Scott McCloud - In Coversation With Peter Doherty

On Monday the 9th of March I attended an event held by Thought Bubble and Traveling man, which was a conversation into the work of "The Scupltor," Scott McClouds new graphic Novel. When listening to this talk, I took notes in order to remember key points and facts McCloud talked about, and why he had designed these pages the way he had, which proved very useful and imformative as we were just begining to storyboard out our story at this time.

The Sculptor was an idea that had been brewing in McClouds head for thirty years, and was first laid out roughly as a combination of illustrations and word ballons, which he stated were important to the layout of the page.

He also gave another eye opening piece of advise. He said that he felt to much thought goes into the page layout, but not enough into the flow of reading throught the pages, which is something he tried to tackel in The Sculptor in a few ways. He uses highlights, midtones and shadows and in the sequence below, displays the main character with shadows to draw the readers attention to her throught the chase in the crowds, (who are shown in midtones). McCloud also explained how he photograpghed thousands of people in thte streets for reference, so that each individual background character, or 'extras' felt like they had stories of their own making the comic come to life.

Most pages are built in a three tier system, and uses Photoshop and Illustrator on Cintiques to create these pages. He draws thr initial rough versions on Cintiques, and builds more and more deatil up on layers in Photoshop. The top layer, being a sheet of white with windows cut out to see the panels on the layers benath. Something else he mentioned to aspiring comic artists and writers in the audience was to ask themselves this: "What are you trying to accomplish with your work?" The answer could be to challenge the way comics are made. Or laid out. It could just to be to entertain. It could be to raise awarness. Whatever the anwer may be thats fine, but its important to know from the start. This is something I know. Our product has many underlying messages and vegateranism, the protection of the natural world and species, but I believe any medium trying to say anything must be above all entertaining. Whatever maeesage a writer is trying to convey, if it is not done in an entertaining way, the audience won't listen.

One of the questions McCloud was asked by an audience member, was: "Why have some boxed panels bleed across the border when the others seem so aligned?"

McCloud had various reasons for this and why it was used throughout the comic. He noted that sometimes, often on a establishing panel or closing panel, they bleed off to the end of the page to have a prolonged feel, to hold more power over the reader, like this scene isn't resolved so it is kept in the back of the readers mind when contining reading. It can also to slowly introduce the scene and setting rather than just dive into the scene suddenly, and sometimes it is to counter balance to opposite page for compostional purposes. In some cases, the whole page bleeds out to make the character feel like he is loosing control, emphasied by the sound effects expanding in size also. 

The last thing I'll mention that McCloud said, was something I had thought for a long time myself, and that was why he decided to illustrated the entirerty of his novel himself. "When an artist changes half way through and ongoing series, the audience feel like they're favouraite characters have been replaced by drawings of their favouratie characters." What McCloud meant by this, was that when a comic is read the audience likes the characters the way they are, it is how they look, even if so cartoon like. That is the world they exist in, and how, to the audience, they look. When the artist changes, the audience don't see they same expressions or body language in those characters, and so they don't feel the same. The best correlation I could make to this is a beloved televison show, changing cast each season or series. They just would not be the same as different actors take different aproaches with the dialouge and characters, which is why I prefer comics fully illustrated and written by the same team, and minum per volume.