looks purposeful is something I still need to put practice into. On this page I like how everything is done within the pencil shading. By that I mean how our character is a white silhouette with a couple pencil markings to help distinguish a face, shirt, arms, etc. I feel that it wouldn’t have the same effect if the pencil shading was done too light and inconsistently. The contrast between the white and pencil is necessary. 

Try A Tutorial 

For my final project I've considered a few ideas. First one being an extension of my adaption project. I really enjoyed that topic and felt I could’ve dove deeper into it all—perhaps give the cat a hint of personification. However, I also think it’d be hard to spread that comic into four pages.

Another idea would be a memoir about the past year of my life. I feel that I've gone through some serious growing pains that’ve changed my perspective on a lot of things. I’d probably include how that change has brought me and someone I know closer than ever.

My friend Grant recently moved into a new house and I finally got to see it when I attended a Halloween party at his house. I stayed the night and got to get a better look at the place in the morning. The large, rather empty living room, the big kitchen, the fire pit in the fenced in back yard, and the tree that’s right outside the front door.

For the most part, i like how this turned out. If I could change anything it’d be the perspective of the living room—I’m not too good at drawing settings at eye level. If I were to add color, I’d only put it around the bolded edges to give the images some accent.

“Imitation Comic”

“Things to Steal”

“My Evolving Process”

   I felt that while working on my adaption project there was more of a need to go through the process of peer input. The workshop tasks in class actually made me look forward to doing the project. While I appreciated the peer input, I didn’t feel too compelled to try new strategies. I wanted to stick to the ones that I felt comfortable with because they helped with keeping things simple—the exact feel I wanted me comic to evoke    I think that adapting a text that already exists creates a more enjoyable experience, compared to having to create something from complete scratch where you have to worry about crafting a narrative that makes sense. I realize that you do still technically have to worry about that when adapting a piece of text as well—I suppose the difference is that you have a piece of text to go back and refer to, to check if your work makes sense.

   I read “Erase Your Fucking Pencils” because making sure to go back and get my pencil marks is a practice I need to be more thorough in. In the entry, Matt talks about eraser damage which is something that I have to deal with often. I hate that it leaves patches on my black and white art. Working on the pressure I put on the eraser is key to me not damaging my art.    A funny thing I’ve learned what exactly a gum rubber eraser is. I’ve used one in the past, but I didn’t realize it could be manipulated into different shapes—I guess I wasn’t paying attention. However, I did notice that the gum eraser does an amazing job at erasing most, if not all, pencil marks. I will definitely start to go about manipulating the shape of the eraser and go about erasing in a tracing like manner.

For this task I made a small, short comic that maps out my mind on a daily basis. It fits perfectly as I’ve been having a super busy month, my mind hasn’t stopped racing since October started! I’ve even had days where I forgot to eat, haha! I’m sure plenary of college students can relate.

For this discovery challenge I used one of those annoying pre qualified credit card offers everyone gets in the mail. Personally, I can’t stand them. They never come with just one. It’s always 5 different “offers” in my mailbox at the same time.

My top two choices for the adaptation project is best places to pet a cat and how to gain a cats trust. I chose these because I love cats so it’ll make the project much more enjoyable. Cats are complicated creatures that get a bad rep because they don’t live to please humans. I believe a comic adaption would allow for people to learn about cats--and hopefully retain it because they’re pictures. 

For this comic, I chose to show what it’s like to live with glasses/have really bad eye sight. I wanted to show the little things that bug me like the glare while driving at night, and people asking stupid questions. The flow of the comic is the standard left to right, top to bottom format. I probably could’ve been more creative with the flow but I spent a lot of time picking what to make the comic about.

At first, the idea of drawing nine panels felt a little intimidating. Once I was able to let go of focusing on making everything perfect, the images just happened. I’d like to get better at drawing bodies and smaller versions of my character. I should probably work on consistency as well.

  “My Evolving Process”

  As an evolving comic creator that has started out by knowing absolutely nothing about comics, I think I'm starting to warm up to it all. By ‘it all,’ I mean the drawing and how it’s okay to make something that looks imperfect--as long as you make it seem it’s supposed to look that way. 

  I wish that I were able to use a digital tool to create comics, but my pen, pencil, and paper will do. In the 8th grade I had a teacher that made us go over our drawing in black ink to make them stand out. Back then I hated it because it made my drawings look weird. However, now I know that I don’t have to go over every single line--just the ones I want to stand out. I feel that the right amount of shading and bolded lines can make all the difference in even a quick sketch.

My discovery tasks take a good bit of time, especially if I make them on a large scale. Discovery task #2, the one about me, took an hour or two. I kept messing up the lines and I was so fixated on trying to make my character look the same in every panel. By the time I got to the last panel, I was over it and you can kind of tell. From that I've learned that I should start with smaller scale comics until I’m more comfortable.

Discovery Task #3

I attempted an aspect to aspect comic of my cat and all her unique markings.