Monday, December 1, 2008

Team 2 Thompson:

p42-43 these are entire pages that depict himself falling into dreams. he seems to mix artitic styles

p60 its an attention grabbing and disturbing page. the graphics make the point clear without the need for words.

p61 the shadowing on the teacher here is very effective. it creates a creepy, larger than life figure

p77 there's an odd combination of the realistic school bus and the babyin the manger on top of that.

p203 the drawing and shading, especially in the hand at the top of the page, seems especially realisic here in contrast to his usual style.

Monday, November 17, 2008

persepolis movie

i was suprised by this movie. since its an award winning movie i gues i had different expectations. it was awkward during certain times like when she montages to Eye of the Tiger. it also irritated me how much they changed events from the book. like peoples names were different and sometimes a character would say something that a different character said in the book.
other than that it was a decent movie. i felt it was pretty well animated and i was impressed that she would take that task on basically by herself

Monday, November 10, 2008

Persepolis

the transitions are basically the same as they were at the beginning. there were some more moment-to-moments, but nothing very adventurous.

there were sometimes where her lack of inventiveness actually bothered me. i cant find it now but there was a panel where she depicts her elongated shadow in a doorway. i couldnt even consentrate because i kept thinking that the cell should be elongated like her shadow to ecsentuate that.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Persepolis 1-110

i feel like the way its drawn is like a childrens drawing. i gues thats appropriate to go along with her P.O.V. as a child. although it makes it hard to distinguish people. also that they are of the same ethnicity creates a similar look to most of them.
i also know very little about this revolution in the book. so its almost as if im learning like she did as a child, through her POV.

team 2 topic A:
most transitions are action to action or subject to subject. sometimes i think the case could be made for a non-sequitur. page 33 for example; without taking the words into account the three middle panels seem unrelated.

Monday, November 3, 2008

MAUS II

the biggest visual shocker in this half is the actual picture he puts in at the end. it's such a huge contrast to everything else, but it also puts a face on Vladek's character. im glad he put it at the end because then i wasnt thinking about that picture through the whole book but at the end it humanizes him.

Team 2 Topic D:
the relationship between words and pictures is basically the same as it was in the first book. nothing very different except for maybe a spot or two where the words are on a piece of paper in the picture or something like that (p 63). when his father is speaking polish there will be a word box for translations (99).

Monday, October 27, 2008

MAUS I

i noticed this book seems to be very structured, panel-wise anyway. most of the pages have a similar set up: mostly between 5 - 10 panels that are small with a square or rectangular shape. and as far as time goes, when he jumps to the past he makes a clearly defined and outlined panel. when he's in the present the panels are open unless there is a large number of them grouped together.
i personally find it amazing that his father lasted so long before he got discovered and sent to auschwitz. he moved around so much, he seems very resourceful. but it seems he had no choice.

Team 2 Topic D:
when recounting the past the words are obviously narration to what the panel depicts. the narration is usually found outsid the borders of the cell but if it is inside it's kept in a clearly seperate box. every once in a while the narration is involved in the pictures. page 15 he uses a train ticket as a text box.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Blankets finale

the ending there: really? thats how it ends?
its just done. at first i thought "no. that doesnt finish anything." but i realized after that yeah, it kinda does. i guess i was expecting more of a revealing conclusion. but i feel like this way, it means you need to draw your own conclusions.
i do like his small transformation at the end there. i noticed in the panel where his hair is chopped off that its probably the only time he has more than a dot for an eye. it shows change, appreciation, growth (i think anyway). after this he gets a more mature style, growth, and apparently a tattoo. it seems to be the typical release of his past and beliefs.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Blankets chap.s 1+2

in the first chapter i found his depiction of his childhood grim and depressing. the dark content is only amplified by the thick, dark, and jagged style of artwork. something about that style was really off-putting to me. too harsh i guess, but it gets the point across.
i started to like it better in the second chapter when his lines got softer and more open to show change and budding romance.
the story seems to move very fast considering he's a child in one chapter and a teen in the next.

team 2 topic C:
he seems to really utilize line thickness with a preference for the dark thick side. in chapter one we see a lot of dark shaded areas. i took notice on pages like 46 with darkness and jagged lines to show a creepy feel. a definate use of positive/negative space in the one larger panel on the page.
on the next page over i noticed him using abnormally thick lines to show an almost aura around his mother. maybe to seperate her from everything else.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Finishing Fun Home

i have to say this book ended depicting her father in a completely different note than when the book began. that suprised me. i started out resenting him and all he represented; wishing she would just explode at him one day and put him in his place. At the end i felt that he actually expressed compassion, perhaps not explicitly, but in his own way by finding a common bond with his daughter.
i also noticed a little detail in one of the panels. on page 226 her father's temporary grave marker reads "Bechdel Fun'l Home." i thought it was, if this was actually how it was in real life, a interesting coincidence that "fun home" would be almost directly referenced by accident. im not quite sure what the importance of it is but i took note of it.
she sure does reference a lot of books i've never even heard of.

Team 2 Topic B:
i feel like through this entire novel that time and motion is more implied than depicted. through the narration time is expressed and explained. through the readers own knowledge of day to day life and through cleverly designed illustrations one understands the motions.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Fun Home Ch. 1+2

team 2: time and motion;
since time flips around to different points in the authors past time is a big theme in this graphic memoir. the reader really has to interperet time from the naration mostly. with motion, there is some use of the occational "zip-ribbon." like on p11 they're used to depict the christmas tree falling and her brother running away.

i personally took particular note of the apathy in bechdel's depiction of her family. they had been raised in a way that it seems they could only get by without feeling. they're lack of emotion about death for example. but that makes sense seeing as she and her siblings were constantly exposed to it.
i actually find this interesting. unlike my opinion of beard's essay that i disliked because of her lack of control, i liked this and was intrigued by their reactions (or rather, lack of reactions). its curious that she mentioned how she had to look to others to experience the emotions she should be feeling vicariously. p45 she tells of how she would tell others about her father's death in order to access the grief she never felt.

i was also amused at the comparison of her family to The Addams Family. it seems an odd thing for someone to actually relate their family to, but at the same time it seems acurate.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Understanding Comics Ch. 4-9

while reading this, one of the things that caught my eye (besides the color pages) was the mention of popular attitudes. after reading through this book my understanding of the comic world was expanded. i appreciated their cultural importance before, but i now get the artistic significance as well. somehow after learning about that i was caught off gaurd by the talk of this form being looked down upon.
"any artist wishing to do great work in a medium using words and pictures will have to contend with this attitude. in others and in themselves..." (p150) and its true
one thing im not sure i agree with is mccloud's version of cavemen's early artwork. im not personaly sure of what i think happened but i dont like his simplified version of artistic creation.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Understanding Comics Ch. 1-4

i was suprised at just how much was involved in comics that i never even thought of. there's a specific, not formula, but just natural way that comics can be portrayed.
i've read japanese graphic novels, tintin, and american superhero comics but never realized the science that connects all the art forms. the triangular graph showing reality, abstraction, etc. showed me the aspects of comics that i never considered while reading them. the methods of transition explained made me appreciate the technical aspects as well.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Richards essay

i really did enjoy this essay. and im not just saying that because the author's coming in to class. it was easy to read and relatable.
i think that this essay is mostly narration and description. the part about her grandparents going fishing on page 6 was almost all narration, which makes sense seeing as she's telling a story. i think the narration was used well. it didnt take much description at all for me to understand the emotions she was going through. she didnt have to tell me what they were because it is just understood. the frustration at the desease taking her grandmother and the sudden onsets of saddness from the death they've seen.
im not sure by the end i fully understood what the purpose of the talk about the great-grandmother's house was. i liked it at the beginning, but what was the significance there that im missing?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Gopnik essay

i actually enjoyed most of this essay. for one thing i didnt feel like it droned on like some of the others have. and the POV seemed different from the others also. by what this essay says this is a succesful man with a happy family. a far cry from a gay teenage boy or a woman dealing with her grief by having copious sex.
i liked the idea behind the essay. he was just concerned about his daughter but ended up figuring out a bigger picture his society. and although not everyone's from NYC i think the image is more universal than that. he basically came to the realization that maybe people live their lives too fast and too busy for other people.
the only time i had a problem with the essay was pages 107 to 109. i felt sidetracked from the story and a little bored with all the history babble. i realized the necessity and point to it all by the end, yet still i could have done without all of the background. still, when the end of p 109 came around and the point was reached i think i got back to enjoying the bulk of it.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Strayed Essay

wow. that was long.
for me, the beggining at least grabbed my attention but for a while it seemed to play out as make believe. i could relate the first half to a crude attempt at creating a commercialized "bold" romance novel. she tried a little to hard for the shock factor. (p 293 "i fucked. i sucked.")
but after all that there was a lot of introvert talk about looking at her decisions and how no one is right about grief, blah, blah. it was interesting for a while, i just think it went on way to long. i lost interest and got a headache. i got what she was saying at least but i think her POV was something like an angsty teenager to me.