New: Book Report: Making Comics

To me, this was a fun but useless book.

This book is by Scott McCloud, the same guy who wrote Understanding Comics. I found UC useful even though I didn't find myself confused by comics--it talked about art and ways of directing the viewers' attention. I found it useful for guiding thoughts about diagrams and page layout--coming at the topic from a strange angle.

Making Comics doesn't talk so much about the layouts. It talks a lot about character--picking personalities for fictional characters, drawing them to illustrate personality. This is amusing reading as far as it goes, but doesn't help me with my life. I don't write fiction, so I'm not trying to make up interesting characters. The diagrams I draw don't feature humans--I don't think I'd gain anything by anthropomorphizing a computer revision control system--so the advice on life drawing does NOT help me.

Well, maybe I'm overstating the situation. I guess I did some character design on Saturday, when I went to a pumpkin-carving party.

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Posted 2006-10-30

 Avani said...

I don't think I'd gain anything by anthropomorphizing a computer revision control system [...]

I don't know about that. You might get more sympathy for the speed of said source control system if you cast it as a well-meaning but harried and underpaid bookkeeper ;-)

(Alternatively, I bet it would make an awesome comic-book style villain.)

31 October, 2006 18:50