Comics, cartoons, animations… things which seemed to be all similar now show a little difference to me after reading the Understanding Comics.
Among the various elements of comics introduced by Scott McCloud, what inspires me a bit more is the refreshing concept of comics itself and its relationship with other similar things as well.
“Comics refers to the medium itself, not a specific object.” (4) The definition is given at the very beginning of this book, which nevertheless has already broken my previous thought – comics, comic book, is what we were all passionate about collecting during childhood. However, according to Scott McCloud, comics is exactly what can be visualized, thus being defined as Sequential Art. Functioning as medium, in other words a certain form, it delivers ideas through both words and pictures, easy to understand. Meanwhile, different from animations, (especially the Japanese ones that I am highly enthusiastic in), it is presented spatially rather than in time.
Apart from animations, I’m also keen on photographing, which is mentioned as another factor related to comics. Subjective Motion, a trickery in photography as the example, was first applied in Japanese comics, then being spread around. I myself am pretty familiar with such “trickery” both in photographing and comics I’ve ever read. However, it never occurred to me that there exists certain relationship between each, which in essence reveals that different forms of media are interconnected in a sense. Exploring media art in contemporary era, we should do our utmost to discover such relationship and to better utilize, thus making the media art truly INTERACTIVE.
Anyway, I’ll finish reading the rest chapters very soon.
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