Week 6 out of class

      This week outside of class we had to read two chapters from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. The first chapter dealt with the gutter. I never really thought of he gutter as being important, but McCloud says that it is really one of the most important parts of a comic. It is where we link separate images into a complete idea through closure. Closure is the process that happens where we imagine or assume what happens whenever we can't actually see what it is happening. This helps comics move along without showing every action or scene frame by frame. The second chapter dealt with time and how we perceive it in comics. McCloud says that time can be controlled in comics by four ways, content of the panel (including words and sounds), number of panels, closure between panels, and the shape of a panel. Also outside of class his week I bought a non-photo blue pencil and practiced with it. I have never used one before and it amazed me how effective it was, when I took the pictures to put on my blog I couldn't see the lines at all without doing any erasing. I wished I had picked one up a while ago. With the pencil I practiced inking in some characters for the comic. Also since I was working with the pen I decided to try and nail down an art style for the house. To this point, how I had been drawing the house had been changing around a bit. Number one is a more realistic style while number two is much more lose and abstract. Number three is the one I am going to stick with moving forward. I think it is a good balance of realism and iconic abstraction and captures what McCloud says about not having the art distract from the content. It is clearly a house and isn't too loose like number one, but it does not have to many distracting details either.