Mc.Cloud- 9.25

Rhetoric in Comics, Video & Other

I found the chart of various transitions to be most useful and most enjoyable of all our reading this week- pg. 70-74. I hadn’t seriously considered all the types of transitions a graphic art could employ and was interested in all the different kinds of closures or conclusions we, as readers, make out of the transitions. It’s really interesting that different kinds of transitions, an amount of panels used, and gutters can make a story mean so many different things. I am referring to the example on pages 84-85 where the story becomes shorter and shorter and there the concept of “drinking and driving” changes meaning as McCloud uses fewer panels than the sequence before. In the “first story” there’s a sense of sympathy and attachment and understanding for Carl- there is more information for us to use and consider between the first and last panel. But in the “last story” there are only 4 panels and asking readers to ‘feel bad’ for Carl is a bit of a stretch.

Even though this is thinking about McCloud as video and not drawing, these chapters made me think about our A/V Project. I’ve done a similar assignment when I was in middle school and transitions were an important component in our teacher’s mind. This week I have been thinking about the A/V Project and the transitions that I may employ for certain parts of my piece. Some transitions would be to quickly move from one slide/picture to the next, other transitions could be a series of video clips that have a blending sort of transition between the two of them. In a drawing aspect, I suppose that leans towards the storyboarding process that we’ll be considering when making the videos.

Text		Text			Text
Title	Pic 1	Video 1 Video 2 Video3 Fast transitions between videos	Pic 2	Pic3
Music 1	Music 2	Music 3	Music 2	Music 4	Music 2

This is something close to what I’ve been doing.

I haven’t messed around with iMovie in a long time, so I played around for a long time on Sunday and drew out stuff like above on a scrap sheet and then also have been fiddling around with iMovie.

I’m also really interested in the thought process that some comics artists go through in creating a comic- what do they think when it comes to directing or enabling some level of control over the reader’s and the way the readers engage with the artist’s work. What things do comics artist have to consider? When writing with only text- or how about not comics- the things a writer needs to consider is audience and age, the writer needs to think about how the work needs to be received, how it should be delivered…. I see that with blogs, packets, handouts…...etc. Of the stuff I just wrote, obviously some of those count when the comics artist, but I hope I can talk about more stuff tomorrow or something. Maybe someone in a group discussion tomorrow will have other ideas.

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**Additionally**

My other favorite thing we read for tonight were the gutters and the consequences they have when they are and are not used in a sequence. I like the way it can force a reader to engage with not only the text but the action occurring on the page/in the panel (to some degree). I am not sure what I’m looking for, but I hope to talk more about that in class tomorrow.