Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art | Scott Mccloud

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art | Scott Mccloud | Wow! Great for comic fans, art students, writers, and almost anyone!

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Understanding Comi...

	Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art Scott Mccloud Harper Paperbacks, 1994 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 126 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Food for thought!!!

If you are an artist involved in cinema/animation/storyboarding/Illustration or any type of creative or communication science, YOU WANT THIS BOOK. This book packs more horsepower under the hood that you might guess by looking at the front cover. It seems more like a phd thesis about the origin, meaning, and evolution of iconography, visual communication; analyzing hundreds of graphic styles, their origins and meanings, and how cultural factors affect creativity and perception.

Wow! Great for comic fans, art students, writers, and almost anyone!

Told in comic form, this engaging look at the art and media of comics is a fun read.

It looks like it could be for kids, but make no mistake: it is not.

This is a thoughtful, soulful look at the thought behind how comic stories are told ny writers and artists and then understood by readers.

If this were a standard "text"-based book, McCloud could never had made his points so well and so clearly.

If you love comics, you will love them even more after reading this book.

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Who would think so much is in The Gap?

I am not a hard-core comic fan, but this book was incredibly interesting. Scott shows how so much of the action happens in the tiny gap between panels. The psychology of the gap is important to understand for anyone who has to communicate information to others. This is a great book for aspiring comic publishers, but also for speakers, presenters and authors.

What a resource!

How better to discuss comics than through the use of comics? And who better to discuss this art form than artist/writer, Scott McCloud who is the creator of Zot!
It is obvious that Mr. McCloud spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the evolution and the mechanics of comics (check out the statistics in Chapter 3, "Blood in the Gutter"). In his discussion of the development of comics, Mr. McCloud takes us through a timeline beginning with ancient civilizations and ending in the modern age. In this exploration, he also stops at Japan where a different way of creating comics developed in isolation from western influences. A broad overview of comics is given to help the reader understand and appreciate the importance of comics and its place in history.

The mechanics of comics are analyzed --from cartoon bubbles, to frames, to what's going on between the frames and to composition. From reading this book, there's a definite sense that there's more to comics than mere picture-making and words. Other factors and talents are needed such as pacing, which can be found in the realm of movie making,, and composition and line quality, both of which are tools of the sensitive artist.

Pacing and frames are devices employed in film/animation. But exclusive to comics is how it is portrayed in a 2-dimensional fashion. Time is visual and moves forward within a defined space. With film, there are frames take up the same space, rendering the film animate. Time and mood are defined within a two dimensional space through the artistic use of layouts. Psychological factors such as closure is also discussed in the context of the use of gutters.

Color and lines can be found in the general world of art and have been explored, researched and discussed in depth by many fine artists. Both are expressive, conveying mood and feeling. For those who scoff at the comic artist because they believe that (s)he is not capable of great art because they draw "simple pictures", Mr. McCloud talks about an important, but perhaps little thought of, device called "iconic representation" which plays a role in helping to render a character more universal among other things.

McCloud takes a complicated subject and through the use of an art form which clearly communicates these ideas, drives them home to the reader. With all the work and history that goes behind creating comics, comics is definitely an under appreciated art form.

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Compare with the Master

This book is from the perspective of a serious critic. For the real inside stuff on technique, both narrative and artistic as employed in comics, check out the still-available instructional works of Will Eisner, who pioneered both the breakout from the tradiitional box and the long form graphic story with his weekly eight-page "Spirit" Sunday comics of the 40s and 50s, who expanded the form before anyone else, and who exposes his hard-won practical knowledge for would-be artists and storytellers in several books on the subject.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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