Picture 1a, by doryexmachina.Comics. Comics are something that I used to love outwardly, then learned not to talk about in public, and then sadly kinda tost touch with entirely. And here I am, reading about comics, researching for my internship (about comics) and making a web comic of sorts — and I’m getting a grad degree for this? SWEET.
Adam and I worked to make a web comic, and we brainstormed concepts, and then finally decided to make a comic about our procrastination process. We took Adam’s lovely Canon camera, set it for continous shooting, and then traced our steps — by putting the camera on my mint green tripod (because mint green is for playas, not haters) and pushing said setup down the hall on a rolling office chair, as previously posted. Elevator –> lounge –> shots of us working procrastination (mysteriously not recorded by Tom) –> actual shot of us working (thanks Tom!) –> foosball table –> foosball game –> Adam napping.
And if I may say so, it turned out NICE. I imported the shots into iMovie and made it into a movie at (0:10) per shot (easy, though frustrating) and Adam made the panels and web site (difficult, though awesome). Adam’s handiwork is freaking brilliant: [clicky].
(Oh, and the play button for the 2nd panel doesn’t work. We know that. Just double-click the screen like everybody else, damnit. Why do you have to be so difficult?! AGH! I can’t take this! You just don’t understand me!!! I’m going to stay with my sister! No, I don’t mean that, I’m sorry. Let’s not fight. Do you want to go get coffee? Great!)
Also, we were tasked to read Scott McCloud and Will Eisner — both of which made for excellent reading (and how timely!). Scott McCloud is a genius, first off — I’d picked up his book (Understanding Comics) as well, so being forced to read a chapter of it? Gee, well if I HAVE to… seriously, it was great. And while comics are a subject I’d thought myself rather versed in, I’d never really considered how/why they actually work for readers. (If you think that’s weird, tell me exactly how much you know about how a car works, yet you drive one. Same thing, I guess.) His explaination of panels and time was weighing particularly on me as we made this comic (and I think was Adam’s inspiration for the end layout, though I shan’t speak for him). All in all, great to think about.
Eisner was a bit more of a dense/convoluted read, though informative as well. I really appreciate reading the history of comic devices (streaky lines, text bubbles, etc.) so this was interesting to look into — and the example of Chinese and Egyptian characters vs. an actual image of a person praying was excellent. Studying Japanese, I wasn’t actually sure I was aware of the tie between the written language and the real world equivalent (except for one, two and three which are one, two and three lines, respectively). However, I was absolutely enchanted by people who can actually do proper Japanese (or Chinese, Korean, anything else) calligraphy. Whether or not it “looks like anything” it’s a true art, and the only case that comes to mind in which the written word is actually visually beautiful. I guess I’d never carried that thought into comics.
This will absolutely make me evaluate my internship in a new light, especially as we’re working on a comic now…
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