not so confuzzled

I spent an afternoon at the book store (with a nummy gingerbread latte), and solved some of my confuzlement issues - as per usual, I was on the right track all along.

Since I liked his first book so much, I flipped through, and actually ended up purchasing Making Comics by Scott McCloud.

Yes, it’s a book about making comics - not illustration - of course. But I happen to be very interested in comics, and illustration is really just a single panel comic most of the time. I think there’s a lot they can lend to each other. Illustration is non-sequential-sequential art to comics sequential art, if you will. Ok, that was confusing… point is they have a lot in common.

This book talks about everything I could have hoped for, AND it’s got contemporary examples that I actually recognize this time around (O’Malley, Larson, Ware etc) AND it’s got exercises for me to play around with AND it’s got a meaty bibliography at the back AND it’s exactly as pragmatic and irreverent and practical as I’d like it to be.

I especially like how helpful it is when it comes to talking about depicting the things that readers/viewers/the audience picks up on, and needs to be drawn in to an image, or story. It seems to be based on some solid psychology/evidence of what has worked throughout comics history. That’s going to be really helpful, whether I’m illustrating or comicing (And I plan to do both, actually).

I think the only reason I don’t see it recommended everywhere, is that it’s really new - 2006 publishing date, to be specific.

However, I also really appreciated the pointing in the direction of Ed Emberly. His stuff is adorable, and awesome and soooo much fun - I’m probably gonna order some real soon (they only had one book, and it’s cheaper online). He’s gonna be a good distraction and reminder that I don’t always need to complicate things unnecessarily. Simple is definitely best a lot of the time. So thanks for that, Travis.