Week 2: Understanding Comics – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

One thing I found quite interesting was how different panel transitions were more frequently utilized in different cultures. This reminded me of the medium is the message as the Japanese style of utilizing relatively fewer action scenes and focusing more on the environment was indicative of the cultural differences (perhaps the Japanese take in their environment and enjoy it whereas Westerners are more focused on moving forward?).

Another aspect of this is how realistic the environment and facial features are. While one might think that more realistic facial features would be more appealing (especially as movies are trending to more and more realistic looks as CGI improves) it actually can detract from the reader’s ability to empathize or identify with a character. While how realistic a character looks should be irrelevant to how much we identify them, we still do it unconsciously which can make the medium (the character) the message (we want you to identify or hate this character).

Yet another way this is presented is the use of icons and how we give them meaning even though in a comic they can make literally anything. The message of the content is the meaning we ascribe to it, not necessarily what it actually shows, there is no correct or right way to understand an icon. Even for people who do know the icon might have different perspectives on its meaning. 

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