Review: Adventures in Cartooning

Adventures in Cartooning is a fun and creative book by James Sturm and two of his graduates from the Center for Cartoon Studies, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost, and published by First-Second.

It is designed as a how-to create comics book, though the lessons almost wholly come in narrative form as the Magic Cartooning Elf and other characters discuss the properties of comic creation while carrying out a simple and fun story. The book is aimed largely at children, and the humor reflects it (though did make me laugh aloud at parts — particularly the "Warning" on the back cover, which is just the sort of thing to get kids to pick it up).

Most of the overt instruction is fairly simple — things like what is a panel, how text can enrich images, orders of word bubbles, and the nature of different graphic devices like motion lines or dotted panel borders. The last several pages of the book also contain sections on cartooning basics that make explicit several of the lessons as well as some additional instruction.

However, because most of the instruction comes narratively, there ends up being only a limited amount of things instructed. This is a shame, because several techniques the authors use are very clever, elegant, and well worth instructing learners if they don't notice them.

For example, in one section the characters climb and then descend a mountain. On the climb, the three small square panels of the page are positioned climbing upwards left-to-right so that the line of the mountain-side is retained, while the opposite configuration occurs for the descent. On another page the characters sink down into water, with the length of the panel growing away from the top of the page in each panel to show falling deeper and deeper.

These are fun, simple, and effective techniques that comic creators can put to great use, though without the explicit instruction I fear they might be lost by less observant readers. Perhaps allowing for some additional non-narrative instruction would allow for even more of these aspects to be brought out explicitly. It would be easy to do this with the little labels and arrows used on the cover (which appear nowhere else in the book), or with the Elf character hovering outside the panels to point things out as well.

(On the flipside, I can understand why the authors might feel they just want to give kids the basics and not overwhelm them with too many concepts, though I'm inclined to think kids can handle it).

Additionally, I greatly liked how much of the book was carried out without text and the implications that text is only used to enrich visuals. This subtly reinforces the development of the visual language grammar in learning — which is no doubt the intent.

Overall, the book is a good read and would likely be a useful tool for helping young creators get on their way to creating graphic stories.

Review: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures by Matt Madden and Jessica Abel

Before I started reading DW&WP, Matt Madden warned me that it was a book for praxis, not theory. As amusing as I find it that such a disclaimer needs to be given to me, the book draws upon aspects of theory throughout in an informed and well-measured way, and I am lead to thinking further about the relationship between theory and praxis.

First off, this book is a great resource. It’s put together well, lays out all the essential issues from hand lettering to stretching to avoid tendonitis (I know from personal experience: important and overlooked!). It even has homework and lesson plans, along with digital resources as well. For praxis, this all is fantastic.

However, no review of mine should escape looking at theoretical issues and reading this book has made me once again consider how praxis can draw from theory.

For instance, an immediate question of mine was: Why is it important to include defining “comics” at all? The book — wonderfully titled — talks entirely about the process, what I would say “writing in visual language.” So, why spend additional space trying to shoehorn various social manifestations of “writing pictures” (i.e. manga, comics, graphic novels, etc.) into the umbrella of “comics”?

First off, why should people who are aiming to create visual stories necessarily care about the arguments for what are or are not "comics"? These issues may be important for scholars, but most who read this book can just go by the "I know it when I see it frame." Truly, if they needed to have their "horizons expanded" by a broader definition, they probably aren't the ones reading this book.

Furthermore, as I see it, inviting readers into the subcuture of “comics” is unimportant to the aims of the book. Especially since they do well to state the applications of the ideas beyond genres and styles, this book is not about “drawing comics” — it’s about learning to be a visual writer. To this end, mentioning “comics” as a cover term at all belies this broad goal. What better way can people expand their applications of “writing in pictures” than by not immediately being co-opted into a subculture that they might not desire being in? Let them learn the visual language, then let them decide what they want to do with it on their own terms.

With the course of instruction, I thought the emphasis on thumbnails and not on scripts was a great choice that isn’t focused on enough. This is the central place that “writing in pictures” happens, and the assembly line style with scripting skirts this step often. It nicely reinforces the theme that this book is teaching people to be authors, not cogs in a manufacturing wheel.

I do have some problems with the instruction of panel transitions as how authors are guided to think about their craftsmanship. Now, heavily influenced by McCloud as a teenager, I did go through a period where I thought in terms of panel transitions (or at least I thought I did), and I certainly benefited from it.

However, when I look back on my thought processes with a broader theory in mind, I realize that I wasn’t just looking just one panel ahead as transitions would have us think. Really, I planned for whole sequences, to the point where (in thumbnails) I might draw an expected panel later in the sequence before filling in the ones in between. Such a process would predict that we are thinking in terms of whole sequences not linear panel-to-panel relationships — as my theories of sequential images imply. I suspect that others have had similar experiences.

On the plus side, what transitions do allow is a directed focus on storytelling methods that convey aspects of the scene beyond just the actions. They provide a cover for people to think about whether to slow “time” down, show other characters or the environment, etc. However, if we were to develop a more robust vocabulary of types of panels to be used and the potential for what panels might contain, we might not need the bootstrap of “transitions” to couch it in.

In fact, while I think that learning theory can be beneficial to practice, perhaps what would be a more direct and simple learning tool would be to see that theory in action. For example, in section 3, they discuss rhythm and pacing — the decision making for what to show and when to show it and use several variations of stories where they demonstrate different pacings. This type of section could be expanded to account for the types of things covered by transitions.

I would also have enjoyed seeing a greater discussion of page layouts and the uses that one can make with them, especially regarding meaning and rhythm. While I disagree with McCloud that the size of panels has an effect on narrative time, I do believe it has an effect on pace — the rhythm and meter of reading. Elaborating on these concepts would be very useful for beginning authors.

Finally, while it has recently become a point of research for me, I found their comments on reading order a bit wanting. Despite their specific advocacy to not use “blockage” scenarios (where two panels are vertically stacked to the left of a long panel) they praise another page by Mike Mignola that uses this layout just three pages prior. The overall message of “using unambiguous layouts” rings true, but this inconsistency (along with personal knowledge that fluent readers don’t have ambiguity in such scenarios) was a little disappointing.

Despite these issues, this book is a fantastic resource and accomplishment given other books on the topic. I wish that I had it when I was a teenager, as I probably would have devoured it voraciously, doing all the exercises and then some. Indeed, while I probably would have gotten more mileage out of it then, I plan on using its resources here on out.

Photo Technology

This is pretty amazing new technology for photos that aggregates the information in many photos to create virtual environments, not to mention a pretty impressive navigational tool for photos and data alone.

The potential for applying it to comics is huge. On the one hand, you could use all the information stored in various panels to create a virtual environment of the fictional landscape. Moreso though, I imagine a tool like this would offer huge ground for those who are experimentally minded about online comics and the Infinite Canvas.

Point perspective

Austin Kleon has a nice little post about point perspective in comics, noting his like of artists who don't use it at all (link via Derik). The preference for point perspective is of course wrapped up in the whole desire for iconicity that readers of this blog are probably sick of hearing me rant about.

His post got me to think about some other related issues. For instance, point perspective was developed in the Renaissance, which I imagine coincided with the Enlightenment's focus on discovery about the world and the rise of science. (Though, I have no idea since I'm not an art historian.)

What is worth remembering though is that point perspective was truly a discovery. The human mind/brain may be able to see in perspective, but we don't draw in it. There was a study** I read that talked about South African children (ages 5-9) who had trouble with understanding certain parts of images. The parts they misinterpreted the most were perspective, depth, and shading — all highly iconic and things that must be explicitly taught to people learning to draw.

Interestingly, when looking at the data, the means for misinterpretation drop for children at Grade 3 (and 9 yr. olds) in almost all categories. The conclusion of the author is that schooling teaches children how to understand images, but this could just be a coincidence in that children’s exposure to images comes in a school setting. That is, it’s not about instruction, but about exposure.

Whatever the case, perspective is not a built in part of the human graphic system. This again goes to the point that drawing is less about mimicking the perception of the world as piped through an individual's mind, and more about the way minds are enabled to convey concepts visually.

Update: I feel I should add, that there's nothing wrong with learning how to draw with point perspective, only that our minds' graphic system is not predisposed to it. As an academic, I'm not prescribing anything, just analyzing. Learning perspective requires iconic understanding that doesn't just come out of imitation of other people's drawings. That is, it once again skirts conventionality and the establishment of mental models for drawing in lieu of imitating perception.



** Liddell, Christine. 1997. Every Picture Tells a Story—Or does it?: Young South African Children Interpreting Pictures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 3. Pp. 266-283

16 panels that are Still Conventional whether you think they work or not

I neglected posting this ealier in the week, but John Morris has a parody/homage to Wally Wood's 22 Panels that always work over at Comixpedia entitled 16 Panels That I Don't Think Work All That Well. There are a couple things I find theoretically interesting about it.

First off, it is a great compilation of conventionalized patterns used in many comics. Just like WW's 22 Panels and the Peanuts patterns I've been finding recently, this list excellently shows how there are systematic and conventionalized patterns in the visual language used in comics. This is in contrast to the view that graphic creation is unrestrained because it mimics perception, and thereby lacks an experss system of mentally stored patterns. Astute observations like these 16 panels excellently show that there is systematic and patterned visual vocabulary used by "visual language speakers" (and I wish more people would do work like this!).

The second thing this list shows is a preference for the use of some representations over others (WW's 22 Panels does this too, though positively as opposed to negatively). Linguistics has often been in perpetual debate with journalists/English teachers/etc. that believe there is a right or wrong way to use language. We are often told "not to end a sentence with a preposition," or "not to split infinitives" — though these are not in any way real rules of English grammar. (They were prescribed by grammar book writers in the 18th century who were enamored with Latin — so they advocated Latin's rules for English, not at all being sensitive to the fact that, y'know, they're totally different languages!!).

This list's intent is prescriptive in the same way. Despite these being consistent conventional trends used in this visual language, they are gauged by their value in usage. An additional aspect to this is the Art perspective most invoked in the comments below the article. Most people object to these panels simply because they are conventional! They're "overused," which means they aren't new and innovative/original — which makes them undesirable to the Art viewpoint.

However, none of this mitigates the fact that these panel types are conventional. The linguist would say "they're all part of language, let's observe how people use them" while the prescriptivist says "they're part of language, but they really shouldn't be, and those who use them are less sophisticated speakers."

It's interesting to note also that no matter how loudly prescriptivism might object to such "bad" usage, it never has an effect on shaping language usage. It's not like split infinitives have gone away because people advocate against them! Nor do I suspect these 16 panels to go away either.

In some ways both aspects of a list like this shows some good headway in recognition of this visual language as a language on the whole. Not only are people recognizing the patterns, they're also judging them prescriptively, just like any other language!

Visual Fluency... aka "Pissing off Writers"

There's a been a little hullabaloo lately about Jesse Hamm's recent blog post on "Why Comic Book Writers Oughta Mind Their Own Business," and the Mark Waid reply. Attitudes displayed by both sides aside, I actually agree with Jesse's sentiment, but I think there's some deeper issues going on here in this "artist vs. writer" clash.

What's really at issue here is the level of fluency a person has in producing this visual language that is used in comics. Most of the time graphic production is viewed as a matter of skill — how good someone is at "drawing pictures" or maybe "telling a story" as opposed to being a fluent vs. not fluent producer in an explicit system of expression.

"Artists" — those who are demonstrably graphically fluent — rightfully are justified in feeling perturbed at being dictated to by writers, whose graphic fluency might be questionable. Jesse's post highlights the disjunct that occurs when "artists" are being directed by a writer who is not graphically fluent.

There is a difference between fluency in comprehension and production. Children whose parents speak different languages than the general populace sometimes might be able to understand what their parents say, but they might not speak it. This occurs en masse in our society for visual language — especially since it's a print culture with no reciprocal exchange of expression. Most people in our culture are fluent readers of visual language, but just being able to comprehend is not sufficient enough to be able to produce.

Beyond proudction, there are some cultures — and individuals — that cannot comprehend sequences of comic images. Reading ability between fluent comprehenders also varies as well. Experimental eye-tracking data show explicit differences in the path of eye movement between "expert" and "non-expert" comic readers when navigating through comic pages. Other studies have shown that skill in comprehension of panel sequences and memory of them increases with age, indicating a maturation of expertise.

Further experiments show that children from countries with limited comic reading (i.e. like America) cannot produce sequential images at a high proficiency (in some studies, over 2/3 of the subjects could not create sequences where one panel has some connection to its adjacent panels). In a truly fluent populace like Japan where most all children read and draw manga as part of the culture, 100% of children tested can create sequential images at a high degree of proficiency using complex visual grammar.

We need to move beyond the naive belief that drawing is just a "skill" in a "universal" "art form" (that is equally expressible by those who do or don't have the skill) and towards the cognitive reality that it requires a graphic fluency in an explicit system of expression that must be learned and developed... leaving a large group of people with degrees of limited fluency.

(... just like any other language).

Comics software sucks

I apologize in advance for this rant...

One of the pre-installed applications on my new macbook is the "comic" making program "Comic Life." I'd played with the demo before, but figured I'd jump back in with this one to see what was changed. What didn't change was my opinion of it: not good. (It's basically a goofy photo album making program)

This has been my opinion of many of the other programs as well, ranging from Comic Book Creator to Strip Creator to Comic Creator to The Balloonist, as well as (less so) Manga Studio and Comic Works.

While some of these are very well designed programs, such as Comic Life, all of them are fundamentally deficient in the way that they are built. That is, I have the feeling that they were designed by people who have little understanding about the theory behind comics. It's one thing to have advice or commentary from people who make comics, its another to actually understand the structure of the medium and how to best utilize software to manipulate it. Especially if you want it to be used as a professional grade system, it is embarrassing not to take this into account.

(While I wouldn't be surprised if some companies consulted comic artists, I'd be very curious, for example, if Scott McCloud has been consulted on any software like this, as he is the most well known theorist out there).

For instance, a few things I noticed after using Comic Life for about half a minute...

Isn't it a bit curious that in the selection of templates for pages there aren't even standard grids, yet they do include layouts that I've experimentally seen to be problematic for readers? Why is it that when you drag in a panel, it simply appears on top of the others, and not bound within some sort of layout schema? Why do you have various templates for balloons and bubbles, instead of a generalized Carrier field that takes different representations, tails, etc. (and my god how annoying the sound effects are...)

... just to name a few. I could probably go on for pages.

Most of these programs fall into similar patterns, structuring the software as a design program... which is fine if you want to do a modified drawing program, but not if you want to be a visual writer. Even the seemingly well thought-out and evolving Comic Studio is doing things far different than I would think most useful or efficient.

As I might have mentioned before, I've had designs for a "comics" software program for about 5 years now, but have no coding skills (and little time) to work on it. So, if there's any talented and enterprising programmers out there (or companies that don't want your current product to suck so much) that would like to give it a go, feel free to drop me an email.

Comic Strip Artist's Kit, and more

In the "tools for comic making with some thought behind it" category comes this blog, Temple of the Seven Golden Camels, by storyboarder Mark Kennedy. He's been posting several good entries of advice for cartooning and comic creation. Much of his thoughts come from Disney animators, as that seems to be where he works (or did work… not entirely sure).

Of particular interest was this Comic Strip Artist's Kit by famous Disney artist Carson Can Osten, which reminded me of Wally Woods 22 Panels that Always Work.



Like 22 Panels…, these pages contain tips for creation, described as being "created to help beginning comic artists deal with perspective problems and other drawing difficulties." It also seems to have been an industry meme that eventually had some parts end up in the book The Illusion of Life. Over seven pages he identifies several common problems that creators face in framing and representation, and then offers solutions and tips all around. Kindly, the pages are all downloadable in large printable sizes.

Other notable posts include these: One, Two, on Composition by illustrator Rowland B. Wilson. These also are downloadable and have some good advice in them, though they are less theoretical in my opinion than the Osten pages.

He also has a whole series on Design and Drawing. One of his comments stood out at me, because it contrasts with the opening sentiments of McCloud's chapter on character design in Making Comics. Kennedy advises in drawings to avoid symmetry, saying ," The human eye doesn't like symmetry. It's lifeless and boring." Contrast this to McCloud who calls symmetry "Life's Calling Card."

In other places, he and McCloud share opinions, like with proportions in frames, to which they both advise against symmetry and placing the focal action right in the center (though McCloud notes its uses as well).

As this post might intimate, the site is full of interesting posts and one can easily take up quite a lot of time reading it. Go: Read!

Update 9/22: It's been pointed out to me that Josh Farkas has created PDF downloads of many of Kennedy's writings and posted items. Lots easier than downloading all those jpgs at the blog, but still recommended to read the original posts too.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud

For those who have been living in a cave the past summer, Making Comics is Scott McCloud's latest offering; a how-to book on the process of comic creation. I've had my copy for about a week, but wanting to give it a good thorough read-through before commenting (as well as juggling it with reading about statistics and developmental psychology), I'm only now finally posting some thoughts on it.

Perhaps returning to familiar ground is a good place to start. Not infrequently I've noticed, I have been wrongly anonymously-quoted as saying that Understanding Comics was a how-to book, and I think MC helps make a clearer distinction. UC is a book of theory, but like the start of any good field's theories (which it is, both good and a starting point) it begins with what is most accessible to people's intuitions. From this, you can go in two directions: theory and practice.

Take for instance nouns and verbs. One can use nouns and verbs to better understand how to be a good writer (like in English class), or you can use them to analyze the deeper structures of how language works (like in linguistics). Comparable is the idea of panel transitions. In UC, McCloud took a very theoretical approach to dissecting and analyzing them, while in MC he (kinda) uses them as a tool for praxis. Both are valid ways of using that theory.

And from the basis of UC these two paths should now be clearer. With MC, McCloud has gone the route of English class, essentially becoming a "visual language instructor." I've primarily gone the linguistics route, diving into theoretical waters and ultimately critiquing the initial theories that McCloud set the tone with (though, while maybe not always as immediately recognizable as McCloud's, even my theories have a practical application too).

As always, as an author McCloud is a treat to read. His drawings looked fantastic and polished, yet, part of me wished he returned to the greys he used in Reinventing Comics, which gave nicer tone difference to the black of the line art and would have been softer on the eyes than his faux-screentones.

The footnoting of every referenced image on every page was tedious and annoying (and better served by the then redundant end section). It made things seem awfully cluttered at times. I liked that he had endnotes and drawing activities, though I would have preferred the activities to be drawn (or have "worksheet style pages" rather than just a listing in text).

Though well executed, Chapters 1 and 2 I felt were a little long because of how dense they were. Each had many subsections (and subsections of subsections), and it would have benefited from broader "book sections" for each, then subdivided into chapters per sub-topic. This might have allowed McCloud to breathe a little more for each one and really go further in depth. Despite the great probing he does, you can tell he's just scratching the surface of his thinking.

I loved his "Choice of moment" discussion of events carried out by panels, represented by connecting the dots of an overarching event. Particularly interesting was how he seemed to equate different parts of the visual sequence explicitly to different words. It reminded me at least a little of how linguistic semantics uses one language to describe the meanings of another (the idea being that if something can be said in one, its equivalent can be found in the other, implying all the while that the two are equal in expressive power). It was very interesting to see how he changed his description of the sequence with each change in panels.

What was also particularly intriguing about this discussion was that it betrayed an internal conflict within McCloud's approach to sequential meaning. While McCloud does include his taxonomy of panel transitions from UC in MC, he uses them sparingly in scattered amounts throughout. Now, I've been a critic of transitions and closure (which surprisingly hardly appears at all in MC), but a simple difference in my theoretical approach to McCloud's is just one of scope. While transitions simply relate one panel to another, a broader look at sequences admits that they form a holistic sequence.

Unlike his panel transitions, this "dots" depiction implies this same sentiment of mine that a sequence composes a contiguous whole event based around an intended expressive idea. Things like his lengthy (and excellent) discussion of "establishing shots" actually damage the idea of transitions, as they also rely on a functional relation to the whole sequence, and would have trouble being placed in a transitional approach (especially when the establishing shot itself is broken up into several panels).

Another theme of the book (and talking to him in person) is how self-deprecating McCloud is about his own work. He consistently expresses that his own work isn't quite good enough, and that is why he's writing a how-to book: to teach himself. As I told him in person, I think this is pure baloney.

In the words of his own "Four Tribes." analysis, I feel that McCloud isn't fessing up to his own Formalist identity, and critiquing his own work from the perspective of an Animist or Classicist. Part of the benefit of this theory is in understanding the inherent subjectivity of how one perspective views another.

He interestingly footnotes that much of his instruction in the books is teaching how to be an Animist, and in reflection seems to be what McCloud wishes he was more of. In some ways I feel that this is a case of "outside type envy," believing that you should be that which you're not because the other might thereby seem better (and might be more prevalent and thus louder in expressing their distaste at things). On the one hand, it's good to respond to criticism and grow as a creator beyond where you already are. On the other, it's good to embrace what's good about yourself for who you are (and for McCloud, there's lots), and it's quite alright to tell people to fuck off and enjoy their own camp without being so prejudicial to that which is different from their preferences.

That said, I should say that any of my gripes about the theoretical underpinnings of the book are tangential to the practical aspects for which the book was intended. In fact, I was a bit surprised there wasn't more theory in it, given that many theoretical observations that have been in his live talks of late didn't make it into the book.

For what the book purports to do though – instruction – it excels at. While I was able to scrape together what I feel was pretty good tools for learning when I was younger, this is certainly a book I would have loved to have when I was first starting out as a comic author.

This also taps into the concerns some reviewers have expressed regarding the book's audience. It certainly doesn't seem to be for people who can't draw at all, but rather for those who already have at least a base understanding and ability. It isn't a "foreign language class" that teaches you from ground up.

Rather, it’s a "(visual) language arts" class that teaches you to hone the intuitions you already have. McCloud strives to take what you have and make you better. He certainly lives up to his side of this equation, and hopefully the rest of us readers can live up to ours.

Other reviews I found interesting:

TCJ Forum
Fleen
Stephen Frug

Comic Book Innovation

I've been meaning to post a link to this site for awhile, but am now finally getting around to it...

Comic Book Innovation is an interesting yet sparsely updated theory-based blog with a couple different comic projects on it. I originally found his site because of his adaption of McCloud's Big Triangle. He seems to also be working on some other projects as well.

While his work isn't necessarily theoretical in a way that explores the medium, it certainly takes a theoretical tact that I haven't seen much in other places. For instance, his Comics Mindmap attempts to break down the constituent parts of a comic, from the parts of a page or panel, up through genre and format. His visualizations of story structure also seem to have some interesting theory based intuitions in them.

One of his projects seems to strive towards creating a "Comic Studio" software program to help comic creators develop works. I'm particularly curious to see what he comes up with, since I've had designs for a visual language software program for over four years now (Alas, I can't code :( ... any enterprising and talented coders out there are welcome to contact me though!).

On the whole, the site seems worth following just to see what curiosities are next to emerge.

Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work

It's been interesting to see the explosion of blog entries about Joel Johnson's buying of Wally Wood's 22 Panels that always work. One part of me is a bit dismayed at the news, since a few months ago I actually contacted the seller contemplating buying it myself. I'm extremely greatful that with his new buy Mr. Johnson has made high resolution files available to the rest of us to share in this piece of history.



Theoretically 22 Panels... is an intriguing aspect of comics in America, because it gives a consistent panel sized unit that is (possibly) repeated in multiple books. Repetition (i.e. conventionality) of this sort is of course a hallmark of language. Like Mark Evanier I'd love to see a study probing just how widespread the use of these panels has become.

My own guess is that these compositions have become extremely widespread across authors, largely without them even referring to the 22 Panels... worksheet. That is, I think that some of these panels have become so common in usage that people imitate them without thinking about it, as they have just become a consistent part of the mental visual vocabulary. (As with all issues like this, if any enterprising students out there want to do a study on this, I'd be happy to advise and publish their piece!)

What's also been interesting about reading the various blog posts on this topic is seeing the teetering balance of the Art vs. Language viewpoints. You can really tell the tension between those who have no problem with using the repetition of these panels (Language) and those who scoff at how unoriginal and un-innovative using them would be (Art).

Theory informed tutorials

Well, now that I'm back online, it looks like this week is just a blogging bonanza!...

Scott links to Rivkah's blog instruction series on Paneling, Pacing, and Layout in Comics and Manga. It's broken up into a couple parts:

Part One
Part Two
(It looks like one more part is on the way. I'll update as accordingly)

These essays are very praxis-oriented theory, but still very interesting. I'm always curious about the intersection between praxis and (cognitive) theory, and actually think there is a fair amount of overlap. Praxis oriented instruction talk about how best to guide the intuitions, while structural theory seeks to probe those intuitions for their underlying rules. Hopefully we'll reach a point where a foundation of structural work is established so we can actually see where it and praxis meet up.

There's also a discussion about the usefulness of such tutorials that I've found interesting for its underlying motivating content of the Art vs. Language divide – individuality and "anti-copying" versus conventionality.

As insinuated by the above statement, my take on tutorials is similar to language classes. If you are a native English speaker, English classes help you hone your intuitions to become a better writer. If you don't speak the language already, language classes actually teach you to acquire the structure to begin with. These "visual language tutorials" are similar – they can either help improve your graphic writing, or lead towards getting graphic fluency in the first place.

Comics Generation Thesis

Jason Alderman has completed his (downloadable) Masters Thesis on "Generating Comics Narrative to Summarize Wearable Computer Data." Here's the abstract:

As people record their entire lives to disk, they need ways of summarizing and making sense of all of this data. Comics (and visual language) are a largely untapped medium for summarization, as they are already subtractive and abstract by nature (the brain fills in the blanks and the details), and they provide a way to present a series of everyday events as a memorable narrative that is easily skimmed. This research builds upon the work of Microsoft, FX Palo Alto Labs, ATR Labs, and others to further ground the procedural generation in the comics theory of Scott McCloud, et al.

The paper poses some very intriuging ideas, and he does a great job summarizing and comparing a lot of the work that's been done in comic theory, including my own. Alderman's paper also has a good discussion of various comics computer programs and a very interesting discussion of adapting comic theory issues into programming code. The appendices also have a wealth of summarized theory and analysis as well. Particularly interesting was the taxonomy of panel types and gutter spacing. Go check it out!

He has some good criticism concerning my old model of visual language grammar though those should be asuaged by my newer work (which can be found at my ComicCon talk next month...hint hint).

And since its been mistaken before, I should point out that I don't consider my notion of "visual language" to be comparable to or a subset of the "visual language" proposed by Robert Horn (though his work informed my early stuff, and I subsequently developed a personal relationship with him when I was in college. He's a very nice man and enthusiastic about all things related to visual communication). Horn is more talking about a broader type of visual communication, largely diagrammatic, but mainly from the union of text and image. To me, the visual language is only the visuals (and only in specific conditions), which then unites with the verbal to create a multimodal whole (see my paper, Interactions and Interfaces for more).

Art v. Language

The debate rages on over at Comixpedia. Despite the baseless personal attacks against me and totally mischaracterization of my positions, I'm grateful for the help its lent in clarifying my ideas. I think that my articulation of the "Art vs. Language" issue was done clearer than I've ever done before, so I'm reposting it here:

I believe that the mentality of conventionality for creating graphic images is actually the predisposed nature for ALL humans. The cognitive preference for everybody is for imitation. The human mind is a pattern receiving/making machine, whether you're Japanese, American, Arrernte, Warlpiri, French, Chinese, Somalian... whatever.

The "cultural force" I speak of (that I call "Art") works against that natural inclination for conventionality that is naturally wired into all people by insisting on individuality of drawing style. The evidence that this influence exists is right in the quandry from the very first post of this thread, which is why I commented on it.

A community is a collection of individuals. Each of those individuals responds to the balance between conventionality and the Art pespective in different ways (probably more like a gradient, but discrete here for clarity):

1. Some use conventionality to a maximal degree and don't care about individuality at all (though as a unique individual mind there is always some degree of individuality).
2. Some embrace conventionality to a high degree and mark out their individuality in small and fine-grained ways.
3. Others make huge breaks with conventionality to create styles that hardly look like any other person or group at all.

Cultures are created by the collection of these communities composed of individuals. Various communities and cultures respond to all of the things I've described above in different ways, based on the choices the individuals make in response to the stimuli around them (both graphic stimuli and community attitudes). Some may respond more like #1, some may do more like #2, and some more like #3. These responses happen in all cultures, distributed in different ways: in America, in Japan, in Australia, in France... all of them. In no culture will every single person follow any one type of tendency, so long as the influence of Art is present in that culture (which is just about everywhere at this point).

Digital Creation

As evidenced by my work in A Love Story and the Meditations series (like the now updated "Karuna" story), I have embraced digital tools with open arms. Though, I have some thoughts on their use, especially integrating them with line art and, shall we say, “techniques from the hand” (i.e. non-CGI produced).

Essentially, I think that digital tools should be embraced, but used in careful moderation. Often, digital graphics are extremely pristine, smooth, and uniform. Comparatively, “hand done” works are messy, imprecise, fallible, random. And I think that at least some level of inherent "mistakes" are important.

For instance, I generally can’t stand 3D CGI art in comics when its used dominatingly. I think it just looks wrong, mainly because it lacks a sense of randomness. It is too clean. Human beings make mistakes, and those mistakes are part of what make us human. Without those elements reflected in our “art,” the results seem cold and artificial (unless that’s the aim of course).

More so, on a level of theory, using a completely CGI creation lacks the cultural conventionality inherent in a “drawing style.” It is the epitome of striving for iconicity, though here at the expense of rooting graphic creation in cognitive structure.

Personally, given the available tools, I strive for a balance of these elements. Context dependent, I want the randomness of line art, the precision and naturalness of photography, and the clean smooth uniformity of digital graphics.