Week One: The Arrival


This week we were tasked to look at Shaun Tan's The Arrival. This story is a perfect example of a comic with a compelling story that visually guides you through the narrative without words. The story follows an immigrant who leaves his family for a new place to call home - experiencing trials and tribulations along the way. 

 The presentation of the comic stood out to me for the most part as it had a very organic 
feel to it, using soft charcoal and light washes of color to add to the tone of the narrative. I say organic as we could see the fine grains and smudges in some panels - making it look old and vintage, like a scrapbook.

 Compositionally, The Arrival uses a lot of well composed shots to "plus" a scene and help further set the mood of the scene. Shaun also used various different types of shots to emphasize where our focal point is like a character or an action. I think Shaun did a great job visualizing his story of immigrating to Australia to a broad audience where it is relatable to a mass audience using imbuing his story with genuine feelings accompanied by the basics of comic creation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Five: Eisner and Thompson

Image
This week we watched an interview with Stan Lee and Will Eisner. The interview addressed the making and evolution of comics. Eisner is a comic veteran who has delved further into pushing the format of the graphic novel. Lee on the other hand was more adept at the comic format, constantly praised and shared how he felt the graphic novel had such a profound impact on comics. Additionally Eisner further emphasized that the graphic novel is not catered to the mass public. I found it interesting that while both interviewers were using different formats, they collectively addressed the controversial issues on how some feel the graphic novel format is hurting the face of comics. Eisner equated it to a drug dealer going to schools with comics. Lastly, Eisner talks about how the comic format is the only medium where you have complete control over ever aspect -  he draws to bring you into the story. 
Read more

Week Seven: Maus Response

Image
This week, we had the chance to read the graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelma. I found this graphic novel to be highly metaphorical with dealing with such a traumatic event. Through making me way through the narrative, I was very surprised at the honest response the author was able to tell and did not have any reservations - one of the benefits of the graphic novel format.  Like mentioned in class, this book reminded me a lot like Animal Farm and choosing to portray the animals in Maus to represent the different sides as a cat, frog, dog. The anamorphic nature of these characters made it visually plesant to read despite the subject matter but upon further investigation, turning the Nazi's into cats and the Jews in to mice can either make me chuckle at its brilliance or feel sad about the matter. Overall I appreciate the opportunity I had to read Maus and would definitely suggest it to people to at least read a bit of it.
Read more