Week 2: Understanding Comics – Bonnie Chan

Comics were always an intriguing art form for me. It was a hybrid of text and images that somehow managed to develop into intricate stories and showcase complicated relationships. To think of comics as static images in deliberate sequences seems so different from the experiences I have when reading comics. The sense of time and space is so easily understood without fully recognizing the details of the information at hand. That was something that really intrigued me. The idea that pictures are received information and do not require formal education to understand unlike words. It made me realize the power of images and recognize that the power of comics lies in its use of both the strengths of text and images in one.

Other important parts that stood out to me was this idea of how images form in our heads through the small bits that are presented to us visually. Pixels on a screen or newspaper are only small dots that somehow group together to become whole. Or the idea that many panels of separate objects is capable of recreating a continuous scene. As well as the idea that symbols and simple images often aid our abilities to understand a message as the most important elements are emphasized. Our imagination takes such a large role in deciphering not just comics, but also art that human capabilities never cease to amaze me. This not only taught me how our mind processes images but also how to create images and works that will be easily understood by viewers.

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