Tag: scott mccloud

My Lost Blog About Physcial vs. Mental Interactivity

When some people think of an interactive art form, they intuitively think of literature and painting in a digital format. They think that as long as an art form can be physically interacted with through their laptop’s keyboard or mouse it has to be interactive – like ergodic literature and cybertext. People often forget that there is a different type of interactivity, one that has been around for thousands of years, and as such predates and is the precursor for the digital era’s physical interactivity. As Scott McCloud had proved it in the context of comic books, there is a sort of mental interaction between people and a given art.

While McCloud didn’t spend a lot of time on addressing the issue of interactivity with his concept of closure, he did inadvertently question the novelty of the interactive digital art forms. After all how can interactivity be a novel idea if it has been around for thousands of years in the form of various arts – albeit in a different form?

It’s not a novel idea, however, some people forget that because they take their psyche’s gift for granted. They believe that in a book words and sentences give rise to what they envision – which is true in a sense – but forget about how their psyches contributes to what they see. If reading was not interactive than we would all envision a book’s events the same way, but are there any two people who had read the same book and in the end had imagined the events the same way? I don’t think so. Not unless they have an identical psyche – a prospect that is impossible.

Andre Bazin, a renowned French theorist from the 20th century, had argued that nothing can be more interactive than reading a book, because the reader is part of the book and the book is part of the reader, due to the reader’s gift to convert words into unique images. Thus interactivity is not a novel idea, only the concept of physical interactivity is.

“Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud – Blog #5

What I quickly began to enjoy about Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” was how it was presented, and the self-encouraging humor it had about itself.

I say self-encouraging, because although the comic made several jokes about itself and the presentation of comics, none of it was necessarily self-deprecating. It all was made with the understanding that comics, their limitations, their styles and what exists beyond their panels is not something to be ashamed about, but rather are things to appreciate and poke affectionate fun.

Before I go on, I should probably admit a few things: I am an avid fan of animation, and have been ever since I was a young child. My first drawing – aside from a cat with nine legs (and I’ll maintain to this day that my 2-year-old self was simply attempting to draw the cat in motion) – was Ariel from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” By growing up in what many now call the animation renaissance of the of 1980s, it became a primary passion in my life that continues today with works from Don Bluth, Hayao Miyazaki or Pixar.

So with that grounding in the world of moving pictures, I have an avid appreciation for comics as well. In many ways, I mirrored McCloud’s early sentiments in his book about the western cultural depreciation of comics as competent story-telling devices or art. But as mentioned before, he did it in such a charming way.

The first hint of his tongue-and-cheek approach (aside from the short and sweet introduction punchline) began on page 24. “This is not a pipe” is a very familiar piece of work from all my art history experience and dedicated visits to art museums, and he did well to connect it to the dilemma of comic books.

“Do you hear what I’m saying? If you do, have your ears checked, because no one said a word.”

Moving on, another presentation of this dilemma I appreciated occurred much later on page 48, when McCloud told the story of the artist and writer coming together to make the greatest piece of storytelling of all time. I found myself emphathizing for each during their long, hard roads in becomming artisans of their craft, then giggle at the bottom punchline when the two stared at each other with a broad, empty expanse between them and large questionmarks over their heads.

This brought me more and more into thinking, and I stayed glued to the text to the very end. Later on, I greatly appreciated the differences and comparisons to eastern and western comic styles, since I too have noticed the differences but did not realize it could be graphically represented in… well, graphs. I resolved to try grading comics myself with this method in the future.  After this, I also noted the publication date of 1993 of McCloud’s book, and quickly recalled many comics and works of animation that have appeared since then. One that specifically came to mind was the recent blockbuster “V For Vendetta,” which many may be surprised to know was derived from what western cultures call a “graphic novel,” or what I like to think of as a way of them to say “so not a comic book.”

Another example I thought of which he actually directly mentioned was “Akira,” which later became a very successful movie adaptation in Japan in 1988, but I was not sure whether it had made its way into the States by 1993. A quick imdb search told me that it did not see wide American release until 2001, so no.

I bring this up because both of these movies, while nestled in their social niches, were still commercial successes in the United States, a place where comic books are only considered for young boys – as McCloud lamented – and only depict grown, muscular men in tights. While this may be true in many ways in western comics, other areas of the world have evolved differently, which proves to me that comics are a limitless media when it comes to depicting art and writing – the difference is how the creators choose to present it, and how the readers open their own minds to receive it.

I look forward to reading more of McCloud’s “Understanding Comics,” because it at times coincides so well with my own feelings on the subject.

Understanding Comics

I was clueless as to what to expect when opening Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, and, in fact, found myself embarrassed to be walking around with a book I had yet to open and, therefore, barely considered a textbook. I had flipped through the book, noting its comic-book-like structure, and dismissed it as a “nerdy” discourse on comics. I didn’t want my friends to see me reading what was perceivably a comic book, because, as McCloud points out, there is a particular stigmatization of comics and a lack of recognition in terms of how significant a genre comics comprise. He even notes that comic artists are reluctant to refer to themselves as such. He writes, “For much of this century, the word ‘comics’ has had such negative connotations that many of comics’ most devoted practitioners have preferred to be known as ‘illustrators,’ ‘commercial artists,’ or, at best, ‘cartoonists’!” (18). It wasn’t until I read the assigned chapters that I grew a deep appreciation for and of comics, and how relevant they actually are to our everyday lives.

While I initially resisted the form McCloud chose to present his ideas, it grew on me very quickly, creating the suspense, sustained interest, and enjoyment that I had forgotten I had once experienced when lightly perusing comics like the Archie comic books I read at summer camp as a young girl. Never before, though, had I realized that there were so many different aspects germane to the genre of comics. By illustrating his points in comic-book form, I was better able to understand the various themes and concepts McCloud introduced throughout the various chapters.

I became deeply interested in the concepts he proposed which applied even to everyday life. At first, I was deeply struck by the idea of the face as a mask (36-7). McCloud was correct in his assumption that I probably would be less engaged in the material presented in the book unless the narrator was “practically a blank slate” or “a concept.” I also had not consciously thought about how we, as humans, are programmed in such a way that “our identities and awareness are invested in many inanimate objects every day. Our clothes, for example, can trigger numerous transformations in the way others see us and in the way we see ourselves” (38). McCloud further grabbed my attention when he wrote, “Since viewer-identification is a specialty of cartooning, cartoons have historically held an advantage in breaking into world popular culture” (42).

Previously, I had not realized that the imagery of icons, time frames, and even the way we react to different line strokes was so deeply ingrained in our collective cultural subconscious. Additionally, I found the third chapter, “Blood In the Gutter,” to be very interesting in terms of how it presented and defined different ways of characterizing the passing of time. McCloud articulated how several different mechanisms of space, the use of lines, et al, could represent a schema of time. While perhaps on a subconscious level I had recognized these devices before (such as elongating a rectangle or repeating the single image of the pondering man), I had never been so acutely aware of how much thought, work, and intellect went into creating these dimensions of time.

Overall, I enjoyed this read, and, as I have mentioned, have gained a new appreciation for a genre that, previously, I had barely considered to be a genre at all. Now I see it as a rich and fascinating genre offering a wide spectrum of ideas, theories, and appreciable artistry in both the written and visual forms.

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud- Blog Reflection

What I loved most about this read is the format of the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I am so sick of spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks and immediately wanting to shoot myself in the head upon reading them. As English majors we are taught to look outside of the box, to be creative and abstract, yet we are forced to read the most incredibly boring texts. This book takes what it examines and puts it into use. I never really was exposed to comics other than the Sunday paper as a child. When I got sick last year I watched almost all three seasons of The OC and realized through the geeky character of Seth that there really was a large comic book following, but even still I don’t think it really drove home to me that the entire genre had been classified and defined so thoroughly.

When defined as the juxtaposition of images to convey a message to viewers, I can see how relevant the history of sequential picture manuscripts and hieroglyphics are to comics. The fact that comics are so broadly defined is essentially what McCloud finds so wonderful about this genre. It isn’t limited to just pictures or just texts, or just the combination of both. Comics aren’t just cartoons or limited to fantasy or science fiction and they aren’t created for any specific age group as one may typically assume. Comics are an entire medium of graphic artistry used to visually and mentally stimulate readers and create reactions. Restrictions are thin and tools are vast, McCloud exclaims “No schools of art are banished by our definition, no philosophies, no movements, no ways of seeing are out of bounds!”

McCloud is careful to convey the aspect of freedom involved in comic creation. Comics allow for the creation of concepts and ideas that are concrete and abstract. The specific combination of language, images, and icons can leave interpretations to be anything from implicit to ambiguous, realistic to supernatural, obvious to complex, physical to interpretive. McCloud explains “it’s the unifying properties of design that make us more aware of the page as a whole, rather than its individual components”. We learn how subjective approaches to comics, the use of symbols, as well as appealing to the senses, helps make the art of comics visible as well as expressive in graphic design.