Response to Scott McCloud (Thomas Waugh)

I really enjoyed this article because it helped me deconstruct the many ways in which a comic is a very unique mediums which can convey ideas which other mediums cannot. Many of these things I had previously known subconsciously, however this comic made me realize many of the processes which my brain does without me even thinking about it. The medium of the comic is very interesting because it does not really need to conform to rules — while a painting, film, or text may be abstract, they cannot be nearly as abstract as a comic. The comic art form allows for an incredible amount of artist expression. One of the things I love most about this art form is how easy it is to break the fourth wall, in other words to both directly and indirectly address the audience. One of the most interesting concepts in this reading as well was the concept of time in comics. This is such a crucial part of reading comics but in my time reading comics I had never consciously realized the significance of the way that comic artists convey the passage of time. The explanations of very small details in the comic were very interesting too, for example when he showed the evolution of faces from realistic to the “stick-man” that we all know and love. It was very interesting to me that I could not look at the basic shape without seeing a face. I also really liked the part where it was the drawing of the painting of the pipe and he used that metaphor to explain that nothing is really what they are depictions of. This reading has give me many ideas for the upcoming comic project and now I am very excited to get to work on it.

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