Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

I think the information presented in this comics is by far one of the most critical knowledge I learned at school. It mainly talked about six aspects of comics, from its definition, how it works, why it engages the viewers naturally with its form, the language of comics, types of transitions between panels, and the six elements of comics. I think they will be beneficial in my future working in the art and design field, and I would like to summarize the ideas in the following paragraphs and write some of my thinking about them. 

Definition & essence 

Unlike the other arts or designs, comics was called sequential art. However, the name was very controversial, so the name has changed to sequential visual arts, juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, etc. People eventually decided to change it to a new name-- Comics. I think it is brilliant to create a whole new abstract new instead of a name describing the form or characteristics of comics, that way people can bring in their imagination of what comics is, and people can also change its form creatively. 

How it works and why it engages the viewers naturally? 

Comics are made of mostly pictorial icons, and they are less detailed than the real images. The simplified icons eliminate the unnecessaries, and it amplifies an effect by focusing on a specific part. With a simplified version of the icon, it also makes the viewer project themselves onto the character (the masking effect) and engages the viewers that way. Comics also engages us in both the realm of the concept such as the story and the realm of the senses such as the experience of driving a car (in which the car becomes part of our identity). It reminds me of Shaun Tan’s illustrations in The Arrival. The character arrived in a fictional city-- it is beautiful, complicated, and very much simplified to show the concept of his inner psychological world.

Comic as a language

The language of comics is seen as a pictorial vocabulary composed of words and icons, closure and gutter. A beautiful metaphor is that "visual iconography is the vocabulary, closure is the grammar; closure is the blood, gutter for the vein."It also mentions that to create a unified language of comics is to make pictures and words equal. It meant to make pictures more abstracted from "reality" and required greater levels of perception (more like words); while to make words are more direct and require lower levels of perception and are received faster (more like pictures). It reminds me of how most of the trends of advertisements are-- it needs both to complete the concepts. 

Types of Transitions Between Panels

There are six types of transitions between panels: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. Most of the Comics in the West and the East has more action-to-action panels while Japanese tends to use more subject-to-subject and aspect-to-aspect panels than the Western comics. Action-to-action comics convey the concept in a concise and efficient way. On the other hand, aspect-to-aspect transitions present a mood or sense of space. Time seems to stand still in this quiet moments. I think some of the Japanese comics with that tells stories by switching different perspective gives the viewers to read from the “God's perspective,” someone who can transit from aspect to aspect. 

The six elements of comics

The six elements are purpose/idea, form, idiom, structure, craft, and surface. The book called in "the six steps of comics" while I would like to call it the six elements because I see it from an analytical perspective and I think the comic is complete with the six elements. Artists start from the surface to the craft, to the structure, the idiom--which is unique to the artist, and eventually, the artist picks either the conveying purpose/idea effectively or creating innovative form because doing both may result in "car crash" in the comics. However, when both of artist with innovative form or with purpose/idea, question themselves "why am I doing this?" to innovate from the most fundamental setting in Comis. 

I think the six elements help us to see beneath the crafts and discover the science behind comics and even design. When facing some difficulties in creating comics, I believe it can help us to analyze and assess our work in a systematic way and find a way to build up methodologies to revise our comics. I can't wait to try it on my work.