Skip to main content

Understanding Comics (3 Points)

 In sophomore year, we had to read parts of this book so we could understand how to storyboard/make animatics better. I'm excited to be able to read the entirety now, as it was amazingly helpful before! Not sure if counts, but here is the comic project I made sophomore year using parts of the book as reference on how to create each shot. It was made with an ink brush and took ~5 days to complete (and so much ink). It was on poster paper, so it was ~30 x 20 inches as well.





What I loved about this book, is that it teaches you things about comics you never think about unless you plan on creating them. Things I understood without knowing the context behind them, finally started to make sense after reading Scott's witty, easily digestible explanation of why comics are structured like how they are. 

I think a great topical take-away was his description of word/picture combinations. We talked about wordless comics last week, but knowing when to use words to control the reader's focus is crucial to comic making. Like they say, pictures can speak a thousand words if you know what you're doing. How you text vs don't treat text can drastically alter how the reader interprets the work. Scott gives the example of having text that says "Bob was a happy baby. At 18 he went to war. At 36 he bought a house. He died at 72." He shows different instances of how the art drawn with that same text can alter the meaning of it: i.e. it could be showing exactly what it's describing, it can be picturing a single character saying all of that as dialogue (character exposition), or it could be depicted entirely in symbols which takes away most of the story and makes it less personal. Using these techniques to make the reader feel a certain is incredibly important to how you want to portray the tone of the work. Really glad I know this for future references.


Bonus: One of my classmates took one of the panels of the book and made it into a sticker of one of our professors. He wears track suits and whenever we asked him a question he would respond with "check canvas".





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Killing Joke (2)

  1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? Eh, it was kind of underwhelming. I'm already not a huge superhero fan, but I do think Batman is probably one of the comics I could probably get into the easiest because I think his dynamic with the Joker is interesting. Since it's an origin story of the Joker, I was really hoping it would clear up a lot more than it did. In fact, I think it didn't really clear anything up at all. It left me with more questions than answers. Why are you going to portray this in a way that relies heavily on mental instability and not approach it realistically? I don't mean this as in I was offended by it or anything, either. I purely mean it in a way that even from a superhero perspective, it was trying too hard to be meaningful and fell flat. It just didn't make sense. His wife dies, they literally do not bring her up ever again, the Joker barely shows emotion towards it, and then he falls into a radio active puddle?? And that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Point Total (93)

FINAL total - 93 points Midterm total   __________________________     - 40 points My Friend Dahmer                                                    - 5 points     Class                                                                     - 1 point     Angel's Hill                                                          - 5 points     Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun                                  - 6 points ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Persepolis (6? Points)

  This story was extremely insightful. It’s best to read as an American since we are so ill-informed of other countries, especially Middle Eastern destinations. It was fascinating to learn about Persian culture and how it evolved just throughout Marjane’s life alone. By the end of the war, I was still a little confused how some women could be all dolled up with their hair visible and makeup on, but majorly had to stick to the regime other times. I think when Marjane met them they were hanging out in private, but I’m unsure. Either way, learning about the mental toll it took on our protagonist to have to mold yourself to fit in with different cultures at just 14 is unimaginable. I wasn’t surprised to see her indulge herself in drugs and get caught in depression later, it was such a hard thing for her to have to go through. Additionally, there’s A TON of political talk that I wasn’t fully understanding but got the gist for the most part. And yes, there’s also a lot I did not agree wi...
Post a Comment
Read more