Week 12 Movement

Navigation in comics- Print-based

Page layout in comic book writing is key in the success of a book and maintaining the reader's interest. If a page's layout is too complex or confusing the reader won't be able to understand how to follow the storyline and ultimately they'll become disinterested in the story, no matter how good the art is. TO achieve this, most comic books, in particular, early comics utilized utilized closed box-shaped panels as frames for their art.

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Note the rectangular shapes and comparative lack in creative panel shape

These panels were easy to navigate because most american readers read each panel along the same line as they'd read any other book: left to right. The reader first identifies the left-most panel, the largest, and then within the panel, the left-most speech bubble is read first, then the one next-to or below it. The reader almost instinctively does this and the simple arrangement of images allows for this navigation to be as easy as possible.

As technology for art changed, the layouts for these comics changed as well. With artists being able to draw using layers, they could add more variation to their panel size and shape. This new outlook in page layout might have also been influenced by growing popularity of webcomics and their ability to use the "infinite canvas" (we'll talk about that farther down.)

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Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom by Lauren Beukes

In this page of Lauren Beukes "Fairest: the Hidden Kingdom," we see her successful attempt at utilizing all the negative space on the page while maintaining a coherent but interesting page layout for readers to navigate. The reader might notice the familiar rectangular panels that are still present but now, rather than being surrounded by white negative space, they are outlined in bold black lines, separating them from the background. The artist uses the separate panels to act as "close ups" for characters, conveying emotions or drawing attention to detail while utilizing a larger "background panel" as a way to show the characters in relation to each other as well as establish setting and atmosphere. The reader still knows to read the page from left to right and the rectangular panels are still present in the frame. Notice that the two panels floating over the the background panel at the top of the page, create at least two edges to frame the image between them, implying a middle panel without actually making one. The reader can still read from left to right, and top to bottom with ease as they follow speech bubbles that are oriented as such. The hierarchy of Rapunzel's speech bubble over Frau Totenkinder's shows who speaks first without having to force a character who is speaking first to be further left. 

In short: Being able to create a frame, understanding how people read and utilizing that knowledge to create a sort of speech bubble hierarchy are both tools that comic book artists must utilize when laying out their comics to create successful reader navigation.

Navigation in comics- Web-based

So with print-based comics, navigation hinges on the layout of your panels and the same is true for web-based comics as well. The catch here is that while in print the artist is limited to the standardized size and shape of magazines, comic books and generally the medium of a piece of glossy paper. With web-based comics, the artist works on what is essentially an "infinite canvas."

The writer and artist of Dresden Codak, Aaron Diaz introduced me to the idea of the infinite canvas in a blog entry he wrote about comic layout (that I'll link to as soon as I can find it.) and his comics are a good example of taking advantage of the web as your medium rather than a printed page:

"Fabulous Prizes" by Aaron Diaz, seriously, check out his work, it's amazing.

In "Fabulous Prizes" Diaz very successfully helps the reader navigate his comic without the use of traditional panels (at least, at the beginning.) The reader is assisted by the use of speech bubbles to guide them along the page, from one scene to the next. The frames of each image are created by the background of the images above, below and to either side of it. For example: in the top row there are actually three "panels" but they are formed in part by the use of telephone poles flanking the middle image, a house house on the far left, and the character's pose on the far right- her arm sealing off the far right side of the frame. Through carefully placed props and lines of sight, Diaz allows for a very seamless-looking comic that the reader can follow in a somewhat dreamlike manner.

As the reader keeps following this they reach a point at about the middle of the page where even the constructed panel frames disappear almost entirely as the character prepares to plug herself into the computer to look at her genome. This is suddenly juxtaposed by the use of the traditional white-edged frame that serves as a visual tip-off to the reader that this is no longer the reality they were looking at before but a different environment entirely. The use of the white frame also serves to separate the rest of the comic into essentially what is the comic's punchline. This makes the reader's navigation of the page successful by continuing to allow the reader to work from left to right, top to bottom but also aids the reader's comprehension of the content by essentially setting up a long-form joke and letting the reader know that this separate area is the payoff.

A side note: Aaron Diaz does a good little series on the art of comic writing in which he discusses shape, color, line and layout on his Tumblr page. I've put a link here but it's worth looking into if you're interested in design, comic art or just general art: