Comic+Creation+Assignment

__CCT300: Comic Creation, Assignment 2 __ Name: Abid Abbas StudentNo: 997009026 Comic Created: "[|]" Prof. Michael Jones




 * The Analysis Part: **

 McCloud in his book describes comics as a medium having limitless potential (McCloud, p.3) to express stories. In addition, he mentions the role of commercial constraints that the medium faces, and with such constraints out of the way, the possibilities are endless (McCloud, p.212). With all the advancements within the realm of internet content sharing, comics are given just the right opportunity to reach their potential. With a digital canvas and an internet connection, comic creators have complete freedom over their content and form.

 A ‘web comic’ refers to an electronically published comic made available to the World Wide Web. These comics are usually self-published by their authors and drastically vary in lengths. Though many popularly available comics are short and concise like ‘xkcd’, there are several other online comics that have progressive chapters published time to time, and everything in between. Web comics usually take advantage of their digital freedom and continuously experiment with expression.

 Amongst the vast array of available web comics, many poplar ones may need not to be visually appealing as long as the content transmitted appeals to the audience. In saying that, several elements of comics come together for readers to fully experience the obsession. Web comics usually have a dedicated following of people that further motivate authors to create more. This need not be a large following per se and may very well cater to a niche. The web comic ‘’ takes the liberty to play around with McCloud’s concepts and the sense of online creative freedom to present itself as a dark-geek-humour comic. Made on Adobe Illustrator and edited on Photoshop the comic is optimized for electronic display.

 The story follows the main character that is a malfunctioned ‘AI’ robot, seemingly abandoned in an unknown environment. It starts at a point where the robot makes a ‘System Recovery’ once its touch-sensors detect input. From there on, the comic follows the character’s flawed functioning in trying to find the purpose of existence, leading to an imminent malfunction.

Since we as humans have the innate capacity to personify inanimate objects (McCloud, pg. 33) and the comic plays on the unhealthy human obsession with existentialism, the illustrations encourages the readers to identify themselves with the character in question, urging involvement (McCloud, pg. 30). The detailing of the character in the beginning and the end is kept simple to assist in reader-identification (McCloud, pg. 44) whilst accompanied with text to identify any ongoing activity or lack thereof. The words play a vital role in telling this particular story due to the complicated balancing act between dealing with McCloud’s concepts on words and maintaining the satire in the comic. While the narrative could be presented using thought bubbles rooting from the main character, it did not serve in maintaining the characters inanimate integrity. Instead, the text uses ‘word specific’ fictional computer program codes with the ones important to the story highlighted to provide the subtle narrative. These codes are to be treated as integral parts of the pictures (McCloud, pg. 154). Furthermore, speech bubbles are added with an onomatopoeic word ‘ploo’ to their respective key climatic frames to enhance the plot arc. Words and pictures intertwine with each other in carrying the strength of the story (McCloud, pg. 155), while words carry most of the story strength in this case, the images/pictures are free to disorient the reader with a surreal environment, character’s mannerisms and added depth perception to the 2D plains in key frames.

‘Closures’ described as the readers’ act of connecting dots panel to panel (McCloud, pg.63); moment-to-moment, and action-to-action are the types predominantly used, along with end-points instances of subject-to-subject sequencing. The beginning uses moment-to-moment and subject-to-subject frames for readers to get acquainted with the character before action-to-action frames start narrating its functioning. While the gutters space and the panel size are kept empty and consistent through majority of the frames, they vary when emphasis is needed. These stress points within the comic are that around activation, fatal error, and power-off. During the system crash specifically, the character extends from its panel onto the gutter space to emphasize the severity of the incidence, followed by the last close up of the character questioning the experience of the crash. The most important use of closure is between the 12th and 13th frame (‘User Backup’ and ‘power-off’) to add some sense of suspense. The unusual gap with a seemingly interconnected puzzle like panel is intended for the reader to assume an interconnected time lapse of computer processing between the frames only to realize that the unique AI user ID could not be backed up and the ‘System Failed’. The end of the user ID goes back to the beginning of the comic when it recovers from a system failure upon sensory input and generates a new user ID.  The flow of the comic follows from a beginning to an end while faintly hinting at a possible endless loop of artificial misery.


 * Bibliography: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> McCloud, Scott. //Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art//. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Print.