"10 Suggestions for First-Time WebComics Artists," by Scott McCloud
It is a advisory piece that certainly works by example. Although actual text is fairly sparse, writing an advisory piece on WebComic design does not call for much text. What is covered most prominently is a WebComics artist's potential extent and range of design as well as accessability.
What is mentioned at the end is what is implied throughout, and that is that as a WebComic artist, you are your own boss. The extent of what you chose to design has no boundaries to speak of. Without an editor to pass work through, you may print and publish at will, and on demand. Writing or designing for a potential market is also a non-factor, which further enables the designer to create as they will. On top of all this, the audience is seemingly infinite. McCloud uses a great graphic to close the piece, and that is a picture of the earth. Obviously the message here is that when one is designing online, or perhaps doing many other things online as well, the audience is almost literally the entire world, if the designer or writer so chooses it to be. Certainly a designer has the freedom and ability to simplify their audience to their liking. But what is emphasized here by McCloud is the ability to write and design whatever you want, and also present it to an audience that spans the entire globe.
McCloud also fixates on technical matters that have to do mostly with access to certain needs and helpful aids to designing on the web. For instance, he suggests that registering your domain name is very important if you hope to avoid junk mail. He also provides helpful hints that direct you on how to use links, as well as encourage you to use the web to help guide you along, sort of a "help me help you help me" sort of relationship between a designer and the web itself. He also touches on shape design and color.
In the end, this web page proved very effective for me quite simply because it did what I felt was most important for it to do, it practiced what it preached. Nobody is going to pay much attention to an informational that doesn't even implement the ideas and strategies that it so boldly covets. Overall I feel that this would be something of use to anyone who is considering creating WebComics, or even just preparing to attempt any sort of we design in general.
6 comments:
I really liked this piece! It didn't tell you how to design a comic outright, but instead shows examples of how to do it. I wish he would have offered examples near the end of the comic, when it came to sound and interactivity.
This article is geared to the digital world, and it is very effective in doing this. There is limited text, but lots of information.
John
I also really liked this piece. I loved the fact that it wasn't some boring drawn out article on how to do it, but an actual comic. I also wished for a few more examples, it seemed a bit short to me. But I loved the approach.
I appreciated her point on image file size, as a photographer especially. I'd like to get a little more information on this "preparing color for the web" topic.
The idea of creating without censorship, in my opinion, the best feature of the internet. I think this is a really important feature, not only for vulgarity and pornography, but more importantly for giving a voice to people who aren't supposed to have a voice or are incarcerated for that voice. Unfortunately those without voice in this world, minorities, the poor, and the uneducated have not been exposed to the internet which should change.
The idea and point to this is an important one and I think that as the internet gains in popularity, modes for limiting the voice of the voiceless I'm sure will be discovered and proliferated, which as Laura Gurak argues would be irresponsible. Allowing money to overtake another medium of communication.
I also liked the McCloud comic; it embodies points made by all the other writers: Porter, Peterson, Hart, Berkun, and Killian. Which leads me to question: can all writing be reduced to comic books? Is this a desirable goal? I'm finding myself fiercely attached to words.
I think they could be, but I don't think that everyone would automatically run to the comic book form of everything. Some people are more visually wired (are we really cyborgs?), where others like to read and imagine what is being portrayed on the page. There will always be those people who are not visual learners, who would find a comic book distracting.
I think that if everything were a comic, we would become a less imaginative society. Our mental pictures of the characters from books could become homogeneous, quelling diversity of thought. Don't get me wrong, I love to sit down for a good comic or two, because I enjoy the artwork.
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