#understandingcomics

[eshidu]

[artsclevervivek]

blog post #1 - smooth sand, striated lines (scaffold)

Sources & Significance

Blog post 1 - Narration & Storytelling reading diary: mccloud • jenkins • deleuze & guattari

smooth sand, striated lines: how deserts do narrative with a b/w fractal accent how i approached three texts and folded them into my own practice from black-and-white fractal contrast to world-as-story, to deserts vs grids as a design hinge.

source - Scott McCloud — Understanding Comics

reading mccloud gave me a simple, portable tool: closure — the mind completing what isn’t drawn. the key line i kept returning to:

“this phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. it’s called closure.”

for practice, i mapped this onto my b/w fractal studies: high-contrast edges act like gutters; the eye jumps across gaps and invents continuity. if i push black to total, white to blown, the viewer does more narrative work.

2) henry jenkins — “game design as narrative architecture” (environmental story cues)

jenkins shifted me from “telling” to staging. the sentence i taped above my desk:

“game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces.” itgs.pbworks.com

i approached the essay as a checklist of how spaces communicate:

evoked (borrowed mythologies / recognizable genres),

enacted (what the player does there),

embedded (props, signage, ruins — the archaeology of clues),

and the emergent echoes that spill out of these.

to internalize it, i storyboarded a corridor twice: first as blank geometry (no story), second with embedded cues (scuffed floor, emergency placard, one light dead, a jacket snagged on a hinge). the beats “read” faster without exposition. jenkins’s lens made me treat level dressing as sentence structure: verbs (interactives), adjectives (materials), punctuation (thresholds, choke points). world-building became editing, not ornament.

3) deleuze & guattari - “smooth and striated” (desert vs fractal as a hinge)

this one i treated like a conceptual rig for layout. the line i kept using as a guardrail:

“‘smooth’ does not mean homogeneous, quite the contrary.” writcult2013

i translated smooth as dune-like flows (open, vectorial, wandering) and striated as grid/logical segmentation (metrics, modules, repeat). my desert vs fractal pairing clicked here: desert = smooth navigation (no fixed path; orientation by gradients); fractal = striated recursion (self-similar cells, measurable rhythm). when composing shots, i now ask: do i want drift (smooth) or count (striated)? the best scenes mix them — a smooth camera move against a striated scene grid — producing tension. the theory became a switching device: pick field (smooth) for mood, frame (striated) for legibility.

closing note

mccloud taught me how gaps tell; jenkins taught me where spaces speak; deleuze & guattari taught me which textures think. together they form a small workflow: contrast → cue → compose. that’s now my baseline for both theory reflections and production sketches.

next post — places of the mind (implemented work)

caption: from theory to practice.

i’ll put mccloud’s closure + b/w contrast, jenkins’s evoked / enacted / embedded cues, and d&g’s smooth (desert) / striated (fractal) into a single environment study. expect a tight, high-contrast workflow: fractal b/w frames, desert flow layouts, and environmental story beats staged in blender → unreal.

implemented shots + breakdowns in the next blog post: places of the mind.

[savidgemike]

"When the content of a silent panel offers no clues as to its duration, it can also produce a sense of timelessness..." #understandingcomics #scottmcloud ============================== "Springtime Blossoms in Marjorie Post Park" by Michael Savidge Made with #sonyzv1, this work is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International & available via Wikimedia Commons #marjoriepostpark #massapequapark #pinkflower #flowerphotography #springflowers #springblooms #springcolors #colorpaletteinspiration #closeupshot #practicingcomposition #snapseed #creativecommons #ccby #wikimediacommons (at Marjorie Post Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdakkkWuWjl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[weirdleedraws]

Ooooooooooh look what I got #understandingcomics #comics #scottmccloud https://www.instagram.com/p/CBSQwpPjRds/?igshid=1fciv6esvcw0h

[comic-book-fan-us]

Found these at my college bookstore. Thought I’d pick them up and give them a read.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1yqCEugbMa/?igshid=h3n635jmtaib

[tyrannosaurusrob]

Day four of the #7books challenge, and I'm still cheating. I've read a lot of how-to-write books in my life, and the best ones have honestly been about writing comics. I honestly feel like if you can learn how to write a good comic, you can probably write anything. Not saying I've ever written a good comic, but Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was like having scales fall from my eyes, and Dennis O'Neil's and Will Eisner's guides were just as informative and helpful if not quite as eye-opening. #understandingcomics #scottmccloud #dennisoneil #willeisner https://www.instagram.com/robofwar/p/BvM8uAeg5EH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1ig7swl47bcvv

[kickballmedia]

To decompress from a long day I chose to break open an old book. “Understanding Comics.” I like this book to help improve my shot selections for storyboards. #comics #comic #book #understandingcomics #kickballmedia #book #read #learn https://www.instagram.com/p/BuXzAS6Ha0q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1uvgo301mmy58

[clovisastaire]

Just got some Xmas presents before time.its tradition. Giving me hope for my comic :) Thanks @sergio_odias #understandingcomics #scottmccloud #comics #happyonrainydays https://www.instagram.com/p/BrVLRdXhi1h/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1aaql91j2ruxy