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Review of Understanding Comics

Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud

Review by Jason I. HongGroup for User Interface Research

UC Berkeley

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Understanding Comics

• A comic book about comics• In reality

– Techniques in visual design– Analyzes how abstractions, time, motion, and

emotions work in a “non-interactive” medium

• Relation to Human-Computer Interaction?– Comics are a 2D medium– Comics convey info in a purely visual medium

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Motivation

• Need introspection about what comics are really about

• First, need a clear definition

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Examples of Comics

• Comics have been around longer than you may think

Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence...

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Examples of Comics (cont.)

• Comics are more prevalent than you may think

Diagrams

Church Stained-Glass

Windows

Even Photographs? Car Owner’s

Manual

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Examples of Comics (cont.)

• Note that the definition does not include superheroes in tights

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Abstraction

• Pictures, Reality, and Language

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Abstraction (cont.)

• Abstracting out details may make things more “universal”

The modern “Everyman”?

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A Theory on Abstraction

• Although we can perceive others in great detail...

...we only have an idea,

a simple abstraction of ourselves

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A Theory on Abstraction (cont.)

• We only have abstract concepts of things

• Comics exist closer to this realm of concepts due to its abstracted nature

• The reader fills in the necessary details as required

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A Theory on Abstraction (cont.)

• We fill in abstract representations with a little bit of ourselves

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Closure

• Closure is how we cope with incomplete information

• Thru closure, we “fill in the blanks”

• The ultimate in user customization?

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Motion

Time, space, and motion are merged in comics

Idioms have arisen to express

perceived time, space, and action

Action lines

Panels Polyptych

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Time

Short perceived

elapsed time

Longer perceived

elapsed time

Even longer perceived

elapsed time?

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Time (cont.)

Size is one factor to perceived time

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Time (cont.)

Bleeding image to edge of page also

creates timeless space

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Idioms

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Why Are Comics Hard to Make?

• Both art and literature are well-established fields, but throwing the two together do not a comic book make

SystemsEngineering

GraphicDesign

Interaction Designer?Information Architect?

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Summary

• Understanding Comics is an excellent book!– Two chapters, on the essence of art and

communication, especially worthwhile

• Comics are simple, low-bandwidth, “calm” medium for telling a story that actually require lots of interaction from the user– Implicit interaction vs explicit interaction?

• Do we always need more bits?– Maybe we need better representations?

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Summary (cont.)

• Can using idioms and techniques from comics can lead to better interfaces?– How do we express time, motion, energy

now?– What other ways can we express them?– What idioms / patterns do we have in HCI?

• For what applications are comics useful?– Comic Chat, any others?