Week 11: In Class Discussion

Optic Nerve:
-Not stylized
-First world problems
-Felt like a soap opera

Channel Zero
-A lot of text
-Sharp/sketchy art style
-Slow moving through the pages
-Pictures seem to just provide an interesting visual instead of helping the story move along

Ice Haven
-Sunday comics style but not meant to be funny
-Adult rated issues
-Some variation in style
-Quick short stories

Every Girl Is The End Of The World
-Written kind of like a diary
-Relationships
-Moments of a lot of text

The Fountain
-Paint style

Week 3: The Comic Strip

For this week I read mostly the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips by Bill Watterson. Most of the comics were in strips of four panels and a handful were a little longer. They almost looked like newspaper comics in the sense that a lot of them were in black and white and then others were done in color (Sunday comics) and a little bit longer. The comics seem to all have a "Haha" feel to it if that makes sense. Not really hysterical but not really serious either. They're just easy reads that help pass the time.

The fun thing with Calvin and Hobbes is that we mainly follow the young boy Calvin on his short 4 panel adventures with his stuffed animal tiger, Hobbes, who he imagines is real. You get to sort of just sit there and face palm whenever Calvin does something stupid like a kid would do, but it gives is a sort of cute charm because of this.

Week 2: Understanding Comics

The things that Scott says is really interesting and backs the things I learned in my Writing for Comic Books class. Our brains fill in a lot of information when we are given images. We fill in the seconds of action or movement between shots. Being that our brains are doing this work and practically playing the comic like a movie in your head, it's beneficial to also have as little words as possible from frame to frame. You don't want it to be extremely vague, but too many words can take away from the action thats happening from frame to frame.

Week 1: The Arrival

Shaun Tan's story, The Arrival, is unlike anything I have read before. This story was told completely through illustration with no words. Something like this can be seen as a difficult task, but Tan successfully created a very compelling story.

It helps that his style of drawing isn't too stylized which allows readers to clearly see facial expressions and understand the scenes. The story follows a man/father who leaves his family and travels to a foreign land. You can see the emotions of this father arriving in a new place and not feeling like he belongs which is a feeling that many people are familiar with.

One thing I learned from a previous comic book class I took, is that you want to be able create a comic that uses as little words as possible. There are a lot of different shots and frame set ups you can use to tell a story without using many words. Tan did a great job through actions and moment to moment shots to tell the story.

With that being said, Tan created a very beautiful story that just about anyone can relate to with beautiful illustrations.

Week 1: In Class Exercise

Max Ernst

1^st Panel translation:

There is a lady in the center of the image who appears to be dancing next to a rooster who has laid an egg.

2^nd Panel translation:

A human sized rooster being stands over the woman who is now asleep; tiny rooster is at his side.

3^rd Panel translation:

There is a woman who was dead under the floorboards and now there are two rooster people. Both look down at the revealed woman while a second woman starts to get undressed.

4^th Panel translation:

Rooster men examine the clothing while the two women lay dead.

5^th Panel translation:

Rooster man celebrates a new death of a woman in  a bedroom surrounded by two regular roosters.

6^th Panel translation:

Rooster men takes over the bodies of the dead woman

7^th Panel translation:

They panic at the thought of robbing women of their bodies

8^th Panel translation:

Woman are accompanied by a goose who helps them leave the head rooster