Page 74 of Tove Jansson’s graphic novel Moomin

For this blog post I decided to use a page from the graphic novel, “Moomin” by Tove Jansson, in order to  analyse various uses of the framing technique. Although there are many types of framing techniques not used in this particular spread, what I liked and wanted to focus on was the idea of framing within a frame. Frames are described as having the ability to effect how we perceive information and creating the conditions for our understanding of a subject. If we take a look at this page you can see that each frame is side by side, creating a very clean, linear flow to the comic. Each frame has a thin black border, defining exactly where each set stops and ends. I think this really helps keep the reader’s eye focused on the comic itself and follow the path of the story. Along with this, there are slightly wider margins between each of the four strips. I think this not only helps with the clean look of the comic but also puts an emphasis on where the eye should be drawn. It makes each of the strips almost pop off the page and away from the white space. If you take a closer look at the images themselves within the main frame you can also seem to notice more framing within the comic itself. For example, in the second strip, the second and third frames seem to have inner framing as well. The arch of the building frames in the characters and allows the reader to understand that they are in a building of some sorts. The next frame over then includes a door, which frames the space as being a room of sorts within the building they entered. This idea of creating frames withing the frames is what allows the reader to understand the context of where the characters are in the story and what they are doing.The idea that framing greatly influences the readers perception of a story and how they might read it is very true, and can be seen here in this comic by Tove Jansson.