Category: Uncategorized

After reading Scott McCloud’s explanation of the way that time and ambiguous spaces are interpreted within media, I’m excited to use his ideas in my own project; Even mediums like film that utilize visibly seamless methods of transmitting images rely on the brain to fill in gaps between the 24 frames per second, and I really liked how McCloud elaborated on the opportunities this provides us as storytellers. In comics (or a diagrammatic narrative), this split is infinitely more emphasized, 

I especially thought his portrayal of “non-sequiturs” was fascinating and something I’d want to replicate. The contrast of two seemingly unrelated images that are obviously linked in some way is just a really potent narrative tool. Especially when working within a tighter timeframe and smaller scale story, using this method helps evoke meaning and interpretation with an economy of space. 

A trope I love in comics or manga is an ending panel that recontextualizes the entire story- pulling away, geographically or chronologically, from the bulk of the narrative and revealing some new piece of information. In the end it’s all about showing and withholding information, and McCloud’s exploration of this idea has been inspiring for my own future work. 

‘

This is a story of someone being afraid of being alone when it’s dark outside. The character is trying to get to her car as fast as possible to feel safe when turning on her car lights. I decided to not include images of the character arriving safe to the car so that the viewers can interpret any possible endings. Did she arrive safely? Was she being followed by someone or something? Is this character not making it to safety? 

I decided to take some of the photos while moving fast so that I could get a sense of movement and rush from the character. The transition I used for this story is action-to-action, following how the character is walking out of a building and proceeds to fast walk (or run) to get to her car. And at the end it feels like a subject-to-subject transition because I’m letting the viewer create a posible situation and ending for the girl that is alone out in the dark.

The most compelling part for me in the first four chapters of McCloud’s book was in chapter three when he states that, we as storytellers have to trust that our audience will be able to fill in the gaps of the story for themselves. This concept really drives home the concept of “show not tell.” And that sometimes it may be better not to give all the details of the action in between actions as it isn’t always necessary to complete the narrative. For me, those in-between moments of the frames are what make a movie/film so worthwhile. It adds me, the viewer, to the story as I get to be involved in the interpretation of the story. That added layer of mystery makes it more engaging. It was a bit amusing to read that at the beginning of the chapter, McCloud talked about how when he was a kid he thought the world revolved around him and was only in motion when he was there to perceive it. This is something I also considered as a kid. Even now it’s sometimes perplexing to imagine that life is happening somewhere else without you experiencing it. It’s quite profound.

In approaching the narrative project, taking into consideration not giving too much away and allowing the story the right amount of visual gaps to give the viewer/reader somewhat of control over how the story is perceived will be an important factor in how I write the story. I think having viewer interaction with the story is something very hard to do, as there is quite a bit of assumption that you as a writer must know how to balance.

For this blog prompt, I put together a little fight scene with two figures that I own. The two close-up shots at the beginning are meant to mimic something you’d commonly see in fight scenes. The third image is based on a shot you’d see in some western movies.

I had to leave class early, so instead of getting a story from a classmate, I had my 8 year old daughter tell me a story…. it’s the story of how, on Popcorn Friday at school, she met her very best friend.

If anyone has any tips on how to create consistent characters, and reuse those same characters in different scenes, with Midjourney… I’d love the help/advice!

I really loved the discussion of the “gutter” in Understanding Comics. I’ve read a lot of comics since I was a kid and I think one of the most powerful tools is the use of the “gutter”. I’m reminded of the story building conversation we had earlier in the semester, where we talked about how if you just say or show the most important things, the reader will imagine the rest. I think stories that make you think and invite you to fill in the gaps are the most fun! I also think the different sizes of comic strips to emphasize importance is an interesting feature that stories that are just text don’t have. When I read manga, and a whole two-page spread is used for one moment, I know it’s a big deal. Similarly, with “Great Rock n Roll” pauses, the final slides showed only graphs, as opposed to the plethora of competing text on previous slides. I think that choice created a lot of weight to those final slides. I think I would like to play around with those ideas in my visual narrative assignment. 

This story of this simple scene is me coming home from one of my classes planning on finishing a big assignment. Then when I get to my chair, instead of sitting down and finishing the assignment, I pull the chair over to play some video games. Scott McCloud talks about these idea of juxtaposed images in Understanding Comics. There are 6 main types of panel transitions according to McCloud. In this little story of mine, I have included two of those types. The types I chose were action to action and subject to subject. My action to action transitions, for example, is when I my backpack is on the bed right after showing my room. This along with my arm position give the reader the idea of me throwing my bag on the bed. My subject to subject transition is when I transition from grabbing my chair to take a seat and instead pull it over to my TV to play video games instead.

I was a bit under the weather and didn’t get to make it to class to participate in the activity. But I tried it at home with Midjourney with one of the stories from my summaries. I am blown away by how accurately it made the characters I had pictured in my head! Especially when it aged the daughter up.