Day 118 of 365 days.
(Stephen and Jack, this is another one you might enjoy)
One might be able to gather from several other pictures in this project that I am a comic book fan. Even if I weren’t a comic book fan, I would hope that I would still have had the foresight in my life to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. As a reference on the nature of art and visual communication, it is one of the best text books I have ever read. I am aware of several college classes in design, web design, art history and communication that have used it as assigned reading. I highly recommend it.
Scott is currently touring all 50 states of the union with his entire family over the course of the next year to promote his third book in the series, Making Comics, which is a much more comic book oriented book than Understanding is but still a good read so far (I’ve been too busy to finish it). He was goodly enough to take a moment to pose for this picture with me while he was signing my books. He seemed impressed with the concept of the 365 project and wished me luck.
He is hitting all 50 states on his tour and if you have an opportunity to go see him speak, I recommend it. In any case, I definitely recommend that anyone and everyone read at least the first book, and if you enjoy comics, all three. (The second book, Reinventing Comics is about comic book creation in the digital age and may be of interest to people who are into the concept of e-commerce and art distribution on the web. Which many people in 365 and flickr in general may enjoy, but might be rather theory heavy for many others).
Note: Scott wrote all three texts I referred to in comic form, narrating them himself through the comic representation in the upper right. I therefore decided to make my own, in the upper left.
great new icon 🙂
you and your comics ;-P enjoy!!!
I love your comic book self….he’s hot!
Great stuff! I have Scott’s Understanding Comics as well. It’s definitely a must-read for anyone interested in the medium…
I’ve been wanting to comment on this one for days, but I’ve been way busy.
I do appreciate this one and I’m jealous that you got to meet Scott.
I do have a copy of "Understanding Comics" as well and learned a lot about my craft as a graphic artist, photographer and a director on top of everything else. He really explains a lot about how to lead the eye from panel to panel and the importance of the medium. I really need to check out his othe books as well though.
I’ve started several failed attempts at publishing comics in the past 10 years and have always gone back to that book for reference.
Nice!!
@Jen and Shan: Thanx
@Sandman: Yes, it totally is.
@Stephen: You should try to catch him when he comes through. I gave up on trying to finish a publishable comic long ago. I always lacked the discipline. Maybe I’ll learn it from this project.
You know, I’m honestly not that familiar with it. I do appreciate the sentiment though. I’ll check it out.
I’ve got a pro-wrestling idea in the works by the way (bet you didn’t know I’m a wrestling geek too did you? But nothing really in the past 3-4 years. probably 1990-2002 is where my knowledge lies) that I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of. Don’t know when it’ll be uploaded, but sometime in the next 314 days.
This one’s dedicated to you Chris! 😀