Response to Understanding Comics Chapter 2:

At first I had no idea what the guy in the comic was talking about win he kept turning down the people' depiction of what the object was. I was like "Okay where are you going with this?" But then They went into a segment on how the drawings weren't what they really were. Like how a picture of a cow wasn't a cow. Then the big word of Icon popped up and then I started to understand. It made me think back to when Jeremy Shellhorn came to talk to us in our BDS lecture about the types of signs that were used in design or on a poster. He said the meaning of signs went from denotation to connotation and from seeing to interpreting. As the viewers we construct our own meaning of the pictures or signs. The signs can be either an icon, index, or a symbol to represent one thing. The non-pictoral meaning is fixed and absolute, where the appearance doesn't affect their meaning. They represent visual ideas. A picture's meaning is fluid and variable. Words are abstract. In pictures the level of abstraction varies. In cartooning the focus is on specific details. It's stripping down and image to its essential meaning. While looking at icons or symbols, we assign identities and emotions where none exist. When the figure talked about how our face is like a mask that everyone else but ourselves can see, I'v always wondered what my face looks like through someone else's eyes. I thought that was cool. I know that we can look at mirrors and what not, but we only have a certain way of looking at ourselves. Do people see me the same way I do? Throughout this chapter I felt like I was learning how to write a comic book and where to place things. Hierarchy and where words should be placed and in which a=order to put the pictures. I learned how the different styles have consequences far beyond the mere "look" of a story. They are a form of visual communication. There is "no life here except to which you give it to." It made me think that we as people give life to what we want to through our thoughts and imagination. I'm not much of a comic book reader, but I really enjoyed reading this in comic book for instead of a text book. It was very informational. And it was a comic about what goes on in comics...how ironic. Now I feel like I know why comics are made the way they are. People like to envision themselves in them and to bring fantasy into reality. It made me think of Marvel's The Avengers and all those other superhero comics. Also I think for out group commercial we're doing part comic/cartooning. So I feel like in reading this it will help us in illustrating our commercial to its full potential.

Response to Understanding Comics Chapter 5:

This chapter stated how emotions and senses can be conveyed through certain backgrounds, lines, words, and pictures. It's so that it can evoke an emotional or sensual response from the audience. Impressionism and expressionism are being used to their full potential. It stated that a line can go from passive and timeless to proud and strong to dynamic and changing to unwelcoming and severe to warm and gentle to rational and conservative to savage and deadly to weak and unstable to honest and direct. Many emotions can be conveyed through the simplest forms of art. This brings me back to what we are learning in our drawing classes from Tom. We're learning very technical ways of drawing and getting proportions right but we are also working on the darkness of the lines and confidence in the lines. If a person sees a dark line it could stand for anger or confidence, but if a person sees a light line it could mean softness or unconfident. It really depends on what the authors perspective is on it and how they want the audience to convey their message while looking at it. This chapter really helps us understand the importance of emotion and senses that are depicted from certain pieces of artwork. Even in the littlest things, some kind of emotion is being expressed. This is going to help us today by helping us as designers or artist become aware of how we want our audience to feel or to respond to our artwork.