"Understanding Comics", By Scott McCloud

Prior to this class, I hadn't been introduced to Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics'. I honestly wish I had been because it could have been VERY useful to my own production of comics much earlier on. A few of the topics addressed in the book that really left an impression on me, were the Transitions, and Time Frames. Of course the Vocabulary of Comics was important and helpful to revise, but in the Transitions and Time Frames chapters, I learned a lot of things about pacing and passage of time in the way that panels are placed and constructed on each page's composition. After going over Shaun Tann's "The Arrival", my mindset had already been in the thoughts of pacing and transitioning panels and pages. I forgot how masterfully done it was in that novel and in so many others. 

McCloud presents the idea of Six forms of Transition:

1. Idea or purpose – The impulses, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies, the purposes of the work… the CONTENT.
2. Form – The form it will take... will it be a book? A chalk drawing? A chair? A song? A sculpture? A pot holder? A comic book?
3. Idiom – The school of art, the vocabulary of styles or gestures or subject matter, the genre that the work belongs to maybe a genre of its own.
4. Structure – Putting it all together... what to include, what to leave out... how to arrange, how to compose the work.
5. Craft – Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem-solving, getting the “job” done.
6. Surface – Production values, finishing the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to the work.

Using a medium or artistic form/structure to properly and successfully tell a story is exactly what these steps made me realize. I have always loved telling stories through comics, but never entirely understood what went into it. A valuable lesson I learned in McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' is also how important the words are, and how along with the drawings and pictures, the words serve as visual elements in representing the story. They serve as design elements like many of the drawings. 

1. Word Specific- pictures illustrate but don’t significantly add to a largely complete text
2. Picture Specific- combinations where words do little more than add a soundtrack to a visually told sequence
3. Duo Specific- panels in which both words and pictures send essentially the same message
4. Additive- combination where words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa
5. Parallel- combinations, words and pictures seem to follow very different courses without intersecting
6. Montage- where words are treated as integral parts of the picture
7. Interdependent- where words and pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could convey alone

(Page from my Graphic Novel)

"Compression - To stop the bleeding"