Week 10 Tone and Color

How Tone is Operating

For today's topic, I have a page from DC's Hawkeye: Little Hits. Here we can see a use of tone and color to convey meaning and message. The page shows this comic's use of a more desaturated palette conveys the "mundane" view the main character, Clint, has of his life as an Avenger. The desaturated tone invokes similar lighting from fluorescent lights of a mundane office setting and keeps a somewhat desperate mood.

How Tone is Interacting

In this particular panel, the desaturated tone works to further the mundane but also the minimalist shape of the comic. In conjunction with tone, the panel shape adds to the minimalist look. (the use of line is similar, in that there are bold lines outlining the objects in each scene and they rarely vary in width as to limit the amount of complexity in the shading or art.)

How Color is Operating
What color is used in this mostly desaturated comic page is used to identify characters and draw to certain objects, distinguishing characters from background. There is little to no shading and variation in the colors used- most shading is done through line- and the brightest colors are indicative of character's signature colors or "explosions."

How Color is Interacting
Color also contributes to the overall minimalistic look of the comic. In this case in particular, the lack of color works to the comic's advantage. The use of color in conjunction with line creates shading for the comic panels. While there is very little increased lines on a panel of color, creates shading in the shapes of the characters and also allows for texture on the buildings.

Comics Artist

Line:

The image here is an uncolored page from a Catwoman comic. Because the page is in the planning stages, all the color values are represented through shading which- upon closer inspection- is controlled through the use of line density. The thickest lines are used to outline characters and differentiate between them and the background. Then within the objects, the dark, shaded areas are created by using lines that are closer together. Line is also used to convey depth and weight through the angle at which they are pointing. If one looks close to the clothing of the characters, we get a sense of weight from how the wrinkle lines fall.

Movement
In this finished page from Scott Pilgrim: The Infinite Sadness, there are a few elements that establish movement. On a large scale, there is the sense of movement of the eye that should be inherent in all good comic layout design. Traditional books are read from left to right and it is the job of the artist to lay the panels out so that the eye wants to naturally gravitate this way. This movement is achieved through the use of speech bubbles, layering over panels in a way that draws the eye from one frame to the next. Within the panels themselves, the characters are participating in a race. To convey this, the artist uses tricks such as dynamic angles in the character's body as well as lines to show the blur of background around a running character and to highlight the direction of a character's movements.

Scale:
With an icon like Superman, it is often hard to create a sense of smallness and awe within the character himself. While we have come to know the character as being a man of super strength and speed, it is easy to forget that he is also a man who has to go about daily life like the rest of us humans. The use of scale in this image helps convey the sense that this Clark Kent is small in this big city of Metropolis. He is larger than the woman in the foreground or the other people in the panel. This serves to make Clark the focal point of the image but with his back turned to the viewer and angled upwards, we are drawn to the scale of the buildings be hind him and the sky above. This creates a towering skyline to make Clark look somewhat more diminutive in the frame giving us a a more vulnerable look at the hero.

Week 7 9 Blog Exercise - Visual Thinking

(these titles are getting confusing)

So we picked two visual puzzles and for this experiment, I borrowed my friend at Cal Poly, because a left-brainer might use different tactics than I would.


First we counted E's

I solved this visually by color coding the sizes of the letters I was looking for, that way I didn't lose track of the count:

My Mechanical Engineering Major talked me through his process:

Overall, he and I came to the same conclusion although we used different methods to do the same thing. The ME Major acknowledged that he'd need find the E's at various angles and marked them based on the knowledge of how many there were in a set. I used colors. Because I need the visual reference to help me quickly identify the shapes.


For the second, I chose the hidden star:

To solve this problem I used the use of recognizable traits of the shape to find the star. In particular, I looked for points and eventually found one that lead to the star:

trust me, I'm a professional

The discussion on how to solve the star problem was somewhat short on my test subject's end:

So I can't really prove how I solved his end but it wasn't as visual as my strategy.

Week 6 Visual Perception 1 / Top-Down Visual Processing

(image url: http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/wilcat92/Huntress/BOP84ffsxtv14.jpg)

Here we have a page from a Huntress comic. Upon first glance of the page, our eyes see the divide of the comic panels in two columns which we read from left to right, the way the english language works. The eye is then drawn vertically to the dynamic shot of Huntress jumping from a building. The eye scans down the pose as it follows the line of action of the character. On the right-hand column the vertical nature of the design draws the eye down, parallel to the character's body on the left and read downwards, mimicking the "falling action"