Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Crawling the Learning Curve.

I purchased a fantastic book on the production of comics last weekend, Making Comics by Scott McCloud. WOW. What an insightful book! It's done by a man who is what I'd consider THE top authority on comics theory, and presented in comic book format, so it's far from boring. The narrative isn't very formal either, which achieves the goal of making the entirety of the notes seem like one big (VERY big) conversation between you and the man.
I'm not hear to plug the book, however (not really, that is), just to make the point that he covers things that say, I might already know, but he would go on to explain why. Why a particular facial expression may convey something you never expected it to, through the simle way that your readers, as humans, register it. Why symmetry, or the lack thereof, speaks volumes about status, emotion or personality through the posing of a character alone, irregardless of the face (mostly). These things can be mostly related to simply human biology, and how the cognitive faculties relate and break down information. It's like science, only better!
I'll be sketching and experimenting, hopefully, so I'll be sure to post them.
Regarding comics, I'm currently stuck with the second arc of Corpus. It being a shorter thing, there was only ever going to be 2 arcs, and while I like what I have in mind, it doesn't seem to fit in with the first perfectly. I'll try rejig it and pray for success.