Peanuts

To be honest, I was never a big fan of the American comic, comic strips. As I was never expose to them in my childhood. Ever since living in America I started to read here and there some superhero or game related comic book, but mostly due to artistic reference. I never really get use to American comic, especially those deeper comic that makes you think. This is actually the first time ever I read peanuts, but I always know about it, and simple just didn’t have time or chance to read it. I like the simplistic art style allow me to realize. I love how every single characters are children and still they told like some old high class educated people. A comic with such simple style and literally no story progression laid its power on the dialogs of the characters. To be honest I don’t get most of the joke or point that they are trying to make, and yet most of them maybe connect deeply in to the American culture that I had not yet understand.

I also watch some animation of the Peanuts, but I feel that totally destroy the uniqueness of a comic which allow you the time to think or realize during each farm. I think that’s why people enjoy reading it besides its interesting or funny, I think another reason comic strip is appealing to people is the time during each picture and each dialogue.

Peanuts is famous back at my home too, but mostly not about the strip itself but more about the iconic character of snoopy. As I always know when I see snoopy but I never really know where he came from. I think the reason it’s so famous is because it’s a dog that dream and imagine thing like flying. However I still don't understand why it is so famous and known as the best story ever told in the american comic strips...perhaps I just don't get it?

Understanding Comics: Scott McCloud

I was shocked after reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, as there are so many things that’s going on a piece of paper…Time, icon, motion, emotion, motion, sound, space...etc. I can’t really point out ONE thing that I am most interest in, as all of them have some really deep thinking and skill behind them for me to learn and study. However one of the thing that makes we think about the most is how he talked about how art is born because people sometime has nothing to do. He pointed out that art is basically self expression, and the reason we do art is because we can’t read each other’s mind. I think it’s interesting that he literally pointed out that art is basically everything we do to express our thought and emotion including bicycle style, signature…etc, and for who says that he or she did it for nothing but art is basically saying “MY ART HAS NO PRACTICLE VALUE WHATSOEVER!” . He also said that the “Pure” art is essentially tied to the question of PURPOSE and what you want to achieve with what you do or create. I take every artist should have something in mind before creating something, or maybe there is no meaningless art as we all have something in mind when we do it.

After reading the book as I am more interested on the topic I did some research on him and found a talk he gave on TED. The talk is basically about the future of comic and a little background history of where he came from. He was from a family full of scientist like his father who was blamed, and this effect the way he sees things and the way he sees comic as a media. During the talk he pointed out that the comic media is always there ever since Stone Age, and not much has change including reading from left to right, up to down, or the time is always going forward as you go through them. However there is one thing that modern comic is different them the ancient one...the “unbreakable line”. The unbreakable line is a line that your eyes fallowing the images either on paper, animal skin or stone, and most of the time in the ancient “comic” the line is never broken. Modern comic on paper is breaking the line by page, and he believes the flow of the comic is therefore lost because of that. He pointed out that the TIME is being broken because the panels are being broken by the edge of the page, and the time is broken. He believes this can be fixing by using modern technology, like the PC.  He believe that if we see PC as a window and draw the comic in a continues way, the time will not be broken.  (Isn’t this just like traditional animation?)

“All Medias provide us a window back to the world we are living”

Imagine a comic created in a multiple time line, multiple ending, and multiple choices and yet connected to either other like a web. This almost sounds like an information map, but how big of a page do we need for that? We can solve the problem with the modern technology to allow us to have a endless amount of pages and the story can have endless amount of choice which he believe is the future of comic.

In the end those are four things he pointed out that’s important to everyone:

• Learn from everyone
• Follow no one
• Look for patterns
• Work like hell

The Arrival

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a really interesting and visually beautiful silent graphic novel. It takes us with the main character’s (the father) adventure in to a new world, where everything is magical and different. The language is different, words are different and it even has strange creatures that we had never seen before. The whole story was done with illustration only; there are no dialogs or words to describe the story. 

Because there are no words and dialogs, it actually makes the reader feel more personal to each character’s emotion, and the situation that the main character is in. As we are put on the same page as the main character we can totally feel more connect to him, because we are learning this new world while he is doing the same. The use of body language and facial motion really show off the creator’s attention to detail and to human gesture. There are also some funny moments there when the main character is trying really hard to ask a simple question, and that really make me relate to myself when I first arrive to America. 

Almost everyone has a strange creature as their companion, they all look animal like, some are big some looks like papers. I really like this idea because it makes me think about many other film, book or video game that put the character on the same position. The character is in a strange world, and there is his trustful companion, sidekick or a soccer ball with a face like in Cast Away. The introduction of this companion allow the writer/creator to show some really in depth personal feeling that the main character won’t normally show, and therefore brings the reader closer and care more about the main character.

This whole companion thing reminds me the game of Portal. In the game Portal, the game puts the player in a strange experimental lab where the whole point of the lab is to kill the player. Player will later get a “Companion Cube” which is basically a metal cube and allows the player to solve puzzle and therefore survive in the lab. As the game progress the player will emotionally grow a relationship with the only thing in the game that’s not trying to kill him, and therefore become its friend. When the metal cube was destroyed later on in the game, most of the players actually feel sad and lost just like Tom Hanks did when that soccer ball died.