The Arrival!!!!

Shaun Tan’s the arrival was a singularly refreshing piece of literature. The most immediately noticeable trait of the book is that there are no words, at least no words that can be interpreted by the reader. This fact leads to what I found the books most appealing characteristic; while using no comprehensible written language, Tan flawlessly communicates a complex and endearing story of life experiences.

I was continually surprised by how successfully Tan communicated any theme, emotion, or experience, however intangible or nuanced it was. Adding to my awe was the fact that the book’s illustrations flowed more like a well edited movie than a novel or comic. The still images conveyed a smooth and readable progression of time, with sequential images giving the stills an animated quality. As well as a pleasing flow of time and sequence, Tan employed skilled transition techniques and appealing compositional elements. Tan communicates with incredible efficiency; little time is wasted by the reader finding where we are supposed to be looking, or discerning what is happening on a given frame.

Several scenes in particular stick out in my mind. When the traveler reaches the new land, he goes through the steps necessary to immigrate into this new local. I was fascinated by the interview scene, that Tan could communicate such an action using no written language yet soever. I have to wonder the amount of reference and studies Tan underwent on human movement, emotion, and aesthetics to so accurately and efficiently pin down each frame.

Another scene which impressed me was the cloud scene. This sequence was impressive to me less on a technical level, and more from a conceptual standpoint. I found this a tremendously original and effective means of communicating the passage of time. I was delighted with the originality of this shot, and others/

Aside from the impressive technical and conceptual aspects of this book, I found the story, interplay of different characters, and original creatures and environments absolutely delightful. This book took me to a different world, one that I've never seen before in film, literature, or games. This world was fresh and appealing to me, offering as many new surprises to me as it offered to the emigrant. The book did not exists solely to deliver a change of geography, however. The interweaving stories of the different immigrants was a poignant display of human struggles, joy, and friendships, and I'm thankful that Tan succeeded in imbuing depth as well as charm into his masterpiece.

Understanding Comics

I was a bit surprised by understanding comics. I was expecting to open the book to find an academic analysis of comic books. I was greeted instead by an actual comic book. Or so I thought. Understanding comic's presentation is eccentric, yet fitting for its subject matter. As the book analyses comic books, I suppose it is appropriate that the book read like an actual comic book. This however, isn't a typical comic book, even by this classes standards (or from what I've read so far). The book was surprisingly informative, giving some rather in depth discussions about the media of comic books, and their relevance to the artistic world. I must say I was a bit surprised to see how well well McCloud argued for the importance and significance of the genre that is comics.One aspect that pleased me about this book was how McCloud described the interplay between comics and other media. Many of the ideas described in this book I found were just as relevant to animation, illustration, or film as they are to comics. Particularly to topic of Iconic imagery, and use of icons interesting as it applies to other forms of art. This made me thing about comics use in my own studies. I have studied film and animated works as reference to how to go about the preproduction of an animation. The conceptual aspects of animation are very important, as a solid base must be formed, with which the artist continually looks back to support decisions on composition, sequential flow, and communicating ideas and actions. I found this book surprisingly informative in this domain, topics such as the use of icons made me think of more efficient ways I could communicate characters or action in my preproduction process.McCloud's book was somewhat surprising, and to be honestly, a bit more laborious to read than I feel a traditionally layed out text would have been. The upside though, is that I found this book much more entertaining that it would have been if he had just written a text. On the same token, I imagine this book attracted many new readers that would have never strayed into the domain of comic analysis had this book not been written.

Little Nemo

I really can't say I enjoyed Little Nemo. I delved into little Nemo in Slumberland. I found some aspects of the comic interesting, but in the end, the lack of plot, coherency, or solid narrative really frustrated me. On a superficial (yet, important level), the way McCay wrote the text made it hard to read the comics at a decent pace. I had to spent an undue amount of time analyzing McCays writing, instead of just breezing through the text. While the extra time It took to read through the comics as a result was bearable, the distraction from the comic and the imagery was less forgivable. To me the most important aspect of the novel was the psychedelic imagery. Because of this fact, I found the distracting text very harmful to the my enjoyment of the comic.On a lighter note though, the comic presented some some images. I'm sure that particularly in it heyday the comic wowed reader with its imaginative environments, weird variety of characters, and outlandish creatures. In our day however, we have movies like Avatar that can present us unbelievable creatures in such a manner that the mystical seams almost mundane. Because of this, I was less enthusiastic about Nemo in Slumberland than readers of McCay's era must have been. The differences between comics of the present day and the pioneering comics become apparent McCays work. Not to bash on the artist, however, for at his time his work was marvelous, and without him many forms of art may not be the same today. I did however, notice many techniques that had no been innovated yet that might have made his work more engaging. Almost all of McCay's compositions were very straight on; he rarely allowed the readers an angled camera view, and usually keep the camera the same distance away from the focus. Many modern comics have gone the opposite direction; we see extreme camera angles and close ups. Such compositions are employed to heighten drama. I really realize this in McCay's work; it isn't until I am deprived of interesting compositions that I really realize how necessary they are to keep a viewers attention. As I was reading through Slumberland I could clearly see a gap in time in McCay's work; it took me a while before I figured out what was really bugging me was lackluster composition.

Blankets

Blankets was a very interesting novel. Longer than I was expecting, I was anticipating the novel to be a chore to read. I could not have expected to be pulled in so greatly by this novel. The first 20 pages or so were rather hard to read; to story of Thomson's early life is not an easy one to digest. I found this, instead of a deterrent, a motivator to read on. I wanted this little kid's life to improve, I wanted to see him get away from his abusive household, and most importantly I wanted him to meet the girl he is seen with on the cover.
This novel seems to very accurately capture not just human experiences and emotions, but specifically events and their significance to people at a certain age. Thomson's descriptions of his characters and what they went through at particular ages struck a cord with me. They didn't just describe those events; they described what it felt like at that age, and in that particular part in time. During the first chapter I recalled my own childhood, and realized how accurately Thomson described hardship for youths. Similarly, Thomson's descriptions of the awkward experience of puberty and first love felt particularly familiar to my own experiences. This really pleased me, I can't recall at this very moment any films or books that so accurately synthesized some of these experiences. Maybe this is just because some aspects of Thomson's life in particular really correlated to my own life, maybe its just do to skillful storytelling.
On the technical side, I found Thomson's use of line rather effective. The line quality sharply varies based on how it is perceived by the protagonist. Frightening portions of the story, such as when Thomson's brother is shoved into the crawl space, are drawn with a harsh, messy, jagged line quality to reflect the narrator's mental state at the time. Conversely, when Thomson first notices his female friend at the church camp, she is drawn in a beautiful, crisp line that had not been seen in the novel till that point. The result is felt, not necessarily immediately noticed. In this way, Thomson more effectively communicates his story, by not just telling up events, but making us feel them as he had felt them.