Words and Images: Part 2 COMICS

Today, I was perusing through a copy of the California Aggie a newspaper produced by my school at the University of California, Davis. Where by chance I took a glance at the tiny comics section where I was met with a little two panel comic strip that illustrate perfectly how words and images need to be well balance in order for things like comics to work.

Comic strip, NAMES, found at xkcd.com

The comic is simplicity at its more basic form, line drawing. The characters are stick figures and the clothes on the characters are there to indicate status, position or gender.

The comic is actually a focus on the male character’s frame of thought as he stands as a groom next to his bride. In one panel is a close up of his dilemma, where he has forgotten his soon to be wife’s name. In the next scene, the comic book artist has zoomed out, giving the viewer the entire view of him at his wedding with his bride next to him and a preacher just about to announce his wife’s name. As soon as the preacher recites her name, a thought bubble stemming from his figure appears and exclaims “Aha! Rachel!” while this was not the most elegant comic, or even humorous, it does show that words and images have to work together to make some sense. If there were no words, the two-panel scene would be all together meaningless. If it were only words, we would not see too much humor, only a cruel joke. The comic together gives the joke a lighthearted experience not to be taken too lightly.

Read more comics here.

Words and Images: Brian Fies

Last week, Tuesday November 2, 2010, our design class had a wonderful guest lecturer by the name of Brain Fies, a comic book artist for renowned works like Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

Book over to Mom's Cancer

He gave us a specific lecture on his creative process, or how he went about creating his two books, thus the color schemes, the layouts, the design, and most importantly the idea. The inspiration for his two books came from his life experiences and his interests. He heavily emphasized that he could have easily wrote a book about his experience especially when going through his family crisis with Mom’s Cancer, but he chose comics.

Why?

Because he had always loved comics, he felt fascinated how words and images worked well together to complete the idea. Words and images gave the story more impact, it made his story more profound, the images were sympathetic and it echoed in his story. One would not survive with out the other. It was an equal balance, the image called on the words to explain what images alone could have not and vice versa.

Excerpt from Mom's Cancer

I believe Brian Fies really showed us the beauty of comics, I have never found comics interesting until he explained his interest in it. Now that I look at it in a different light I can see the beauty in which image and words are juxtapose together create an existence of time. Comics brought life into his mom’s journey and battle with cancer. His comics beautifully stretch or condense time through panels, a skill I have come to admire in comics. In this one strip, Fies illustrate a passage of time through his mom’s struggle with lung cancer in which she makes a commentary on her addiction to cigarettes, while she goes through her chemotherapy treatments. Fies used selective quotes from his mom’s arguments with herself and images at each process to show exactly what his mother was thinking. If words had only been used, there would not have been much of an impact. Seeing the chemotherapy eat away at this woman, along with juxtaposing words made me feel sorrow, anger, and a multitude of emotions as she dealt with her chemotherapy and abstinence from cigarettes.

Brian Fies and his Family

Check out Brian Fies at his own Blogspot!