Overall Thoughts on Reading

Simply put: I enjoyed “Understanding Comics” by Scot McCloud and would recommend it. Keeping the comic format made the academic writing easier to digest because it was easy to visualize the concepts presented.

One of the most striking concepts is the conversation around cartoons are the embodiment of “me” or “I” injected into the story. I personally don’t have a ton of exposure to comics & manga, but I definitely find myself trying to identify with characters in novels. This was slightly more challenging with a comic because I don’t necessarily identify with the character that was presenting the information. But, knowing that it is my voice hearing the words my perspective changed slightly. Because the concepts were presented in a story-like manner, I was learning along with the avatar. On top of that, this brings a whole extra layer to “self-learning”, learning new content from “yourself” idenifying as the teacher in the comic.

Personal Notes from Reading

How to Define Comics

• Will Eisner - Sequential Art
• How to seperate form from content and how the content is delivered

• what is the form? more specific juxtaposed sequential visual art

  • dictionary definition of juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence
• comics vs cartoons (one panel)

Vocab

• icons - images to represent a person place thing or idea

  • cartoon is icon (lol at disney blackout)
  • abstracting the face — we never see our own face but now in the day of zoom it is hard to not see our faces all the time
  • cartoons become the embodiment of “I” as a concept because reading especially is bringing to life something that wouldn’t otherwise
• pictures = received info
• writing = perceived info

Blood in the Gutter

• Senses can only reveal a world that is fragmented and incomplete

• closure = observing the parts be perceiving the whole

  • comics must use closure more often - primary means of simulating time and motion

• Transitions:

  • Moment to moment - little closure, shows actions frame by frame
  • Action to action - single subject
  • subject to subject - reader involvement
  • scene to scene - transfer between time and space
  • aspect to aspect
  • non sequitur
  • 2-4 show things happening in concise efficient ways

• west vs. east transitions

  • east uses more type 5 because of tradition of cyclical and labrynthine works of art

Time Frames

panel is most important comic icon

Show and Tell

• Words used to be pictures but now are sound only.
• evolution of language to more direct, like pictures

• combinations:

  • word specific— pictures illustrate but don’t add to complete text
  • picture specific — words add only soundtrack
  • duo-specific— words and pictures tell the same message
  • additive— words amplify message
  • parallel — words and pictures follow very different courses
  • montage — words are a part of the picture

  • interdependent— words and picutres go hand in hand

    • can have a specturum between words and pictures

the six steps

• definition of art — doesn’t grow out of survival or reproduction
• creativity follows 6 steps idea / purpose = content form = medium (book, chair, drawing etc) idiom = genre belongs to structure = how to compose work craft = constructing work, applying skills surface = production value, finishing

a word about color

• dependent on commerce and techonology