Wednesday, January 26

I got a check on my first blog, but everyone around me got check pluses. I wonder what I'm doing wrong...?

Apparently we need to post definitions of terms discussed in class, as well as notes and maybe a sentence or two of what I'm thinking about the class. It's not the person who gets the most of what's going on in class that wins, it's those who put in pictures and videos and links that get the better grades. We can also go back and revise our posts after class. I'll be sure to do all of that from now on.

It's not that I'm stealing this idea, but Anna, next to me, found this video and I thought that I would be proactive enough to find my own video. This one is a review of the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud that I thought extremely relevant to the class:

This is Tucker, ABD's new dog. Might be the cutest thing I've ever seen:

Class Notes:

·      Logographic

o   A picture represents a whole word

o   English is a phonetic language made up of arbitrary, abstract sounds that are represented by unique symbols

·      Ideographic

o   Represents an idea conceptually, rather than by a word or words

o   Like the Chinese alphabet

·      Hieroglyphic

o   Differs slightly from logographic because pictures indicate words from which sounds are taken to create the syllables of a word.

o   The word itself is a symbol for a specific thought, idea, or notion, and tells the story in its presentation

·      Chapter 3

o   Terms

§  Closure

·      Idea that something remains even though it may not be visually there at that moment

·      Like peek-a-boo

·      We can fill in the gaps between frames in the comic because of this notion

·      Mentally completing that which is incomplete based upon past experience

·      Every artist relies on his audience’s ability to do this, and the more we rely on our imaginations, the better the art

§  Perception

·      The act of filling things in and hypothesizing

·      Enables us to do night driving

·      To us, reality is derived from perception

§  The Gutter

·      The between-frames part

·      “Blood in the gutter” is the title of the chapter, and it means that our mind fills in the gaps that we don’t necessarily see

·      Psycho, Reservoir Dogs, etc.

o   Kinds of transitions between frames

§  Describes how the imagination is supposed to get you from panel one to panel two

§  There are a total of 95 panel-to-panel transitions, but he only goes into detail on 6

§  Moment-to-moment

·      See the women, then she blinks

·      Requires very little closure

§  Action-to-action

·      The most common one by far

§  Subject-to-subject

·      Need a certain degree of reader involvement

·      19-20%

§  Scene-to-scene

§  Aspect-to-aspect

§  Non-sequitur

·      Doesn’t make sense; no logical relationship between the two frames

o   McCloud discusses the difference between different genres of comics from different countries

·      Chapter 4

o   Time is spatial in the world of comics, and time and space are the same

o   There are many different ways to signify the passing of time in comics, and it can jump a single second or 100 million years  between frames

o   There are certain techniques to show the passing of time in silent panels

§  Repeating the same from several times

§  Changing the panel’s shape

§  Putting more space in between panels

§  Borderless panels

o   Portraying motion in a single panel           

§  Continuous background

·      CBML templates

o   Professor of library studies from IU came up with a system of coding comic books so that we can preserve them forever

Monday, January 24

My friend Cade is sitting right next to me, and he's complaining that his name and blog URL isn't on the class site. That kinda sucks, since my name is right at the top of the list. O well, I'm sure this was just a simple misunderstanding that will be easy to fix.

So we began class today talking about how the episode of Lost we watched last class period is a microcosm of the whole show, representing everything the survivors go through during the entirety of their experiences with the island. I disagree, especially since the series gets much more complicated as events occur and different groups of people are introduced to one another. I watched literally the entire show, all 6 seasons (6 years worth of TV) in one semester during my sophomore year, so I feel like I got the whole thing in a very short time period, thus making me much more equipped to sum up the whole show than someone who had to watch it on TV. That being said, one must watch a whole lot more than just one episode in order to conclude anything about the whole series.

Personally, I think that they're going to run out of ideas for TV shows in 20 years. They're just getting so complicated now, it's impossible to be original at all. It's not that our brains have evolved as a generation, it's that the TV producers have had to come up with more and more complicated issues to talk about in their shows in order to keep their audiences. Therefore, Lost is our Gilligan's Island, and I predict there are going to be many more shows like it coming out in the next couple years. That's how shows like The Walking Dead, Dexter, and Hawaii 5-0 are coming into being, to sate the appetite of a relentless public.

Also, I just found my new favorite website: <http://foodgawker.com/>. Check it out, and try to only stay there for 2 minutes.

Off to get my bloodwork done. Ciao!