Winsor McCay is, of course, a legend in both comics and animation. And reading his comics, you can see how fascinating he found movement and timing. The spatial relationships between panels often comes into play, whether it's utilizing the horizontal movement of a parade, the vertical movement of Nemo falling, or putting one big circle in the middle of the page and having the panels move around it. In one comic, McCay's interest in animation was especially apparent as Nemo was being swung around by a trapeze artist, each panel functioning very much like a frame in animation.
What I personally found most appealing about the comic were the settings and situations. Very dreamlike; they seemed more like a way for McCay to explore several interesting ideas quickly than an actual story, like we're seeing part of his thought process. And of course, there's the classic ending of Nemo waking up at the end of each comic, often falling out of his bed. I laughed every time...
On the other hand, there's a dark side to Little Nemo's adventures. Many of the people he meets seem to meet bad ends, like the glass people and their queen Crystalette who all break into a million pieces when Nemo attempts to sneak a kiss from the queen. The least you could say is that it's depressing, but this tiny child was just responsible for the deaths of a whole bunch of people. Maybe they're not even real, since these adventures of "Slumberland" are so obviously a dream world, but still: those are some dark imaginings for a kid his age.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Arrival
This post may be a bit late in coming, but I found this book extremely interesting. So let's talk about Shaun Tan's The Arrival.
A wordless comic, one might think, would need to be a relatively simple story in order to get the message clearly across, like those panels they give kids on standardized tests in elementary school to see if their capable of putting events in order. The Arrival, however, challenges that--not just challenges, it breaks that thought into a million pieces. The story is deep and relatable, the images are complicated and well-rendered, the story never once loses it's reader (quite a feat!), and the final result is something that the average, comic-less person may not even count it among other comics.
Furthermore, who is the intended audience? The typical stereotype puts any kind of picture books (including comics, but increasingly less so) squarely in the category of a children's book, especially when it lacks words. But of course, this story is one that would require a certain level of maturity to fully understand the meaning of it. Coming to a new country/culture by oneself, attempting to learn new ways, is a problem that just about anyone can understand, even if they've never immigrated before. However, I don't see toddlers looking through the book on their own and understanding it.
Personally, I found the side stories to be the best part. That Tan could go off on a short tangent to get across someone else's life story in a way that was both clear and moving was amazing to me. In the end, the story is such a good one, but the medium really makes it shine.
A wordless comic, one might think, would need to be a relatively simple story in order to get the message clearly across, like those panels they give kids on standardized tests in elementary school to see if their capable of putting events in order. The Arrival, however, challenges that--not just challenges, it breaks that thought into a million pieces. The story is deep and relatable, the images are complicated and well-rendered, the story never once loses it's reader (quite a feat!), and the final result is something that the average, comic-less person may not even count it among other comics.
Furthermore, who is the intended audience? The typical stereotype puts any kind of picture books (including comics, but increasingly less so) squarely in the category of a children's book, especially when it lacks words. But of course, this story is one that would require a certain level of maturity to fully understand the meaning of it. Coming to a new country/culture by oneself, attempting to learn new ways, is a problem that just about anyone can understand, even if they've never immigrated before. However, I don't see toddlers looking through the book on their own and understanding it.
Personally, I found the side stories to be the best part. That Tan could go off on a short tangent to get across someone else's life story in a way that was both clear and moving was amazing to me. In the end, the story is such a good one, but the medium really makes it shine.
Understanding Comics
For this episode of Comic Responses, we're looking at Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
Of course, a book about how comics works would have to be a comic. It makes sense, but it gets a little wordy in parts (too much explanation, not enough pictures). Still, McCloud's approach to explaining what comics are, how they work, and why they work was fascinating. Most interesting was the relationship between pictures and words, at what point an image becomes simplified from a photograph to a drawing to a symbol to those series of symbols we call words. Likewise, how unfortunate it is that as artists and writers become more and more precise, the less their work has in common.
The simplification of characters in comics, according to McCloud, ups the relatability of said characters, or our ability to put ourself into the role of the character. Meanwhile, environments are often more defined to give a somewhat accurate depiction of space. While reading this, the comic that came to mind was Bone by Jeff Smith. The main character is little more than a white blob man with a big nose. The other characters, minus the ones actually related to him, are more realistic, classically rendered comic characters. The environments reflect that, too. The monsters of the comic straddle the line between adorable/cartoony and realistic/terrifying, which I expect is exactly what they must be to fulfill their role in the comic as both antagonists and comic relief.
Sure enough, in McCloud's chart of characters relating Reality, Meaning, and The Picture Plane, Bone is placed right next to the simple, dots-and-line face.Publish Post
The same concept is found true in internet memes, especially rage faces. For anyone not familiar with them, they are often crudely drawn faces, simple and unrealistic, expressing emotions hyperboled to the point that people are able to laugh and relate to them. Another similar example of this concept at work is in Japanese Anime, which McCloud just touches on. Often, the faces of anime characters are simplified to the point of a few lines, sometimes with a complete lack of nose.
Of course, a book about how comics works would have to be a comic. It makes sense, but it gets a little wordy in parts (too much explanation, not enough pictures). Still, McCloud's approach to explaining what comics are, how they work, and why they work was fascinating. Most interesting was the relationship between pictures and words, at what point an image becomes simplified from a photograph to a drawing to a symbol to those series of symbols we call words. Likewise, how unfortunate it is that as artists and writers become more and more precise, the less their work has in common.
The simplification of characters in comics, according to McCloud, ups the relatability of said characters, or our ability to put ourself into the role of the character. Meanwhile, environments are often more defined to give a somewhat accurate depiction of space. While reading this, the comic that came to mind was Bone by Jeff Smith. The main character is little more than a white blob man with a big nose. The other characters, minus the ones actually related to him, are more realistic, classically rendered comic characters. The environments reflect that, too. The monsters of the comic straddle the line between adorable/cartoony and realistic/terrifying, which I expect is exactly what they must be to fulfill their role in the comic as both antagonists and comic relief.
Sure enough, in McCloud's chart of characters relating Reality, Meaning, and The Picture Plane, Bone is placed right next to the simple, dots-and-line face.Publish Post
The same concept is found true in internet memes, especially rage faces. For anyone not familiar with them, they are often crudely drawn faces, simple and unrealistic, expressing emotions hyperboled to the point that people are able to laugh and relate to them. Another similar example of this concept at work is in Japanese Anime, which McCloud just touches on. Often, the faces of anime characters are simplified to the point of a few lines, sometimes with a complete lack of nose.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Wonky Rooster
Max Ernst: A Week of Kindness or The Seven Deadly Elements
Thursday, Element: blackness, Examples: The rooter's laughter.
First image, someone doing a wonky pose next to a rooster on a ball with a man lying on the ground in the background. I got nothing. Really. Nothing.
Second image, creepy rooster man with huge wings standing over woman tied to table in some sort of dungeon laboratory. Once again, there's a rooster watching in the corner.
Third image, rooster man and (cat?) man standing ver a woman in a grave. Another woman floats over her, either about to throw a sheet into the coffin or else maybe that's like a ghostly ethereal cloth. I first saw it as her the ghost of the woman in the coffin, being split from her, escaping from the mortal bonds, or possibly returning to the body.
Fourth image, the two seem to be talking about how to deal with the writhing ladies laying around. Are they dying? Or are they being revived? Or maybe they're just doing what classically rendered ladies do best.
Fifth, rooster man comes through the door, obviously in agony over the death of his love who has apparently fallen out of bed. Perhaps she's been killed by the chickens who are attempting to stand around non-chalantly.
Last, rooster peaks around the door, watching these people who I believe may be practicing the newest dance craze.
The juxtaposition of the giant rooster man against the realistically rendered environment and classical ladies is kind of a humorous one. At first glance, I'm guessing there's either some kind of sexual metaphor going on here with all the flailing naked ladies or else the rooster's trying to kill them or wake them up (from the dead?) because that's what roosters do. Given the title, maybe he's just making fun of the misery of the flailing ladies. I feel also like we may be getting the story in the wrong order.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)