The Peanuts Linework

I’m going to relate this blog post to the last one as I discuss the strips I read from The Complete Peanuts Comic Strips. The idea I want to discuss as it is so well used in these strips is line. In one strip I read, Peppermint Patty is sitting at her school desk in panel 1. Her usually straight and smooth lined hair has changed to jagged lines that flow out from every point in her head as if she just stuck her finger in an electrical socket. She interrupts the teacher to announce that her questions are messing with her hair. The use of a different line in this strip is the exact way that Schulz is able to evoke a different feeling for Peppermint and from the reader. Though it is a simple change in form, the strip would not have made any sense if those lines were smooth and formed like her appearance on most other days. It also fits in so well with the character as Peppermint has always viewed school as one of her major challenges, being more sport oriented. I guess what is most impressive to me as I read comics is not just the really ornate comics that display the artist’s technical skills but the really simple comics that display the artists emotional-response evoking skills. The Peanuts strips are pretty simple lines but the lines are always used in a way that fits the story.

Understanding Comics: Living in Line

A section that I 100% love and understand in Understand Comics by Scott McCloud is Chapter 5: Living in Line. Using line, color and shape to evoke an emotional response from the reader. The beginning of the chapter, several spreads of panels that had simple line drawings with what emotion that line drawing was meant to evoke is an integral part of creating imagery that is meant to get a response. Describing colors with an emotion oriented adjective may make no sense in any field that is not art and creative imagery. As a graphic designer, I am taught to pay attention to the colors I am using and what they will mean to my consumer. I am taught to know whether I should use sharp corners or round them off, depending on what the subject matter is. All of these little elements work together to create one solid feeling, and if your viewer doesn’t get that feeling, then you have failed. To connect this to comic art, the artist has a story. The story has a feeling, or several feelings throughout the story. The artist is responsible for choosing a line that represents that feeling. Same goes for the color and the shapes in the panels. A spread that supports this in the chapter is that of several different comic artists work with descriptions of what those line types meant in relation to the characters they made up. Line can portray movement, emotion, communication. The opportunities are endless, and it is our job as artists to make sure we are utilizing the right opportunities when we use such a massive tool.

A Story with no Words

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a lengthy comic that tells an entire story about a father emigrating to a new place without the use of words. The graphic novel uses panels of small, medium and large sizes to take the reader through the story by displaying actions and emotions deliberately in each frame. The framing is done in a style closer to the thumbnails you might see from filmmaking ideation rather than classic comic book/ graphic novel style. Many pages feature full spreads of like illustrations that don’t change too much from one to the next; such as the spread of similar small cloud frames towards the beginning of the novel. The way Tan tells a story without using words is by capturing his character’s emotions and whatever is happening to them, frame- by – frame. By focusing on the happenings surrounding the characters that are important to the story line, he is able to provide a continuous visual story for the audience. What the audience does with what they see is up to them; there can be a little room for interpretation when no one is telling you exactly what you are seeing. Tan can influence it by focusing on the emotions of the characters, hoping to relay those emotions to the readers as well. With a novel like this, each frame so carefully and technically detailed, it is hard for the reader not to spend a minute on each frame, gauging what they are seeing and constructing the proper emotional response.