Visiting the International Comic Festival in Lucerne I found a helpful link in making sense of oneself and the world.
The argumentation of the book “Drawing Words & Writing Pictures” remembered me very much of the recent literature of Cognitive Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence, explained in a very simple way.
It starts with the juxtaposition of word and image. How do we label images to communicate additional information? Do we rather add sociocultural meaning, personal experiences or something unexpected? What is causing most involvement, why, with whom?
How do we connect visuals to a story and come to which conclusion? Which time frames do we use? How to create a narrative arc? What makes a protagonist? Why and how does he act? How about the characters and their attitudes? Are they rather situative naturalistic or constant archetypical? Is continuity needed, and why?
In which worlds and environments are they acting? How to visualize them? And finally, how to reproduce the stories? How does production and distribution change in the digital age?
The book is very encouraging, even for people who were not able to draw or write storyboards and stories for different time spans. They are also offering classes and online tools.
A brilliant checklist not only for drawing comics but also for presenting the own situation, life, company or product to whoever in digital media now and in future. And maybe the machines are going to tell us soon, what we see, feel and perceive why, and propose to us how to improve.
The author is a human, living in New York and having a small daughter loving ice cream. He is not dealing with psychological theories or explanations and categories.
psystrat 