I was never one to read comic books growing up. I still don’t read comic books. I think part of it was because I never really watched a lot of cartoons growing up either. One thing that I’ve always wondered is how do you read from each panel to each panel? Sometimes the pages aren’t constructed in such a way that each panel is side by side and it is then easy to know to read from left to right, naturally. Scott McCloud addressed this point in his book about comics. While I was reading this book, I kept on catching myself first trying to figure out where to go from frame to frame when it wasn’t totally obvious. The more I read, however, the easier it was to pick up on. It wasn’t until maybe around 60 or 70 pages in that he touched on this area. It was pretty breif, but the mention was made to help us as the readers realize that there are things in this world that are natural to us. It is only normal for us to read from left to right, top to bottom — in the West anyway. In the East, some things are different — including reading and writing styles/formats. Differences between the two cultures are also noticable when it comes to comics. Japanese-style comics were different and in some ways more advanced or ahead of the curve.
After thinking about relationships between comics and some other sources of media, one common theme I found between comics and the game Zork is that both are read from frame-to-frame. In between the frames are the ‘gutters’ of comics where the reader becomes involved and participates. In the game Zork and others alike, the user is participating by playing and making decisions. Also, the game is presented one "frame" at a time. Each scene or space that you are in is a frame of time or space. This is another relation I was able to come up with. Scott McCloud talks about time and space in his book and how the size of a frame could possibly play a role in how long a scene is, or extend a dramatic moment by lengthening one frame over another. Zork is able to present this through the text it responds to you with. Based on the text, you can then determine which space you will be going in.
I actually took the book to Dragon Sea buffet with my friend my friend Mat and we talked over the book as we chowed down. Mat disagrreed with MacCloud on those 1 frame comics such as Family Circus or Far Side being not considered comics. I think his argument was that they are multiple frames of comics combined into one. Macloud mentioned that there are differences between east and west comic books. I’ve seen this in trips to Borders with Mat when we look at comic books. There are books there that you read backwards. You start at the back which is the last page of a typical book from the west. You then flip pages right versus left as you read them.
Macloud talks about synaesthetcs in which art forms are combined to interest different senses. This made me think of Multimedia. Multimedia can use various forms of art and a senses. Webpage are an example of multimedia. They can have music and animation in them. This requires the use your sense of hearing and sight.
Macloud talks about the paths of study an artist goes through. I can relate to this some in my studies in music compostion over the years. I started with learned mostly about harmony in music theory over 3 semesters. In my fourth semester, I studied music forms such as sonatas, rondos, fugues ect. After that, I went into deeper material such as orchestration which gets into writing and arranging for orchestras. I spent my first year of orchestration studies and practice getting a feel for orchestras. It wasn’t until the second year of orchestration studies until I felt I could really start to be creative with orchestra. An example of this occurred in a subway station one night. A approaching train from a distance that became louder as it came closer was like a timpani rolling a note that started at a piano dynamic that crescendoed to a forte dyanmic. The squeal of the brakes of a train sounded in my head like a flute playing a high note.