Making Comics: Scott McCloud

Having read Understanding Comics beforehand, I chose to read Scott McCloud's Making Comics for this week of class.

I found the work to be similar to the original, in format and in basic humor. And the humor is something I can appreciate! I feel like Mccloud put a lot of effort into putting not only himself into the book, but a lot of gathered theory that has built how he does comics.

McCloud makes a point of using visuals to illustrate ideas. And not just the basics, such as composition and so on, but literally every point of the book is illustrated. And so, it allows another way to understand concepts I'm used to applying on my own, or had read somewhere else. Though I'm not a fan of graphs and charts and the like, McCloud builds from listing in a chart to illustrating a concept, to reaching further into each concept, illustrating as he goes.

In the example of a man finding a key, testing it, and an hungry lion jumping out, McCloud goes from explaining the basics of a story and cutting it down, to how to position a camera angle on the story, with out going overboard.

I wasn't exactly enlightened by the content of this book, but I really appreciated the rewording of familiar concepts. As I've learned to work with comics of my own, I've found things that work, things that don't work, and have picked up ideas from other artists. McCloud reiterated these concepts, but in new ways- and explained why they did and didn't work. I found this very interesting, and that's what kept me reading. There's something about hearing it from someone else's mouth. And needless to say McCloud is more experienced and eloquent than I am when it comes to articulating exactly what is going on in a comic. I've been feeling my way around, and this book gave names to what I've been doing, and reminded me of some concepts I've let fall by the wayside.