Tuesday, May 3, 2016
week 5
For the blog topic, we were supposed to create some sort of comparative analysis to Will Eisner's and Craig Thompson's approach to storytelling. Now personally I have to say that I have a biased opinion on the matter because I have openly admitted how much I care for Thompson's work. I think that Blankets is charming and wonderful in many ways, but I also know that Eisner can create just as compelling of a story and make it open to understand for almost everyone. If you look at an Eisner comic, you see almost a "cookie cutter" format for how he draws his characters, because he follows a formula to get his poses to work and that formula works. This is why his series The Blue Spirit became popular. Overall, I can see the comparison as legitimate even past my bias.
Week 4
This week we studied actual comic books! Everything that we were looking at previously lead up to us finally being able to look at comic books for the rest of the semester (mostly). Starting off from the beginning though we see that Marvel and Action Comics are where the standards are pretty much set. These are the moments where we start to see superheroes that have passed through generations and are now continuing to influence others in multiple media outlets.
But regardless of those media outlets, these original comic books pretty much started everything out in terms of what we consider the modern graphic novel. Out of the comics that were presented for this week, I chose to read Marvel Comics. This comic introduces us to popular superheroes like the Human Torch and Superman. Both are still well known today which can be considered a big deal to people just starting out during this time in the comics industry. Judging the work artistically, you could tell that the artists were passionate, but limited as to what they could do with this medium. Graphic novels were cheap and color was expensive so in order to cut costs they had to limit their palette. This caused certain panels to look more rough and unrefined like the underwater panels. The drawings themselves aren't terrible, they just don't have as much punch because there aren't any real star graphic novel illustrators yet.
But regardless of those media outlets, these original comic books pretty much started everything out in terms of what we consider the modern graphic novel. Out of the comics that were presented for this week, I chose to read Marvel Comics. This comic introduces us to popular superheroes like the Human Torch and Superman. Both are still well known today which can be considered a big deal to people just starting out during this time in the comics industry. Judging the work artistically, you could tell that the artists were passionate, but limited as to what they could do with this medium. Graphic novels were cheap and color was expensive so in order to cut costs they had to limit their palette. This caused certain panels to look more rough and unrefined like the underwater panels. The drawings themselves aren't terrible, they just don't have as much punch because there aren't any real star graphic novel illustrators yet.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Week 3
This week we learned about one of my favorite comic artists Winsor McCay, and the overall effect of the comic strip movement. Nemo in Slumberland, along with other comics that came around this time, showed the interest in reading comics instead of other forms of literature, which is cool because they could create a lot of work and make great money for it. Artists like Winsor McCay who were fast enough to create lots of work would make that much more money because of how much content he produced. McCay was able to create a complete world by producing a lot of stuff for Nemo, and even to this day people care about his work.
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
First blog post for this class! The overall excitement for the class as settled down a bit and due to some unforeseen circumstances it seems as though I'm getting a bit of a late start on it, but that should be cleared up and caught up eventually.
The idea behind works like Shaun Tan's "The Arrival" is almost like a literal depiction of the idea behind a picture being worth 1000 words. There is potential to have more to say with just illustrations, so adding any text wouldn't help at all. I have a strong appreciation for the work and approach that Shaun Tan did. He is one of my influences when it comes to communicating a good narrative. The Arrival had moments in it that could have been easily misunderstood, like the parts where he was out looking for a job, and he couldn't really find an easy way of communicating his need to work. In fact, the ways that Shaun Tan showed how the main character was communicating was pretty smart with his hand gestures and facial expressions. Half the time he didn't understand what was going on and would make these confused facial expressions.
Something that made a lot of sense to me when it came to how the narrative was shown, was how alien-like the new world seemed to the main character. The shape language that Shaun Tan decided to use for more hostile creatures and objects could make someone feel really uncomfortable and shows how foreign the whole places seems and feels.
Overall, artistically it's easy to see that Shaun Tan has the ability to not only illustrate well, but his communication techniques are what drive his narrative abilities home. He's a smart guy who understands how to present his work in the graphic novel format.
The idea behind works like Shaun Tan's "The Arrival" is almost like a literal depiction of the idea behind a picture being worth 1000 words. There is potential to have more to say with just illustrations, so adding any text wouldn't help at all. I have a strong appreciation for the work and approach that Shaun Tan did. He is one of my influences when it comes to communicating a good narrative. The Arrival had moments in it that could have been easily misunderstood, like the parts where he was out looking for a job, and he couldn't really find an easy way of communicating his need to work. In fact, the ways that Shaun Tan showed how the main character was communicating was pretty smart with his hand gestures and facial expressions. Half the time he didn't understand what was going on and would make these confused facial expressions.
Something that made a lot of sense to me when it came to how the narrative was shown, was how alien-like the new world seemed to the main character. The shape language that Shaun Tan decided to use for more hostile creatures and objects could make someone feel really uncomfortable and shows how foreign the whole places seems and feels.
Overall, artistically it's easy to see that Shaun Tan has the ability to not only illustrate well, but his communication techniques are what drive his narrative abilities home. He's a smart guy who understands how to present his work in the graphic novel format.
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