Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland (Rewrite)

Looking back at one of the first comics that I had read in this class I can simply say that this comic had a lot of influence as to how I based my posts and my understanding of the comics that I was reading.  When I first read the comics I reminisced back to when I was a child and where my imagination took me.  As a result I began to ask myself in every comic or graphic novel if I could find myself relating to that story or find myself placed directly in the story.  After an entire semester of reading comic I do not think that I could name a comic that better placed me in the mindscape of my childhood and my relationships with what was around me.

Artistic the comic is not one that gets very high recognition and most people would not tell you that this is a comic that has changed their life dramatically.  I for one am not a follower, and can honestly say that this comic was an eye opener to many things.  The comic opened my view on comics to not that just of context but also the staging quality and the application of my lessons in my concept class to the reading of a comic or graphic novel.  It also opened my eyes to why I am here studying Computer Animation and what were my goals in life and how would I get there. Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland most people would ride off as just another comic but for me this comic was in a way life changing.

Nemo in Slumberland was not the most artistic or concept applied piece that I have read in this class but it was one that held it own and fought for appreciation.  If the images had been more glamorous or if the characters actually had character I do not think I would have related as much as I have with it.  With the character conforming to the other around them and little action being taken paralleled what I had been doing all semester and it way a huge wake up call for me.

Nemo in Slumberland is by far not recognized for its relationship with the audience but instead is recognized for its lack in the image department.  But its lack is what makes the piece such an asset.  It allows the viewer to relate without all the jumbled mess of the extra stuff thrown into most animatics. Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland is not one of my favorite comics but I can honestly say that reading it has been a life changing experience.

Promethea

I was a little distant to read this comic for some reason.  Just hearing the name gave me flashbacks from Greek mythology lessons in high school and I was not sure if I really wanted to go through that experience again.  After starting that comic I could not put it down.  That piece was an absolute masterpiece!

This piece was one of my absolute favorite pieces to read this semester and I really and enjoyed the graphic images present in it.  The staging alone was so magnificent to study, but within the pictures but also between the images in relationship to the page itself.  That has to be my absolute favorite part!  The choices made to place the images and have them interact with one another are truly magnificent and beautiful.  The staging was not the only thing that appealed to me.

Some other things that were just simply icing on the top include: anime influences, and the graphic quality of the text.  Some influences of anime that I recognized are the silhouetted characters, strong poses and the facial expression that carry the story at times.  The text in the story was a bit lengthy at times and created this graphic mass, but the images spoke for themselves to in a sense that was the best way to include the text.

My final note on the piece is the orientation of the viewer in perspective to the actual comic.  A lot of the images are in a long panel format, which allows the view to feel like they are actually in that space.  The span of ones eyes is much like the long panel in the comic, which allows the audience to directly relate to the scene and the characters in the scene.

Simply amazing!

The Adventures of Jimmy Corrigan

 

This graphic novel was both beautiful and hard to read.  A lot of times I found myself confused as to weather the character was an adult or a child and the titled assisted in my confusion greatly.  The main character looks like and adult and some points but then resembles a child at others, but his face and wrinkles stay the same throughout the piece.  It was hard to stay with the story.  Other than my confusion of the orientation of the character the presentation is beautiful.  The images are very posterized and flat.  The transitions between images are unique and work to the advantage of the story.  One can’t rely on the emotion and gesture of the character to spill out what they are feeling; it is the staging that surrounds the character that makes it work.  Some images are tight around the character that give a claustrophobic feeling where as other are very spaced out isolating the main character.  The use of many close up images would be hard to communicate in an animatic or just big images one page at a time.  But the way that multiple images are staged onto one page allows for the establishing shot to be included but not.

I had a love hate relationship with this book and maybe if I read through it a second time I will get a better understanding of it but that is something I will need to explore in the future.

Asterix

This piece was interesting to read mainly for its graphic qualities.  It heavily resembled the recognizable form and style of the super hero comic.  The characters are very exaggerated and there is a heavy uses of motion lines and blur.  The poses are very clear and silhouetted.  The text coming from the character is complimenting of their thoughts and actions.  It is a little wordy with the explanations and the characters thoughts.  The background is given just as much attention to detail and accuracy as the characters are.  But because the characters are so diverse we can still point them out in the image. 

The style of the piece reminded me a lot of the Looney Toons and the Smurfs.  The designs are very bubbly and exaggerated.  The poses are defined well, and there are many arcs followed through the actions.  The styles believably take you to a surreal world.  The imagery was the highlight for me of this book and I do not know if I really want to go back and read it again to focus on the text.  I think the images speak enough for themselves.

Ranma Book 3- Rumiko Takahashi

This graphic novel did not have as much of an impact on me as other anime pieces but it was definitely appealing to read for many reasons.  The book had this special quality to it.  Every so often the page would be collaged together to pass time or to convey deeper meaning to the images.  The way Takahashi did this was so fine and intricate.  It came off as a very unique graphic design quality in the way he allowed his images to flow from one right into the other, and the way he broke that awful frame.  Other than his collage style he also uses a lot strong poses, this reminded me a lot of Battle Angel Alita and the imagery in that comic.  The proportions are also exaggerated and the facial expressions are clear as a bell.  The piece is not heavy on text at all and he complements the imagery with onomatopoeias to help add mood to the piece.  This was a lovely book to read, and reinforced a lot of the aspects I found in other anime pieces.

Ghostworld

We began watching the live action film based off the graphic novel Ghostworld in class and certain things pushed my buttons to take a look and the book itself.  The movie was very upfront and uninviting.  The two main characters were always in a bad mood and seemed to want to cause more troubles than assisting people.  I felt like I was one of their victims in the movie.  This is very opposite from what I practice in my life and it was very hard to get into the movie, for this reason I tried to read the book to see if I could adapt more to that representation.

When I first picked up the book it didn’t look to be so bad, but after reading a few pages it was too hard to continuing reading.  All of the images are very bleak.  The book is printed with three colors: light teal, black and white.  Every image is oriented the same way and there is no variation between two images.  There is an excessive amount of close ups and mid shots that just pushes me away from reading it.  Not really sure what to be focusing my eye on if the dialogue was not there.  Most of the images are very flat and come off as posterized.  There is no variety in facial or body expressions; the characters are very stiff.  With all of this bleak and very uninviting imagery it represented the characters very well, but could not finish the book due to the dryness of the images.

The one thing that got on my nerves the most had to have been the staging of the images.  In concept class we discussed how flat staging is used for comic relief, where as dynamic staging creates drama.  Almost every image was very flat but the idea of that even being comedic contradicted the attitudes of the characters.  I was very lost and was not quite sure how to react.

Battle Angel Alita

Battle Angel Alita was the first piece of Anime that I ever read.  I was very sheltered growing up and was not introduced to anime through comics.  The only show that I had ever seen was Sailor Moon.  After reading this I have been persuaded to read a little more and try to expose myself to the anime culture.  This comic was pure for me. 

The comic presented strong morals but also presented a great quality in the images themselves.  The poses were very story and clear.  They were exaggerated to a decent extent but they were believable.  This is one of the first instances in comics where I have seen characters built to a humanesque form with such strong poses.  There is also a perfect amount of negative space and the characters are staged very well, creating conflict and relationship between character and their environment, and other characters.  Lots of attention was paid to the representation of who is important in the shot.  The close ups are reserved on for the main character so that the audience sympathizes with her.  The non important characters tend to blend in with the background, where as the main characters are contrasted and almost always silhouetted.  The whole piece is very graphic and designed in a clear and welcoming fashion.

The story and images also remind me of a very sci-fi kind of feeling.  Some pieces that come to mind include Battle Star Galactic, Star Trek and the Matrix.  The story and the images that convey this strong story could easily be molded to represent any of the above listed sci-fi stories.

Reading Battle Angel Alita was a very new experience for me, but I enjoyed every moment in getting the chance to read it.  I only have read the third piece of it and look forward to reading the rest in the near future.

Phoenix

The book Phoenix in the Karma series written by Osamu Tezuka was an absolute joy to read and it was another one of those comics that reinforced what I have been learning in my concept classes and my goals in my career.  The book itself went into really deep morals and gave the story reasoning.  I really liked this aspect of it because I am huge about living by ones morals and I tend to write my poetry in representation of different morals and have been trying to transfer it over to my concept boards for class.  This was an amazing piece to work through and study how Tezuka was able to successfully present his morals while not preaching them.  The book also contains a lot of content that is from the background of the his culture and in a sense brings honor to how he lived his life.

As far as the art aspect of the book, it was clear and very well composed.  I loved the graphic quality of the images.  All of the images read clearly almost as if they were part of animatic.  Tezuka use small phrases here and there, but they are not use excessive, just enough to complement the images.  The blocking in the frames was original and flowed with the story instead of a predetermined path.  The character designs were also recognizable and didn’t conflict with one another.  I was so please with Phoenix I just couldn’t put it down and I look forward to reading it again.

Maus

The series Maus is a an amazing book from the content that was written about to the images that were presented.  Maus speak about how was like to live during the Holocaust as a Jew.  The was Spiegelman presents the story to the audience is very unique.  He gives each race a different animal type.  The Jewish are represented as mice, the Polish are represented as pigs, and the Nazi are represented as cats.  I love the metaphors that he creates with the character representations.  From this book I was actually inspired to take some of my stories from concept and rework them so they were not so literal but created a deeper metaphor between the characters and how they were represented.

The images presented in the book heavily support the content Spiegelman presents, by making the audience feel very uncomfortable and putting the audience in the awkward positioning observing the brutality of living during the Holocaust.  All of the images are very busy and do not have much blank space within them.  The backgrounds are very noisy with extra lines for shading, where as the characters are very blank and empty.  There are not any facial expressions due to the build of the characters.  The emotion is created through the compositions Spiegleman creates and the staging as well as how much noise and breathing room is given to the audience.  Every once in a while the images break their frame and throw the audience off guard.  Characters are very similar and do not show any variation.  The characters are also never fully isolated on the page.  The picture that Spiegelman has made makes me very uncomfortable to read his book, but in his case it just adds to the beauty of the piece.

My absolute favorite image in the book is when the character is explaining how he has lost two of his brothers and that his family has fallen apart.  The page has multiple images on it, and many of them are actually part of a whole image.  There is a shot where the character is leaning down while sitting and the image has been sliced into five parts.  The character is represented in a broken mess where he is reflecting on what has happened, the image sliced up is the perfect image to get that message apart and it is absolutely beautiful.  This book was amazing and the articulation of the information through images was spectacular.

Eightball

Eightball was extremely different from the comics that I have been reading earlier in the semester.  This is one of the first glimpses that I have gotten in the field of superhero comics.  Throughout my childhood I was never really introduced to comics; the only time I ever saw superheroes was on the television on various channels like cartoon network, or nickelodeon.  Reading Eightball gave me a completely new experience at looking at superheroes.

Eightball’s images and characters appeared very raw, and in some ways not appealing.  After living twenty years and seeing superheroes in their fleshed out designs and bright colors, reading this comic seemed was a bit dull.  Seeing it in a new fashion allowed me to really rip into what made up the style of that comic.  I found many things that were not appealing to the eye unless you looked at it as an artistic twist to the presentation of comics.  Some of things that stood out include the orientation of the characters to the environment and the over look of the piece.  The piece is very boxy in areas.  Sometimes the character appeared to have been drawn with boxes in perspective at first and then never finished.  There is not a lot of detail in the bodies of the characters or the background.  The bodies of the characters are very flat where as the face includes an excessive amount detail.  The details in the face makes the characters all look really old and creepy.  The overall look of the piece looks somewhat posterized.  The look works in some cases but not in others.

Overall the experience I got from Eightball was very unwelcoming and too abstract in character design for me to relate or feel comfortable.  I am glad I got to read Eightball to experience superheroes in their non-television format, but due to my history of seeing them on television I did not enjoy it that much.