Week Two: Idea/Insight of McCloud


This week, we were tasked to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.I was very interested in how he presented a lot of concepts we are familiar with but in the context of comics, are very different - particularly Icons.

An Icon is to represent an idea and the similar word, symbol was defined as one category of icons. The meaning of an icon in the comic-world can be fluid and variable in terms of the context such as words are nothing more than icons but put in a context of a book, can represent something more. One of my favorite examples McCloud uses is when using a face, as its stripped of its details and reduced to nothing more than a contour drawing, the idea or ICON still holds up.

Also discussed in this book is the basic rules of cinematography - which was my favorite part. Maintaining screen direction, knowing when to cut, creating suspense were all tools highlighted as ways to have a compelling comic. I could not help but draw a correlation between comics and storyboarding as they both utilize these concepts to tell a story sequentially in the most efficient way possible.


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