Week 1 — Stop-Motion and Thoughts about the book“Understanding Comics”

This first week’s assignment was to create a stop-motion working in teams. We present a cat that sees and starts chasing an elusive mouse. The group was composed of Katie, Filmon and me.
Video
Process
At the end of last class, we started exploring different concepts about the animation, we talked about probably working on a 2d stop-motion with a photographic scene in the background.
Inspiration
Doing research about animation and frame by frame images we stop with this image in a sequence of a cat and decided to use part on this sequence to recreate a storyline where a cat chase a mouse.

Although we thought of creating an image frame by frame, we understood that we do not have experience drawing form animation, and looked for a source of a cat in movement and found it Walk Cycle Animation Cat. The image consists of 37 images of a cat walking and running. We used the first 31 images of the sequence.
Working frame by frame
To be able to use this cat and make sure that it has a reasonable size to work on we printed around 3 inches each in proportion. The images had to be cut precisely with an Exacto knife and put it over a 1/4" foam board to give it some tridimensionality to the scene,

Process of filming
After the preparation of the material, we started preparing the scene and the frame. Before starting shooting we test the animation moving the cat and the mouse by hand. We also tested the spots where the cat would change his actions and where the mouse would appear.

Because we did this exercise, we had the impression that the duration of the animation would be around 10 seconds.

We decided to work in 12 cat frames per second but shooting 2 pictures per frame.

In the first part of the animation, when the cat is walking, we loop through the walking frames so the cat walks for a longer period. The program Dragonframe let us inspect the animation frame by frame.

One of the difficulties of animation that I notice during this process is having a consistent movement in proportion with the background and other elements of the scene. However, I enjoyed how we tried to play with the velocity and movement of the cat through the scene.
Also, putting the cat's frame over a board helped us create shadows in the cat that helps with the depth of the scene, making this contrast with the mouse that it is completely flat.

Book: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
I have little exposure to the art of comics. When I was a child the only comic that I remember reading was Mafalda, a clever girl with humanistic concerns created in Argentina by Quino. I have little to no idea about what are the considerations when creating a comic or its historical background. “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” by Scoot McCloud was an interesting read, changing my perception of the tradition of Sequential Art in Art history.

Essence and origins of Comics
As the author mentions, it is easy to find patterns in art history that arrive at the same definition of comics. Although McCloud in the book debates with himself about a specific definition of comics, he summarizes it as juxtapose pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence. His explanation and definition opened my eyes to see that comics are not a new invention, but a recurrent way of storytelling in art history see in ancient Egypt or in Maya codices. However, it was the invention of printing that opens the possibilities of comics as a form of art and a communication tool.
The way that nowadays we interact with comics, extend our identities and our experience of life, emotions, and reflexions. It is interesting how McCloud sees the appeal of the comic in the balance of simplifying to the purpose and meaning and following the awareness of realism and language. However, he recognizes that there is a spectrum of artistical inclination dance between these tendencies. I would say that by this interpretation, every line and word has a meaning and consequence.
Characteristics of Comics
The principles and balance between abstraction, realism, and meaning weren't completely new by me. Coming from an artistic background, I recognize the description of how the comic artistic pathway of their craft as a universal creative approach. However, in the book the author introduces an essential characteristic of comics, and how this influences the perception of time, space, emotions, and sound. One of the key attributes in comics the transitions use through the comic panels.
McCloud describes six transitions each one with a level of closure. These six panel-to-panel transitions are:
- Movement to Movement
- Action to Action
- Subject to Subject
- Scene to Scene
- Aspect to Aspect
- Non-sequitur
The author mentions that these transitions vary in use depending even on the social and cultural influences of the creator of the comic. Interestingly, this attribute englobes other key players in the development such as the potential of lines and motion in comics.
Although you can see deep studies in visual arts that explore motion, I would say that most of then have explored motion as comics do. As McCloud mentioned in the book, through the use of lines, subjective motion and polyptych (Images divided into sections, or panel but with a continuous background), the sense of movement generates their own language, now frequently used in other forms of visual arts. Adding these qualities to composition, in the art of comic you see a good play interaction of time, motion and sound (sound is mostly manifest through the use of “word Ballons”).
In contrast with other visual arts (except filmmaking), Comics is created hand by hand with the art of writing and storytelling. In the chapter “Show and Tell”, the author mentioned that this coexistence of word and pictures is interchangeable to the creator instinct, but the most frequent form of this use is an interdependent relation, where the relationship is a balance between words and pictures.
Interestingly, in this fluent description of the principal characteristics of the comic, the author takes time to recognize the process of creation and development of the artist. He describes this relation from the artist to the creation as a six-step path composed by Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft, Surface. Although he recognizes this process as an individual path that each artist has with their craft. As the author mentioned on page 182:
Any artist creating any work in any medium will always follow these six steps whether they realize it or not.

This journey doesn't have a specific order or priority, but each artist decides to focus on what is more important depending on their individual preferences.
The last topic that the author mentions is color and the history of color in the development of comics until the ’90s (when the book was written). the author mentions how publication went from using flat colors (improving form and composition) through the use of gradient. However, color as not substitute the black and white publication. Although this could be base on the cost of publications in colors, it is also based on the creational preference of the artist.
This book gave me a glance at the art of storytelling and the considerations of creating images in sequence. I had no idea that some of these principles are fundamentally the same as other art forms: the consideration in composition, expression, movement, rhythm(time), meaning, balance is shared. However, I would love to see an updated version of this book to understand what is the art of comic nowadays with the propagation of use of the internet, and how comic artist adapt to this publication possibility. Also, I would like to see the evolution of sequence art such as comics in contrast with comic memes and this new role of comics in our society.

