Understanding Comics Response (3)

     Something I felt really spoke to me while reading Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” was his section on abstraction and how humans like to see themselves in everything. It wasn’t a new concept to me, especially considering my field in art and animation, but this was the first time I think I really saw somebody else go so deep into discussion about why this was the case. His explanation about the image we see of ourselves in our own mind actually makes a lot of sense. There is only so much our brain can fill in from our own memory and so the image we keep of ourselves, in itself, is an abstraction because it’s impossible for us to remember every single detail about our face without looking at it. Because everybody has this wildly abstracted image of themselves in their own mind, they are able to connect so deeply with, say, a stick figure or even a simple smiley face. The simpler the abstraction, the more universal it is. 

I see a lot of manga and anime that use this trick a lot in some of their protagonists' designs by making them look as generic as possible. The purpose is to get the reader, (which I imagine the intended demographic to be mostly Japanese) to project themselves onto this blank slate and imagine themselves in these scenarios. Of course there are some that connect on other levels, but this seems to me the most basic and widely used technique. 

I found this idea of abstraction  particularly interesting as it pertains to my major of Computer Animation. When I first applied to Ringling, I was basically self taught. The kinds of artists I was looking at were like Iain Mccaig’s or the Kim jung Gi, and what I found is while I was trying to imitate these more “intricate” styles, I had lost my ability to abstract and simplify. I obsessed over anatomy and drawing representational depictions of the human figure and as I did I strayed farther and farther from my original infatuation with drawing cartoons. When I got into my major, I began to realize how ill equipped I had made myself and have basically spent the last 4 years of my College career trying to undo this. Building the foundation has been   

In animation readability is key, and the simplest way to achieve that clean silhouette is to simplify and abstract the forms of the body. A lot of this also has to do with appeal. Part of this relates to another one of his points: The less focused you are on the messenger, the more focused you are on the message. In terms of animation, the simpler the abstraction or shape, the simpler the pose or silhouette the more clear it is and therefore the clearer the idea that it is trying to deliver. The presentation is different but the idea is basically the same.