Excerpt of “Clye Fans” by Seth from pages 222-223 of Chris Ware’s McSweeney’s quarterly concern. No. 13.

“Motion can be implied as well as literal…Artists have long sought ways to represent the movement of bodies and the passage of time within the realm of static, 2-dimensional space” (Graphic Design: The New Basics, pg. 233).

This except of Clyde Fans is a good example of the artist, Seth, effectively showing the motion of Simon Matchcard, the man in the two pages. Though there is nothing about Simon that inherently implies that he is traversing space, Simon seems mostly upright and standing, but elements such as cropping and repetition help establish that Simon is traveling through time and space.

Simon is in almost every frame, the color pallet doesn’t change either, but the artist manages to imply that Simon is moving by cropping certain parts of Simon implying that the “camera” is moving. This in turn also implies that our view of Simon is rotating. By using completely black frames in the sequence the artist does a good job of signaling a longer period of time passing, he uses them as transitions between three physical locations.