Posi- Dan, Neutra-Dan, and Nega-Dan
The piece
that I have included was part of an assignment for my sequential art
class but turned into an experiment involving pacing as well as an exploration
of my personality. For this assignment we were asked to create three
characters based on our personality, one which was our negative, one
that was our positive and a neutral character. Without regard for putting
these characters into context, I simply choose to create three different
caricatures of myself each corresponding with the criteria set forth.
We were then asked to create a single black and white page that included
two of these characters.
I originally thought that what ended up, as the second page would be
a standalone page meaning that I had a beginning, middle, and an end
to it. Because of this mindset I decided to go for a gag but wanting
to concentrate on a more naturalistic pacing, I decided I needed more
panels than my normal six. The best course of action at this point was
to thumbnail the entire gag I wanted to do and then figure out a page
layout that would best accommodate it. I eventually decided to set it
up as a four tiered page consisting of two small and two large tiers.
One of the things that I did out
of the norm is that I contained the action in smaller panels. My thought
being that instead of having larger panels that would make the events
seem of a grander scale, I would reduce them to decrease the amount
time they are observed, there by making them frantic and more violent.
This is a manipulation of an idea from Scott McCloud's understanding
comics in which he presents the idea that larger more openly structured
panels can give the reader a sense of timelessness (102 McCloud).
To aid in the compression of time, I decided to remove the gutters (the
space between panels) and have each image fall directly next to one
another only separating them by a single line. This was something I
figured out on my own through simple compositional studies at MIAD.
By foregoing gutters I didn't give the eye time to rest in the piece
and it then became harder to focus on one thing. When I combined that
with the way that comics function as an image based narrative read left
to right separated into panels, I stumbled upon a way to create an even
more accelerated pace.
The first and third pages don't
adhere to this as tightly because the challenge of these pieces was
to make them work in conjunction with second page. I went through several
different sets of thumbnails and thought about this quite a bit. What
I ultimately decided to do was figure a way that this would relate to
my personality. It took a lot of thought and deconstruction of how the
second page represents me, but what finally made it click was Posi-Dans
reaction to Neutra-Dan and how I often become annoyed with myself.
What I wanted to come across in the first page is that I often talk
about what most people consider unimportant or childish gibberish such
as conversations about comics, cartoons, games, etc... And while I am
happy doing so I often feel the need to censor my choice of conversation
around certain people. If I don't I create a certain tension in my head
that may not exist and I become embarrassed by my actions. In the second
page this embarrassment leads me to quickly reconsidering my choice
of conversation or action. This sudden change often ends with me making
an ass of myself, because I never considered what I was saying or doing.
The third page shows how I often get over what is that caused me embarrassment
in the first place, but that only last until someone or something reminds
that I made an ass of myself thus starting the whole self loathing process
all over again.
I will be the first to admit that the description of this piece is far from what I show but I simply used this as a frame of reference for constructing the rest of my story. This was an interesting experiment in both form and method, and has been one of my favorite pieces that I have done in a lately, I am hoping to be able to try this again but with more depth than is in this piece.