Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Page 12 of Craig Thompson’s graphic novel, Blankets (Top Shelf Productions, 2003).

Scale is not difficult to find in many comics or graphic novels. Often times, artists use scale to create deeper understanding of the written work and/or to add drama to the visual elements of a story. In their book, Graphic Design: The New Basics, Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips explain that scale can be seen in two ways, subjectively and objectively.

In graphic novels, the author may draw the elements of the story in a way that translates the real-life dimensions of those objects onto the page. This makes the correlations between the real object and the representation of it more obvious. This is objective scale.  Other times, the designer many rely more on the audience’s impression of an object’s size. This is subjective scale, which can make a comic more visually intriguing and thus connect with the reader’s emotions.

In his coming-of-age graphic novel, Blankets, Craig Thompson uses scale to convey the emotions of the main character. The story is in black and white, and Thompson relies on shading to create depth. In the portion of the story that is displayed (page 12), Craig and his brother have been fighting and their father comes in to scold them. The way Thompson has drawn the two boys in relation to their father is an example of relative scale. The smallness of the boys makes the father seem that much larger to them. The thin lines of the boys in relation to the massive arms and hands of the father, gives us readers the same feeling of fear and smallness that the boys are feeling. We can see this contrast very plainly in the last frame, as the father’s hand is huge, picking up his son by his shirt collar with ease. The shaded lines create depth and movement as we see his shirt being wrinkled and the lines of muscles in the father’s arm.

What It Is Page 48 by Lynda Barry

I found this series of comics to demonstrate framing exceptionally well. There is implied  and point of view framing from a wide angle to a close up to the characters face. In class Ms. Becker said a “good design is invisible because it doesn’t get in the way of spreading its message and for this case that is true. I feel like regardless of how the page was structured I can still recognize the focal point of the comic. Also, I noticed the illustrator used cropping to their own liking to display less “garbage” (unwanted imagery) in one frame compared to the one after it.

Some of the boarders aren’t too thick which gives me a sense that this particular scene is happening fast or in the same setting. Since there is no huge shift in scale and all of the frames are alike this makes the comic feel less unique compared to ones that I have read before that have frames inside of frames. Maybe sticking to the basics is what helped me follow along the story line of the comic because had there been various frame sizes and positioning I would have been more interested in the design and layout of the comic itself instead of looking for framing. I know my eyes would have wondered around the page in search of other cool layouts instead of reading the texts and paying attention to the characters development.

Chris Ware

While framing can be used for dramatic circumstances and direct your eyes to create movement or focus, in Chris Ware’s case, he makes his stories in almost a grid like pattern. He also utilizes cropping in the example above, because instead of outlining each panel with black lines and obvious gutters, he simply crops the picture and against the stark white background the pictures make an implied gutter. I believe there must have been some more technical thinking behind the creation as well, because the top 3 panels from up to down and on the far right of the page, at the bottom of the pictures you can see a brown line which is from the window frame, and it looks intentionally placed there to make the contrast more stark and more balanced for the rest of the page. He also uses frames inside frames in a couple of the panels by showcasing a window equally margined inside the cropped panel.

Framing in comics is key to both presentation and storytelling. This spread from Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol shows the protagonist falling into a pit and the events leading up to it. This simple scene is framed very nicely, even without words: The first page makes good use of negative space through thought bubbles with thick lines that slowly take up more and more space as the protagonist gets closer in view, eventually falling. The way the protagonist is “pulled” towards our view is a very simple and effective way to display distance, motion, and lead her towards a key event in the story due to a visual sense of pacing. On the next page, this pacing is maintained through a small collection of framed events with frames composed of uneven, unfilled borders that are placed onto a splash page that shows the protagonist falling into a pit. For the splash page, we’re shown a side view of the protagonist that displays her scared expression and the our view is pulled back to show her entire body and the depth at which she’s falling.

(Vera Brosgol, Anya’s Ghost, First Second Books, 2011, pgs 12-13)

The photo I chose to represent Framing is from a graphic novel that was provided for us in class. The reason this page caught my eye was the variety in size that each frame was. Some are small, wide, not even a frame but a vignette almost, and theres one really long frame that spreads across the whole page. The boarders around each individual frame also varies in size, or are frames within a frame like in the bottom left corner. The frame I think is most interesting is the jagged vignette like style because it really emphasizes the shock of that moment and makes you really focus on just the man and his facial expression. The frame that spreads across the whole pages is used for a panoramic view of the car dealership that the man is in, used to show the whole space and what his environment so we get a sense of where he is. All these various sizes of frames make it more visually appealing and interesting because you wanna get down to that last frame to figure out what happened in that vignette frame. How does it go from being at home sad to a shocker kind of moment. 

Page 1 of Tove Jansson’s “Moomin Falls in Love”

In Tove Jansson’s “Moomin Falls in Love” there are various types of framing going on throughout the book. The most notable ones are the implied frames. One notable way of making frames creative would be to use what is going on in the actual story itself to create a frame. Such as frames 5-7 have the rain drops created an implied frame. It fits in with what is going on with the story currently and it gives a unique and creative aspect to those frames. As you can see Jansson’s frames are all touching each other except for when the page ends and a new strip has to be made. This allows for various different methods for creating implied lines. Another example would be when the characters are outside, Jansson removes the bottom line from the frames to imply that they are on open ground, however to the audience it still feels like a frame. The scaling of the frames in this comic isn’t that complicated. Jansson increases the width of frames as she needs to, however she never increasese the height of the frame which calls for the need to be more creative with the width of the frames. Also she would put her name on the bottom right corner of every strip to create an implied line. One thing I have to say is how the frames and the implied frames all fit the style of the comic. I feel like if there were frames within the frames or different thickness of frames it would ruin the whole style of the comic as all the characters have the same thickness of the frames.