Talk talk talk...

I've been remiss in my reminders this year, but I have a few talks coming up if anyone is around San Diego.

The first is another appearance at the Visual and Iconic Languages Conference on July 21-22, which I believe is closed to the public (more's the pity), though my talk will be on a general overview of visual language theory. Hopefully, as with last year, they'll put the talk online.

A few days later I'll be over at Comic-Con, where my talk is on Friday at 12:30 in room 30AB. I'll be presenting a talk about manga and Japanese Visual Language. Here's the description of the panel:

12:30-2:00 COMICS ARTS CONFERENCE SESSION #7: VISUAL LANGUAGE - Neil Cohn (Tufts University) explores the visual language underlying the "manga style," how it works and how it differs from the visual languages in comics developed in other cultures. Robert O'Nale, Jr. (Henderson State University) uses David Mack’s Kabuki to illustrate how gestalt can be an important avenue for analyzing design and meaning in comics. Alec Hosterman (Indiana University South Bend) demonstrates the dominance of hyperreality in comics art and explains how it can be utilized for further study of the art form. Room 30AB

Both of the other presentations look promising, so it should be a fun panel. Come on out, enjoy the talks, and say hi!

Podcast: The Functions of Panels

The last podcast I did with the VizThink folks was so fun I decided to do another. This one is about the various functional roles that panels play in the visual language used in comics. Among the topics I hit are:

• focusing information within panels
• navigating page layouts
• visual "storytelling"
• text-image relationships

It's a slightly pared down and also expanded (at the same time!) version of the talk I gave at the VizThink conference. Enjoy!

VizThink 08

I've spent the last several days out here in San Francisco at the VizThink Conference where I gave a talk about visual language. There have been a lot of interesting presentations, some more amenable to my thinking than others.

It's also been a great pleasure to hang out with Scott McCloud here, who seems to be the other "comics" guy. I don't think I've spend this much time with him since I kept his girls occupied by teaching them how to make paper airplanes so he could sign books about 8 years ago at ComicCon.

I've been struck in particular about two things about Scott. First, he really knows about the very disparate facets of the comics industry and culture. And second, he's an unbelievably adept spatial thinker who deploys the processes very eloquently. Even in casual conversation he does a great job of organizing ideas and conversation topics into spatial configurations (usually gesturally). It's been fun to see.

There have been a lot of interesting ideas floating around here, and one in particular that I've been thinking about doing some video podcasts of my theories to further balance out the papers on my site. Anybody have thoughts on that?

Podcast on Visual Language

Later this month I'll be giving a talk at the VizThink Conference in San Francisco, so to promote it I did a podcast yesterday. Here's the original post, though they were nice enough to give me the feed here as well.

Mainly I discuss the Big Ideas behind my visual language theories. What is "visual language"? How does it relate to "comics"? Etc.

Enjoy!

Status report

School is back in full swing, which means my time to devote to other projects (like blogging) has received a decimating blast. I'm still planning to post my research project on page layouts sometime soon — I just need to find the time to make some edits at this point.

On the good side though is that I have multiple projects in the works. My experiment using Peanuts strips is well underway in the coding and preparation of stimuli, and should hopefully be rolling with subjects in a month or so.

I'm also working out a coding schema to analyze the various donated books I've got on my shelves. Hopefully that will tell us some interesting things about the ways different populations encode information in their comics. Most excitingly, I have some students interested in working on these projects with me, which means the potential to get a whole lot more done that isn't just reliant on my time constraints. (yay!)

And, having just experienced a rather boring summer rehabbing my hip from surgery, I'm now trying to plan ahead to next year by designing a "Cognition of Comics" course. We'll see if it gets picked up for the summer school, but if so, it should be a lot of fun.

Also in the news, I'm now slated to be a fascilitator at the VizThink Conference in San Francisco in January. There's an interesting and diverse line-up of speakers, so it should be quite the event.

Oh, and I have a meeting with Noam Chomsky in a week. That should be interesting.

Video: Visual Grammar

The conference proceedings for the Visual and Iconic Languages Conference from a few weeks ago are now posted online. On the site you can download the slides from my talk, and they've also posted full video of the conference proceedings. I've embedded my talk below, and also to my site.

I highly recommend watching this video of if you are at all interested in my overall theories or in how sequences of images communicate. I describe what exactly I mean by "visual language" fairly clearly, and why it is different from "comics."

Most of the talk though is essentially a snippet of my developing theory of visual grammar — how sequences of images communicate — including my arguments for why panel transitions don't work and my alternative model. I don't plan to post an essay of this work online for awhile (I've been tinkering with it for four years), so this is the best place to find these ideas.

My talk runs for the first 45 minutes of this video, followed by 15 minutes of questions (the second hour is someone else). If you download the slides (large pdf) to flip through at the same time, they might be clearer than on the screen. Enjoy!

VaIL '07

I recently got back from my keynote talk at the Visual and Iconic Languages conference at the University of New Mexico. The conference went very well, and a lot of very interesting conversation was had in a very short (1.5 days) amount of time. People seemed to enjoy my talk on visual language grammar, so hopefully some good will come of the event. Personally, I seem to have made some good contacts for potentially promising future works.



As I've mentioned before, I've been told that my talk may be posted online. If that's the case, I'll be sure to link to it.

One of the most interesting talks was given by Alan Stillman, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Kwikpoint. They make sheets of paper filled with simple images on it, designed for communicating with people when you can't speak the language. They were originally designed for travel, though now they're being used by the military in Iraq and Afganistan.

Originally I was doubtful of how effective this sort of thing would be, but he showed a great video of soldiers' testimonials saying how these guides helped them save people's lives, both military and civilian. And, hey, who am I to argue with very tangible success like that? He was also a very nice guy, and we've talked about my maybe doing some advising for them. I certainly hope that happens, since they really seem to be making a substantial difference.

And, just cause it's a great photo, here's me and the conference organizer, Sunny, taking in some New Mexico flavors...

Comic-Con Report '07

As ever, I had a great time at Comic-Con this year, seeing lots of friends and giving a few talks. My convention floor highlights were pretty subdued I think, as my favorite was perusing the gorgeous original Alphonse Mucha prints at the vintage art dealer. I would have liked to meander the hall a bit more, but having hip surgery two months ago took a little skip out of my step. Though, I did get to saunter about with my grandfather's old pimp-like cane (the top unscrews to reveal a compass and a shaft for a flask!).

Inevitably at the Con I have some random encounters, especially since I'm originally from San Diego and have been at this Con in some professional capacity for 13 years now. Topping the list this year was a friend I'd lived with in Japan and hadn't seen for six (!) years.

My panels seemed to have gone well too, and thanks go to everyone who turned out in attendance! You all are what make the experience a good one. The Comics and Education panel was fun, with a nicely vocal exchange between audience and presenters that made the discussion far more communal. I felt like my theory talk had a lot of good energy, largely drawing off the 100+ people who turned out. Durwin Talon's presentation on color theory that immediately followed mine was fairly cool too.

A couple who heard my talk told me a fun story afterwards. They were next door at a workshop where the instructor said that layouts are read just like text, left-to-right and down, which they found to be a little boring. So, they came next door and heard me, where I presented my experimental data showing that people don't just read comics left-to-right and down! Yay science!

In any case, for all you that missed it, I'm aiming to have the paper for this talk online in a month or so. Next on the docket I'll be flying out to New Mexico to talk about visual grammar. I've heard they'll be taping the talks, so an online lecture may be coming soon...

Talk talk talk... at ComicCon '07

Just like every year, I'll be talking next week at ComicCon. This year I've got two appearances lined up (with a booksigning on Friday):

Thursday- 10:30-11:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #1: Comics in Educational Settings—Comics have long been stigmatized as a lesser medium of communication than text. However, for many years comics have been making inroads to classrooms as an effective medium for learning, from analyzing graphic novels as literature to using superheroes to teach philosophy and writing textbooks in the comic medium. Neil Cohn (Tufts University), Diana Green (Minneapolis College of Art & Design), Leonard Wong (Templeton Secondary School, Vancouver), and Danny Fingeroth (Disguised as Clark Kent) discuss the various roles comics and the comics medium can and do play in education. Room 30AB

And then my theory talk....

Friday- 2:00-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #8: Storytelling and Visual Language—Neil Cohn (Tufts University) reports the findings of a psychology experiment showing that readers navigate comic layouts by using systematic rules that rely on subtle cues of panel sizes and relationships while often defying the stereotypical Z-path, "left-to-right and down."...Room 30AB

This one is actually just my talk on a bigger panel, but I'm actually really looking forward to it. I did this experiment from a booth at ComicCon a couple years ago, and I'm excited to have finally analyzed the data. I've actually got cold-hard numbers that hint at how people read comic page layouts, so the talk is going to be a fun one (as if they're all not!). I'm still tinkering with the essay, but I hope to have it online not too far off.

Following this Friday talk I'll be signing at the Comic Relief booth, hawking my usual wares and looking to engage in lively conversation. Hope to see you there!

I'm a winner!

Apparently, I've won an award. I just got an email saying that my "paper, The Grammar of Comics, was selected as the winner of the M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship for the Comic Art & Comics Area at the 2006 Popular Culture Association conference in Boston."

So... yay!

Various concerns

Yesterday I had arthoscopic surgery to remove a tear in the cartilidge of my hip, so I'm currently spending most of my time laid up on the couch (with the occassional field trip on crutches around the house. Recovery seems to be going well). I'm using this time as my "vacation" before summer school starts, so hopefully I can catch up on a bunch of the non-school work I have that's built up.

I'm soon planning to launch a remodelled version of this website, which will include the removal of a few of the videos and essays I currently have up. So, if you've been putting off checking out certain papers, now might be the time to check them out (not many are coming off, but I figured I should give forewarning).

This summer I'll be giving a few talks come July/August. As usual, I'll be speaking at the Comic Arts Conference at Comic-Con International. As it stands, I'm planning to unveil a new theory about page-layout, and I'll also be on a panel about "comics and education." More on this to come...

I'll also be giving one of the invited lectures for the first annual Visual and Iconic Languages Conference at the University of New Mexico. I'm very flattered they thought to ask me, and expectedly, that one will be on visual language grammar.

Finally, my friend Alexander Danner will be having a release party for his new book Character Design for Graphic Novels. For those in the Boston area, the party will be on June 30th, 7pm at Porter Square Books.

Speaking fun

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to be speaking next week at the Popular Cultural Association National Conference here in Boston next week. If you're interested in attending, I recommend checking out their site. I'll be presenting once again about my work on visual language grammar.

Then, I'm almost more excited to say, that I'll be teaching my stuff to the Syntactic Theory class that I'm a Teacher's Assistant for here at Tufts since my professor is going to be out of town that day. My advisor is the teacher of the class, and since he pretty much helped invent modern syntactic and semantic theory, its been a thrill just being in the class let alone getting to teach a lecture or being the TA.

The course so far has aimed less at teaching the students how to do a particular theory of syntax (though it has done that a bit, advocating my advisor's new theory of Simpler Syntax), but instead at teaching them how to be syntacticians. What are the choices to be made? How can you tell what theory is best and why? These are the questions I'm struggling with in my own work, so it's been enlightening for me greatly as well. (Beyond this, I suppose my contribution just goes to make this course even more unique and weirder than the average university syntax class.)

In this spirit, I'm thinking that I'll teach the class my basic theory of VL grammar, then just give them a whole bunch of the more wacky and interesting sequences I've found and see what they can do with them. And, since I enjoyed it so much, I'm going to include Tim Godek's strip from today. Can you figure out what about it's structure makes me like it so much?

Talk at PCA

For those in the Boston area (like me), I'll be speaking at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association National Conference. My talk will be on the "comics theory' panel on Thursday April 5, 6:30-8pm at the Marriott Copley Place (though it's indicated that times may change). This talk will be on my recent work on visual language grammar.

CCS trip

Today I made my trip up to Vermont to talk with the fine folks at the Center for Cartoon Studies. It was quite fun, and gave me a nice break from grad school as well as a little exploratory New England adventure.

I presented my talk on visual language grammar and I thought that the discussion with the students was particularly good. I’d planned on having a lecture, discussion, and then Q&A, but their observations in the lecture were so good it left hardly any time after for more focused discussion.

Showing their intuitive chops, they pitched in with great questions, observations, and insights as only full time students at a “comics college” would (or as I called it, a “visual language learning school”). I was quite impressed, though not surprised given their vocation. I also got to have a delightful post-talk tour from a student named John-Michael that extended the discussion of theory til I had to hop on my bus back to Boston (thanks again for the book John!).

From all indications, they seemed to have as good a time as I did. So, for any of you reading this, thanks for the fun day!

Talk at Center for Cartoon Studies Oct 26th

One of the great new things I'm discovering about living in New England is that lots of cool stuff is all close together (coming from California, nothing is close together). One of those cool things is the Center for Cartoon Studies up in Vermont. Since its so nearby, I've arranged to give a talk up there on October 26th. I'll be presenting about some of my favorite major themes: the distinction between comics and visual language, the Art vs. Language divide, and my ongoing work on how sequences of images communicate.

(Note to any CCS students who might be reading this: if you have any other topics of interest you'd like me to delve into, please shoot me a note!)

I'm greatly looking forward to the trip. It will be my first time up to Vermont and the more northern part of New England. I've also noticed that Scott McCloud is giving a lecture/booksigning there at Dartmouth the week before (hosted by CCS ), so I'd be curious to here students' takes on our different approaches afterwards.

Wizard World Chicago Wrap up

I'm happily unwinding after a long weekend of Wizard World Chicago. I lucked out with a booth next to Jose and Daphne from Dreamweaver Press, which was fun since we were booth neighbors in San Diego a few years back too.

Though it was a little slow, I was very glad to talk to everyone who came by, and flattered by the occasional few who actually knew of my work already. It'd been awhile since I'd had a full on booth at a convention, so I'd almost forgotten the look of "you do what?!" on people's faces when I describe that I research the "cognitive processes behind comics."

By far though, the most entertaining moment of the weekend came on Saturday. In the middle of talking with a guy about my work and interests, he was apparently so impressed (?) with me that mid-sentence he whipped his phone out of his pocket to call a female friend who was somewhere else on the show floor and tried to get her to come over so he could set me up on a date with her. A bright-red laughing Daphne said that's enough for me to now introduce myself as a "sexy comic theorist."

So, I guess I now know what's going on my next business card. ;-)

San Diego Con? Check. Chicago Con? Check. ... Now on to all the loads of work I wanted to get done before (gulp) moving to Boston in three weeks and (gulp!!) school starting in four!

ComicCon Report (finally)

Huzzah! My computer has returned. While I was responding to (and purging) a few emails I was astounded to find 520 emails had accumulated across my various addresses. So, if you’ve emailed or expected more prompt communication from me over the last two weeks, I apologize and please be patient… I’ll get to it in no time I’m sure!

ComicCon was quite fun for the two days that I attended. Given that I’m from San Diego, with parents and friends making bids for time and the fact that I’ve been going in a professional capacity since I was 14, two days is plenty.

My first day was rather uneventful on the whole, though I did get to visit with various people, including T Campbell, who was the first person I ran into and always a pleasure to talk with.

Friday had far more fun highlights, opening the day with Brandon Peterson introducing me to Frank Cho and Howard Chaykin (who is hilarious, fascinating, and could be listened to all day). While there I ran into Merlin and we headed up to Scott McCloud’s panel. The whole family was great on stage. Scott’s talk was expectedly excellent, and his daughter Sky’s talk was awesome despite the technical problems (a theme of the day I’d find out).


I then skedadled over to my own panel with Zon Petilla (left) and Hal Shipman (middle). The talk as a whole went alright, though it had some issues. Running off a flash drive on an old and tired computer, the first segment suffered several mangled slides, causing my presentation to be a little lackluster, and ushering me into posing my fellow presenters and good friend Ian on stage as if they were panels.

Luckily, I was saved by fellow presenter Hal Shipman’s computer, after which it was smooth sailing. I sincerely hope people enjoyed the talk and that the distractions didn’t detract from it too much (and perhaps gave it some additional entertainment value?). I also thought that Hal’s talk, which followed mine, did a great job of exploring the differences between how Herge and Hal Foster used various graphic signs like speed lines. I’d love to see more papers like it.

At my talk I was also stoked to finally meet in person Neal VonFlue (who reminded me of a groovy Morgan Spurlock) along with Fabricari. It was great to talk to them and everyone else who came by at the booksigning afterwards.

So, all in all it was a fun, if short, ComicCon this year. Now on to my hundreds of emails, and Wizard World Chicago this weekend.

Wizard World Chicago

Well, I got back to Chicago yesterday, safe and sound from San Diego. My computer is still in the shop, so I'll wait to post my Con-report til I can properly fill it with links and some photos. In the meantime...

If you're in the Chicago area next week and want to come meet me at another convention, I'll have a booth at Wizard World Chicago next week from August 4th through the 6th. I'm at booth #3184, so come on by, check out my shwag, and chat!

Murphy's law strikes, and ComicCon looms

Isn't it always the case... just as I had a ton of work to do and preparation for ComicCon, my computer skizzed out and is now in the shop. Argh! Luckily, my talk was already saved to my flash drive, so that won't be affected, nor should any of the handouts I'll have for the Con. However, it also means that there will be no Meditations updates next week.

So, just one more reminder about San Diego:

My talk on the Visual Language Panel will be in Room 7B from 1:15-2:30. I'll be talking about the underlying structure of how people understand sequences of images.

Every year at the CAC they sell a CD collection of the papers for people's talks. My contribution will be just like my talk: a pdf essay about the Grammar of Visual Language. And, if you needed any more incentive to come out and here me talk, this paper will only be available on the CAC CD for the near future. I'm not planning to upload it online anytime soon, so it is a ComicCon exclusive.

Also, after my talk I'll be doing a booksigning at (I've heard) the Comic Relief booth. I love Comic Relief. It was my comic bookstore of choice when I lived in Berkeley and they always do a great job of promoting things that deserve it. So, come to my talk, say hello if you see me around, and definitely come by the booksigning to buy books and chat with me. Hope to see you in San Diego!

More on ComicCon

So, I've found the official Comic-Con programming guide is now posted. Here's the Friday description for my panel:

1:15-2:30 Comic Arts Conference Session #6: Visual Language—
Neil Cohn (Meditations: 1999-2002)  reveals the “secrets” of sequential art: the grammatical rules and visual “parts of speech” underlying comics' use of sequence. Zon Petilla (Cal State University–Fresno) asserts that there is a universal visual grammar operating in comics that can be used to teach language. Hal Shipman (Northwestern University) examines the contrast between the vocabulary and grammar of visual language in European and American comics, represented respectively by the adventure strips Tintin and Terry and the Pirates.
Room:7B

Note the room number 7B. For those keeping track, that's right across the hall from McCloud's panel in Room 8. Quite convenient, eh? (hint hint)

Comic-Con Visual Language Panel

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'll be speaking on a panel about "Comic Theory" at the Comic Arts Conference at San Diego's Comic-Con International. The talk is going to be on Friday July 21st at 1:15-2:30 (not sure the room still). Here are descriptions of all the talks on the panel:

"The Secret of Sequence" - Neil Cohn
The sequential aspect of juxtaposed images has often been regarded as central to comics as a medium. This presentation will reveal the rich patterns underlying comics' sequence: a grammar, complete with "(visual) parts of speech" and grammatical rules. Pushing beyond the confines of linear panel-to-panel relationships, this approach should intrigue anyone interested in how comics communicate.

"Visual Language and Universal Grammar" - Zon Petilla
My research involved using a cognitive map to bridge the gap between understandings of a group of words for a Limited English speaker to test my theory that there is a Universal Visual System that can be used to teach language.

"The Western Vocabulary of Visual Language" - Hal Shipman
Within the Western comics tradition, there are essential cultural variances in the vocabulary and grammar of visual language. Contrast these differences in European and American comics, represented respectively by the adventure strips Tintin by Herge and Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff.

I'll post more as I learn it...

San Diego, coming soon!!

Thanks go to Scott McCloud for kindly linking to my latest Comixpedia article on "visual rhyming." He suggests "Eye Rhymes" as another good term, and I agree, it does sound pretty cool.

He also notes that he'll be speaking at the San Diego ComicCon on Friday from 12-1pm. I know I'll be there, and so should you: Scott gives great talks. And immediately after Scott's presentation, you should walk over and see me talk at 1:15 to 2:30 on the Visual Language panel of the Comic Arts Conference!

This year's panel should be fantastic. I can't wait, because my talk will be the best presentation I've ever done. I don't want to overhype it, but I've been working really hard on it and it should be great. Called "The Secret of Sequence," I will finally be unveiling most of the my model of Visual Language Grammar, so, if you're curious at all about "how sequential images create meaning," then you won't want to miss it.

The panel will also have two other talks about theory related things as well. I'll post more about them, and the location, as the date nears.