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Understanding Comics (McCloud) chapters 1 and 2

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 7 months ago

UNDERSTAND COMICS, CHAPTERS ONE AND TWO

Today I read Understanding Comics (the McCloud book). I know it was sorta late, I hope its still okay.I read chapters one and two and took notes so im just going to kinda put my notes/say what I thought about the chapter.

CHAPTER 1 "Setting the record straight"

So I'm not too sure if we were supposed to read this chapter, but I wanted to anyway cuz I didn't even know what I was about to read. I did it as sort of an 'introdution' thing.

These were my notes/thoughts:

Well first of all I really liked how the book persented the information.It made it interesting for me to read, not boring like my usual text book.

To start out it was saying how comics are not often "examined" like other forms of media are.

For example

◊music

◊videos

◊films

◊theater

◊and visual atrs

The 'definition' of COMICS in the book says: "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence"

JUXTAPOSED means adjacent, or side-by-side.

The book was also talking about how ancient drawings can be considered comics also, like cave drawings and ancient egyptian painting. I can see how that would be, they do fit the definition of comics. They go in order, there is more than one drawing, and they are telling a story.

That is interesting because I have never thought of them a "comics".

Then it goes on to explain how comics are not cartoons because comics are more than one "pictures" in sequential order that tell a story and a cartoon is just one picture.

CHAPTER 2 "THE VOCABULARY OD COMICS"

The first three pages were pretty interesting, it was trying to explain ICONS by putting a bunch of pictures that look obvious, like they look like what they are but the're not. I cant really explain it, that was the best i could do. It had a picture of a cow, and under that it said "this is not a cow". It was just saying that the images were icons, not the actual thing. I think thats what it ment.

McCloud says the definitition of an icon is: Any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea.

A symbol is a category of an icon.

I liked this quote: "A cartoon isn't just a way of drawing, its a way of seeing."

McCloud souwed a plain picture of a circle with two dots for eyes and a curved circle for a mouth. something as simple as this.. :) <---what do you see? a face right? well the book was saying you mind wont let you see anything else. even though it is so simple, you mind sees a face.

Very interesting.

I think these chapters have a good interesting way of explaing things, like "picture plane" and how cartoonists have many different ways to draw cartoons and how important audience involvement is, and the difference beteween american comics and japanese comics. Alot of interesting things.