I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Scott McCloud speak at the University of Maryland yesterday. His presentation style matched the tone and exuberance of his books.
At some point, I’ll write up some more formal thoughts on his talk, but in the meantime, you’ll have to be content with my hasty notes.
Scott McCloud
Introduced by chair of English dept
Lectures endowed by John & Bebe (?) foundation
New departures in format - started as academic format - got a little boring.new media storytelling
First in series: Shelley Jackson interstitial library
Today: Comics as StorytellingMcCloud Introduction
Is comics about the pictures?
Well, we read comics.
Words and images have long co-existed
See comics as unique and powerfully expressive, not as a blend of other media
McCloud similar to description of Zot — new media criticism, technology
Four hundred power point slides
They go by kinda quick
After writing about comics for a dozen years, I begun teaching people how to make comics
How to draw comics the marvel way
Picking the right tools
Things are different now - graphic novels, imported japanese comics, digital comics
What is the common denomenator?
How should I not focus on one particular genre?
Comics = words, pictures, symbols, series of images
Treat comics as a seires of choices
Choise of moment = which to include
Choice of frame - how to frame those meoments
Choice of image = what sort of imagery
Choice of words = how to combine words & images
Choice of flow = how to arrange panels on page or screen, how direct readers eye
web comics and printed comics, follow same genetic code, one image after another
see in panels, imagine between panels
creates temporal map
humans and chimps = 96% same DNA
That four percent diff makes all the difference in the world
We’re looking for a “durable mutation” in the age of digital media
visual, sound, motion of multimedia
use shape of the previous technology as metaphor for new technology
Problem = there was a bit of disjuncture
Assume that space = time, but autonomus sound and motion (as in multimedia) yanked people out of the narrative
The notion of interactivity = not incompatible with conventional comics media
Printed comics = inherently spatial relationship
This is lost online
Designer of video games has abdicated authorship to user
It’s an arc from author to user there’s a tendency to expect it to move ino one of these directions
Moving through space and time, essential to comics, had its predeceors in lots of ancient forms (heiroglyphics)
Picked shapes, conventions conveninet to technology, dictated by technoology
Shapre of artform is immediately affected by technology of print
Rectilinear panel borders
If the form of comics could predate print and if print can so dictate its shape, could we find something going beyond that that would be as dramatic a change
Unbroken reading line = simplicity of form was being held to
As we are moving through space, we’re moving through time
Print, something changes = adjacent moments aren’t necessarily adjacent spaces
That break is also being repicated over the course of 500 years
Early multimedia = sound motion
BUT
What else?
Thnk of screen as window = put temporal map back together and arrange comics in the typical way
Created flying squirrel on planet made of molten lava
Successful Mutuation = one that survives, NOT a durable mutation
There’s no one driving the bus = they have a will of their own to survive
Don’t try to micromanage the evolution of the form at all
Something we could have done in print but didn’t — influenced by web comics
People still using old technology as basis
Nowhere Girl = more comfortable on the web, screen friendly colors,
make the content of the work come to the fore = the medium becomes invisible
Individuals playing with different techniques
Formalist Thinking
Clacisist Sensation
Animist Intuition
Iconoclast ??
Form vs. Content = this tension being played out on the web in a very real way
Always creating something that would work NOW vs. creating something that works in the future
In the “thinking” realm are off in the corner, whereas there’s a stampede of activity by the “content” people
There’s value of anticipating what things will be like in the future
A standard can make an enormous differnce in how a mutation is restrained
Heading for more immersive displays, gesture-based interaction
Early comics = opportunistic
The irritation of going through a scroll bar is Of the moment. This can grow into an entirely new animal.
You can’t waste paper
No premium on blank space on the web
You can vary frequency modulation
Is there an aesthetic divergence = takes them further away from their fellows
More pure expression of the idea of comics
Moving away from prose & motion pictures
We’re actually rising above the landscape of time
You’re able to see it all from a birds eye view
The most powerful driving force behind narrative, is the simple act of escape
We just want to go someplace = it’s our birthright
If that’s true the most successful media, that deliver on that promise, that’s the moving image, why then do we need the other media, by re-experiencing our world through a variety of viewpoints, we can triangulate the world we live in
We crave different ways of looking at the world
Comics allow us to enter from distinct vantage points
Archiving of comics? why do they seem disposable?
How to find this stuff
