Category: Visual

Week 10 Blog Post

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Caleb

Hello everyone,

The three works we looked at during break and into this week brought me all the way back to elementary school where I would constantly read Choose Your Own Adventure books. Indeed, each work should be considered stories.

For example, With Those We Love Alive is a story that requires the reader, or for better terms the person interacting with the story, to put the pieces of the narrative together. Much like how a choose your own adventure book would have you turn to the page of your desired decision, the webpage would “turn” to the consequential page of your chosen highlighted word. Similarly, in My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, the pattern of click destination is used to progress the story, once again requiring the reader to take each piece of information they are given and put together the story on their own. The narrative exists, but it isn’t quite as linear as How to Rob a Bank. That being said, How to Rob a Bank utilizes a more linear presentation of key presses to progress the story forward, much like a slideshow. The story still requires pieces to be assembled but aids the reader by handing out the pieces as the story progresses instead of having them seek out the information solo.

I found each work to have a certain level of engagement that partners with the linearity of the narrative. I’m going with this thought as a personal preference, as others may feel differently. Having the ability to progress, change, and choose the path a story follows gives another level of meaning to each work, with the reader becoming a part of the story itself.

Lastly, I want to quote Scott McCloud:

“Generally speaking, the more is said with words, the more the pictures can be freed to go exploring and vice versa”. (pg. 155)

All three of these works utilize pictures and words, some using one more than the other, to present a world for their story that the reader creates through each page, slide, and frame. A fantastic experience and quite the nostalgia trip.

-Caleb

Visual Narrative #2

snarith20

Ellis is a dog. A dog with a lot of desires, all he wants in life is just to snack on his favorite treat his tasty bones. But his Mom never gives him enough bones. He tries and tries to tell her but she always only put those nasty kibbles in his bowl. Will Ellis ever get enough bones to fill his desires?





Post #8: Cinema and Owl Creek

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Nathan Stewart-Otto

Hey class,

The film “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has more emphasis on the hanging and imagined escape, while the written short story provides more context and history with the protagonist. There are a few specific noticeable differences–for one, the stories start at different times. The text begins with the rope already around the man’s neck, before flashing back to explain how he came to this situation. The film starts slightly before that, showing the soldiers preparing the rope to hang the man and continues linearly. The text shows the story mostly from the protagonist’s perspective. For example, him seeing the soldiers silhouetted against the sky, standing over him. While the film sometimes zoom out and shows him swimming away from above, or the camera on him from the bushes as he lands on the shore. The text’s description of the water feels more disorienting than the film’s. It describes him spinning, the colors blurring, and is far more brief. The film has several minutes of him in the water, and most of it is the man swimming away.

I like how the film adapted the story. It portrays the man’s fear well, the tension of the hanging, the panic in the chase, and the feeling of being alive. Its use of music and zooming in on nature added to the scene where the man believed himself to be alive and free. The film also did well in presenting the man’s perspective as he was swimming away with shaky camera shots frantically looking around and up at the sky.

Again, the text was far more explicit in providing context to the story. Though both presented the story from the protagonist’s view and put him in a positive light or sympathetic light, the text’s context allowed me to understand and develop my own feelings and opinion on the situation. In the film he was just a man trying to stay alive to return to his family. In the text he was also a man being punished for specific actions.

Nathan

Week 6 Blog Post: 5 Photo Story

Caleb

Hello class,

In theme with Valentine’s Day, I created a story about attempting to rekindle a lost relationship between two individuals. The story follows the creation and eventual send off of a handwritten letter. I chose to order these photos in this direction to mimic the flow of the letter’s creation. A shift to the left indicates a setback, like the crumpled up letters. A shift to the right signals progression, like the mailing of the letter in the mailbox photo. In reference to McCloud’s panel-to-panel transitions, I made use of subject and scene. The first three photos reflect a subject-subject transition shown by the photos depicting different objects within the same environment. The last two photos show the scene-scene swap with the letter next to the mailbox in the fourth photo then reappearing in a bedroom in the fifth, signifying the two separate environments.

Visual Narrative II

Sammy

In this mini-story of someone going to the bar for a drink, I used subject-to-subject and aspect-to-aspect transitions. I recruited my coworker for help and together we came up with these shots (and many more actually.)

Post #7: Visual Narratives

Nathan Stewart-Otto

Hey again class,

This is a little story about and owl-duck finding out about a very large (in comparison) dog! The panels predominantly use moment-to-moment transitions, but you could argue some action-to-action and subject-to-subject transitions as well.  The panels are organized moment-to-moment as the owl-duck explores and finds clues of the dog. Some transitions might count as action-to-action (like the panels where the owl-duck discovers the fur and dog), but perhaps not, as they don’t involve any actions beyond traveling and seeing things. I would likely count traveling and discovery as “moments” and not “actions.” The use of different zooms and camera angles (like the zoom in on the owl-duck’s face, the zoom out to show the surrounding environment, and the over-the-shoulder scene showing the dog) were inspired by “subject-to-subject” transitions, but I’m not sure if they would count since they contain the same subject in every scene, just with the occasional additional background, fur, or dog in the shot as well.

Nathan