Visual AnalysisPart II

Never mistake the message—for the messenger.

Source: Understanding comics The Invisible Art Scott McClou

Moment-to-moment: easy to attain closure Action-to-Action: single subject Subject-to-Subject: while staying within a scene or

idea—requires reader involvement to be successful. Scene-to-Scene: Deductive Reasoning needed to

transport the reader across significant distances of time and space.

Aspect-to-Aspect: bypasses time for the most part and sets a wandering eye on different aspects of place, idea or mood.

Non-Sequitur: no logical relationships between panels.

Panel to Panel Transitions

Moment to Moment

Action to Action

Subject to Subject

Deductive Reasoning

Scene to Scene

Aspect to AspectBypasses time for the most part and sets a wandering eye on different aspects of a place, idea, or mood.

Non-sequitur which offers no logical relationship between

panels

Figure Ground Relationships and Negative Space

How we all began telling

stories

We assume as readers that we will know what

order to read panels in but the business of arranging those panels is actually quite complex.

Some artists are deliberately ambiguous. Closure can be a powerful force within panels

as well as between them, when artists choose to show only a small piece of the picture.

Closure

Whatever the mysteries within each panel, it’s

the power of closure between panels that I find the most interesting.

There’s something strange and wonderful that happens in the blank ribbon of paper.

We already know that comics as the mind to work as a sort of in-betweener—filling in the gaps between panels as an animator might—but I believe there’s till more to it than that.

Closure

Time Frames

Transitions and Time

Polyptych: time and space

merge

The idea that a picture

can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer is vital to the art of comics.

Can Emotion Be Made Visible?

By far the most widely-used most complex

and most versatile of comics many synaesthetic icons is the ever-present, ever-popular word balloon.

Over the years comics creators have struggled with dozens of variations in their desperate attempts to depict sound in a strictly visual medium.

Variations in balloon shape and the symbols that go inside the balloon are constantly being invented or appropriated.

Word Balloon

When Bleeds are used (picture running of the page) the effect of timelessness is strengthened

Establishing shotLong ShotMedium shot