Session 5 - Graphic Code of Comic Books
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Emily Carroll: A short comic analysis
Figure 3. Carrol, E. (2013) Out Of Skin [Comic Strip]
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Figure 4. Carroll, E. (2010) Out the Door [Comic Strip]
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Emily Carroll has been a big inspiration to my own art and I really adore her comics. Main reason I was attracted is the bold use of red or other striking colours, the black and white contrast and the scary imagery. The old rustic and Victorian touches is something I'm really interested in too. For a lot of her comics she breaks the walls of the panels and she usually doesn't restrict herself to gutters, and will have the character progress from moment to moment within the same panel (below), making the moments way more dynamic and ghostly. She does this a lot with speech bubbles as well, where they crawl and warp around with assisting text for each panel. I had never seen another comic artist do this before and is very original to me. For people who read marvel or other popular comics with a very set strict rules of panels and colours, this is a fresh breath of air if you want something different, and she keeps surprising the reader with ways she can break the comic up.
I wanted to include two pages from different comics to have two different types of comic. First page (Fig. 3) shown has the first half being moment to moment as the woman just walks along, and then subject to subject as it shifts through the characters in her mind. It has a traditional layout of 9 by 9, where the two first strips have merged into two panels, emphasizing on the slow walking. The text is nicely laid in the gutters which is something not very traditional, but also text within the panels for the subjects. Both the gutter and the hyper frame is painted in black with an organic brush like outline to assist the art style.
The second page (Fig. 4) starts with moment to moments as this girl is just walking down the hallway, then aspect to aspect at is zooms out on her in the hallway and action to action at the end as she halts before walking down the stairs. The layout does not seem to have a rule (that might be because it in a scroll-down internet comic strip), but there is still harmony and structure in where the panels have been put. Again, the text has been placed in the gutters. Contradicted to the first page and a lot of her other comics the gutter and hyper frame is white, but she still uses an organic rounded outline of the panels.
Fig. 3 Carroll, E. (2013) Out Of Skin [Comic Strip]. Available at: http://www.emcarroll.com/comics/skin/ (Accessed 18 April 2020)
Fig. 4 Carroll, E. (2010) Out the Door [Comic Strip]. Available at: http://emcarroll.com/comics/outthedoor.html (Accessed 18 April 2020)
I wanted to include two pages from different comics to have two different types of comic. First page (Fig. 3) shown has the first half being moment to moment as the woman just walks along, and then subject to subject as it shifts through the characters in her mind. It has a traditional layout of 9 by 9, where the two first strips have merged into two panels, emphasizing on the slow walking. The text is nicely laid in the gutters which is something not very traditional, but also text within the panels for the subjects. Both the gutter and the hyper frame is painted in black with an organic brush like outline to assist the art style.
The second page (Fig. 4) starts with moment to moments as this girl is just walking down the hallway, then aspect to aspect at is zooms out on her in the hallway and action to action at the end as she halts before walking down the stairs. The layout does not seem to have a rule (that might be because it in a scroll-down internet comic strip), but there is still harmony and structure in where the panels have been put. Again, the text has been placed in the gutters. Contradicted to the first page and a lot of her other comics the gutter and hyper frame is white, but she still uses an organic rounded outline of the panels.
Fig. 3 Carroll, E. (2013) Out Of Skin [Comic Strip]. Available at: http://www.emcarroll.com/comics/skin/ (Accessed 18 April 2020)
Fig. 4 Carroll, E. (2010) Out the Door [Comic Strip]. Available at: http://emcarroll.com/comics/outthedoor.html (Accessed 18 April 2020)
Scott McCloud: Closure & Transition
In an earlier session I covered Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, but this time I would like to talk about his Closure & Transition Types section. Heading straight into it, he starts explaining things that are familiar to us from the lecture like gutters. Gutter are gaps in time where there is an essential understanding between the author and the reader to fill in the missing blanks. This relationship between the author and the reader gives a voluntary closure, where our participation is the driving force for panels, and our imagination is vital to the process. Say the first panel is of someone lifting an axe above someone's head and the next panel is words illustrating the victim screaming, it is only our own heads imagining the act of the swing. He says that the panels "fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments" (McCloud, 1994, p. 66-73).
As we learnt during our lecture there are different types of transitions between the panels.
Moment > Moment: There is little closure, almost just like a film we see the small different changes with no time skips
Action > Action: This shows distinct progressions in the same scene
Subject > Subject: Switching between different subjects, like people, within the same scene or idea
Scene > Scene: This has panels that show significant distance through time and/ or space
Aspect > Aspect: A common transition with switches between different aspects of the same place or idea
Non Sequitur: This is when panels have no relationship, and it might be more open to interpretation
McCloud, S. (1994) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, HarperCollins Inc.
As we learnt during our lecture there are different types of transitions between the panels.
Moment > Moment: There is little closure, almost just like a film we see the small different changes with no time skips
Action > Action: This shows distinct progressions in the same scene
Subject > Subject: Switching between different subjects, like people, within the same scene or idea
Scene > Scene: This has panels that show significant distance through time and/ or space
Aspect > Aspect: A common transition with switches between different aspects of the same place or idea
Non Sequitur: This is when panels have no relationship, and it might be more open to interpretation
McCloud, S. (1994) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, HarperCollins Inc.
