Little Nemo is perplexing to me, as it seems odd that a story that's guaranteed to end the same way every week could be so appealing, especially when that ending is "and then he woke up". Then again, I suppose that's part of the charm. The knowledge that "it's only a dream", that there's no danger and everything will be alright in the morning, lets the stories always remain lighthearted and fun, and allows us the readers to indulge ourselves in the gorgeous, fanciful and varied worlds that McCay presents us with. The simple and open-ended premise cleverly allows McCay to present us with a brand new spectacle every week.
The comic is absolutely beautiful. The art holds up even by today's standards, but put next to contemporary comics such as Krazy Kat or The Yellow Kid, there's no comparison. McCay's work is intricate and detailed, while at the same time retaining the simple forms and expressiveness of cartoons. The coloring makes the absolute most of the printing format, and is capable of being both subtle and extravagant as the situation calls for. The result of these combined elements is something that can only be described, quite appropriately, as dreamlike. Reading Little Nemo, it's clear to see the influence it has had on other artist's interpretations of Dream Worlds, from Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen to Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
There is clearly something more going on here than an amusing diversion. Many of the strips have Nemo waking up just before some anticipated event. Often the whole strip will be about Nemo just trying to get to Slumberland (which begs the question: where exactly is he before he gets there?), only to wake up before he can make it there. This repeated motif captures something of the profound mystery and allure of dreams. All of us have at one time or another suffered the frustration of waking up from a dream too soon, had the last images fading away as we struggle to hold onto them, left with the aching feeling that some great secret was waiting just beyond our reach.
One of my favorite devices McCay uses to achieve this effect is the use of a tiered or staircase-like panel layout, with the panels getting progressively taller and then smaller as you move across and down the page. Although used scarcely, maybe so as not to diminish the impact it has, it creates a lovely visual effect that evokes the feeling of falling deeper and deeper into the world, as one falls deeper and deeper into sleep, and then having our vision of the world get narrower and narrower as we slowly start to wake up. Even when not using this tiered layout, McCay seems to have a fondness for tall, narrow panels, which creates this sense of gravity across the whole page, and also makes reading these comics on a computer screen a poor substitute for the real thing.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Educational Comics
I came across this by pure happenstance online, and it seemed like the kind of thing I should post about:
https://www.armsroom.com/files/m16.pdf
It's a Vietnam War era M16 rifle handbook, illustrated by none other than Will Eisner!
It's pretty cool, at a time when comics would still largely have been viewed as childish entertainment, to find an official government document making use of comics techniques. Just by perusing the handbook, it's easy to see how the sequential nature of comics, as well as Eisner's clean, simple line-work, is perfect for conveying complicated information in a way that's simple, quick, and easy to understand. And the occasional gag makes reading it less of a chore, and makes it more likely that soldiers actually will read it.
The handbook also takes a cue from this even older example, of a German technical manual for a Panzer Tank:
https://archive.org/details/Der-Generalinspekteur-der-Panzertruppen-Die-Tiger-Fibel
...which is peppered with random drawings of naked women. While the Eisner version is not quite so "on the nose", having an attractive lady as the primary instructor is certainly a good way to make the book more appealing to the enlisted man, and to make him more likely to listen.
https://www.armsroom.com/files/m16.pdf
It's a Vietnam War era M16 rifle handbook, illustrated by none other than Will Eisner!
It's pretty cool, at a time when comics would still largely have been viewed as childish entertainment, to find an official government document making use of comics techniques. Just by perusing the handbook, it's easy to see how the sequential nature of comics, as well as Eisner's clean, simple line-work, is perfect for conveying complicated information in a way that's simple, quick, and easy to understand. And the occasional gag makes reading it less of a chore, and makes it more likely that soldiers actually will read it.
The handbook also takes a cue from this even older example, of a German technical manual for a Panzer Tank:
https://archive.org/details/Der-Generalinspekteur-der-Panzertruppen-Die-Tiger-Fibel
...which is peppered with random drawings of naked women. While the Eisner version is not quite so "on the nose", having an attractive lady as the primary instructor is certainly a good way to make the book more appealing to the enlisted man, and to make him more likely to listen.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
One thing that struck me on my second reading of Understanding Comics was how much of the concepts presented could be generalized to other forms of visual art. In particular, I find there's an interesting parallel in the discussion of iconography and caricature in comics to the subject of art in video games.
McCloud asserts that depicting characters in a more simplified, cartoony style makes it easier for readers to identify with those characters, and project themselves into the role of that character. I think this is a concept that can be just as effectively applied to games, where it is even more important that players be able to view themselves within the context of the story.
In the early days of video game, the limitations of technology meant that the art pretty much had to be iconic of it was going to be recognizable at all. Clever artists were very deliberate about what they did and didn't describe with the pixels at their disposal, and relied heavily on the players' imaginations to fill in the blanks (another form of closure). These methods, perhaps ironically, led to a slew of colorful and memorable characters, whom players had no trouble identifying with. Characters such as Mario or Link, Guybrush Threepwood or the nameless protagonist of Doom, resonated with audiences in part because of their simple graphical style. And when these characters get modern, hi-definition makeovers, they tend to retain that style, while still making use of the technology of modern systems.
Unfortunately, a lot of people today, both players and developers, seem to think that the only way for a player to identify with a character is the "blank slate" method: that by making these characters as totally bland and generic as possible, this will leave players with a "hole" to fill of sorts. And this philosophy has led to a wealth of game characters rendered in the highest technical fidelity, with not a single memorable character trait, such as Master Chief or Commander Shepherd. Meanwhile, other modern characters such as Minecraft Steve, Darksiders' Death, or the Scythian, continue to demonstrate that the best way to get players to truly project themselves into the world of the game is with simple, iconic characters, with a life and personality all their own.
I guess this didn't really have anything to do with comics. But I suppose it shows how each new art form can feed off of and learn from its predecessors, and that nothing exists in a vacuum.
McCloud asserts that depicting characters in a more simplified, cartoony style makes it easier for readers to identify with those characters, and project themselves into the role of that character. I think this is a concept that can be just as effectively applied to games, where it is even more important that players be able to view themselves within the context of the story.
In the early days of video game, the limitations of technology meant that the art pretty much had to be iconic of it was going to be recognizable at all. Clever artists were very deliberate about what they did and didn't describe with the pixels at their disposal, and relied heavily on the players' imaginations to fill in the blanks (another form of closure). These methods, perhaps ironically, led to a slew of colorful and memorable characters, whom players had no trouble identifying with. Characters such as Mario or Link, Guybrush Threepwood or the nameless protagonist of Doom, resonated with audiences in part because of their simple graphical style. And when these characters get modern, hi-definition makeovers, they tend to retain that style, while still making use of the technology of modern systems.
Unfortunately, a lot of people today, both players and developers, seem to think that the only way for a player to identify with a character is the "blank slate" method: that by making these characters as totally bland and generic as possible, this will leave players with a "hole" to fill of sorts. And this philosophy has led to a wealth of game characters rendered in the highest technical fidelity, with not a single memorable character trait, such as Master Chief or Commander Shepherd. Meanwhile, other modern characters such as Minecraft Steve, Darksiders' Death, or the Scythian, continue to demonstrate that the best way to get players to truly project themselves into the world of the game is with simple, iconic characters, with a life and personality all their own.
I guess this didn't really have anything to do with comics. But I suppose it shows how each new art form can feed off of and learn from its predecessors, and that nothing exists in a vacuum.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
The Arrival, by Shaun Tan
The brilliant thing about The Arrival is that the absence of any dialogue or legible text is not merely an arbitrary limitation by the author, but a deliberate device used to emphasize the sense of finding yourself in a strange and alien world, where you can't speak the language or possibly even read.
Although much of the story is modeled after the sort of archetypical story of an impoverished worker immigrating to America, with imagery that recalls the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, The Arrival is designed as a universal story. The intent is for the work both to resonate with those who have experienced the struggles of traveling to a new world, but also to capture and communicate the experience to those who may never even have left their home country. The fantastical machinery and fanciful flora and fauna evoke a world that is strange and confusing, but also full of wonder and bright promise.
The Arrival is told in a unique format, which fits somewhere in between a traditional comic book and an illustrated story. The book alternates between large full-page illustrations, and pages of small panels laid out on a grid. The full-page illustrations are usually large-scale landscapes, depicting either the grand, sometimes bewildering New World, or else the dark and oppressive Old World. In either case, these large illustrations invite the reader to take their time admiring the drawings closely, to study them as one would a singular drawing, and to soak in the mood and tone of the world.
The smaller panels are used when a bit more clarity of story-telling is needed, either by showing a sequence of events over a short period of time, or creating a montage of small glimpses into an event over a longer period of time. One particularly striking example is when an entire page full of thumbnail sketches of clouds is used to express the protagonist's journey over the ocean to the New World. It is neither needed or expected that these panels would be "read" in linear order, and yet the layout of the images clearly communicates the passage of a long period of time. And although it is clear that nothing very interesting happens during this time, the feeling of looking to the sky day by day reflects the protagonist's hopes and expectations for the New World.
Of course, the smaller panels can also be used simply to convey a mood, as on the very first page. Here, there is no passage of time implied between each of the panels; instead, the focus on small snippets of the room sets the mood for the opening scene, as well as drawing our attention to certain important story points such as the boat ticket, the packed suitcase, the family portrait, and the origami bird. In any case, this alternation between small panels and large drawings is used throughout the book to create contrast. The Juxtaposition of the grand with the mundane, of the colossal with the miniscule show how both perspectives effect our lives. It shows how it may be the big things that we will always remember, but it may be the little things that seem the strangest, or the most familiar, or mean the most to us.
Although much of the story is modeled after the sort of archetypical story of an impoverished worker immigrating to America, with imagery that recalls the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, The Arrival is designed as a universal story. The intent is for the work both to resonate with those who have experienced the struggles of traveling to a new world, but also to capture and communicate the experience to those who may never even have left their home country. The fantastical machinery and fanciful flora and fauna evoke a world that is strange and confusing, but also full of wonder and bright promise.
The Arrival is told in a unique format, which fits somewhere in between a traditional comic book and an illustrated story. The book alternates between large full-page illustrations, and pages of small panels laid out on a grid. The full-page illustrations are usually large-scale landscapes, depicting either the grand, sometimes bewildering New World, or else the dark and oppressive Old World. In either case, these large illustrations invite the reader to take their time admiring the drawings closely, to study them as one would a singular drawing, and to soak in the mood and tone of the world.
The smaller panels are used when a bit more clarity of story-telling is needed, either by showing a sequence of events over a short period of time, or creating a montage of small glimpses into an event over a longer period of time. One particularly striking example is when an entire page full of thumbnail sketches of clouds is used to express the protagonist's journey over the ocean to the New World. It is neither needed or expected that these panels would be "read" in linear order, and yet the layout of the images clearly communicates the passage of a long period of time. And although it is clear that nothing very interesting happens during this time, the feeling of looking to the sky day by day reflects the protagonist's hopes and expectations for the New World.
Of course, the smaller panels can also be used simply to convey a mood, as on the very first page. Here, there is no passage of time implied between each of the panels; instead, the focus on small snippets of the room sets the mood for the opening scene, as well as drawing our attention to certain important story points such as the boat ticket, the packed suitcase, the family portrait, and the origami bird. In any case, this alternation between small panels and large drawings is used throughout the book to create contrast. The Juxtaposition of the grand with the mundane, of the colossal with the miniscule show how both perspectives effect our lives. It shows how it may be the big things that we will always remember, but it may be the little things that seem the strangest, or the most familiar, or mean the most to us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)