Week 15 Visual Techniques

Active Techniques: symmetry, complexity, intricacy, flatness, activeness, 

Active Techniques: simplicity, flatness, asymmetry, boldness, unity, economy, stasis

While both of these are indie film posters, they share many visual techniques to convey their messages as well as some distinctly opposite techniques. Together the posters both use flatness to make the key images or shapes pop in the overall poster. With "Beautiful Losers" the flatness is used to draw attention to the outline of the butterfly. The flatness in the "Juno" poster is used to give the image a more "quirky" feel, with the patterned orange and white stripes. The first poster makes use of a few techniques that are very opposite of the other poster. While the first is intricate in design with a large butterfly filled with characters and scenes from the movie, emphasizing the complexity of the story and character while the other poster makes use of simplicity to show the more simplistic nature of both the story and the characters Juno. Similarly the use of symmetry in the Beautiful Losers poster gives the image a sense of grandness and depth that can be associated with the movie. For the Juno poster the use of asymmetry as well as the use of unity in the characters shows a wacky film about put-upon characters. Overall the design of the first poster is to emphasize many people dealing with a large story and conveys a feeling of chaos and grandness, this is done through complexity and activeness and intricacy. On the contrary, the Juno poster's simpler design shows the story of a quirky look at one small story about a handful of people and their lives through simplicity and asymmetry and stasis. 

Week 14 Contrast

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKbQrEQ3FCS8XFUS7pEhYZFDe5vtAZQ1JvGcprBYKp_KlYrUO6xzNXmiOS_vJIAoMCwzpbJDqq-BKTYsJ3BVJ6GaGLV3RwnykJWxf-_hjbg2WE3S63xj6v5StquVErqkDzC5orKNgiQI0/s1600/HAWKEYE2012008_COV.jpg

This is a cover for the new Hawkeye comics (a series I've recognized a few times for good design this year) The most startling interesting thing about the reboot of the title is the artist's decision to take a more minimal approach to his design in both color and line detail. This minimalist style creates very effective high-contrast images. Here the stark contrast of the woman's white skin against the red background makes her shape pop out and is contrasted again by a set of choice black items. Because the issue focuses on a femme fatale character the choice to highlight the gun and the woman's heels is especially effective in emphasizing what this woman is about. Additionally the black gun pointing down draws the eye downwards to the woman's high heels which also point downwards continuing to draw the eyes down to the title of the comic. Overall the use of minimal color creates a lot of contrast which makes for a very striking and effective design.

http://comiccoverage.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345158e369e20115708ce2cd970b-pi

In general, a lot of early 2000's cover designs were not great. This particular issue of Captain America suffers from a few flaws but here we're focusing on low contrast. The main issue with the lack of contrast is that the colors are so similar in tone and saturation, it is hard to recognize who or what is going on in the image. Captain America's hair and head are too similar in color and the lines sepearting them are too thin to create a proper distinction between them. This is further muddled by the second character's bust behind Cap's head, blending the flesh tones in even further. The low contrast problems are also present on the upper right where the red and white stripe motif of the shield blends unfortunately with the red and white flag background.

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.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/kara1.jpg
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:

 

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"