Class Reflection

Now that Media 150 has come to an end it's easier to take a look at what worked and what didn't over the course of the semester.

One of the strongest aspects of the class were the lectures. Both Professor Anderson and Professor Lucas brought their individual strengths and backgrounds to each lecture. They knew exactly when to take a step back and let the other one shine when the topic at hand fit more into their specialty. However, when it was appropriate they did an excellent job of team teaching and never seemed to step on one another's toes.

With any class that centers around technology that is constantly changing and evolving by the hands of a large percent of the living population, and maybe some of the non-living, you run the risk of miscommunication and conflicting understandings of how these things work. In this course, information was being funneled through multiple sources before it got down to the students. Anderson and Lucas have their respective departments and knowledge base, and that is funneled down into three seperate section leaders each with THEIR own profession and field of interest which is then once again funneled to us. On top of that each of our section leaders were learning different aspects of the material, at times simultaneously with us, which made it difficult at times to truly explore the subject matter since we didn't have a readily accesible "brain to pick" who had a thourough knowledge of our material. As a result I believe that some of our work may have seem stunted and just short of a real success.

But in no way do I mean to say that this class wasn't successful. I know that I learned alot not only in my lecture, but in my section as well thanks to my section leader. Her expertise in the field of documentary film making always shone through and it was that sort of unique talent that each of the professors involved in the class had that have made it such an invaluable experience.

Bottom line, I'm looking forward to Media 160.

Ivan Brunetti, Page from Schizo #3

The layout of a page is the most important thing that a cartoonist has to think about when making a comic. The page draws you in, each of the panels direct your eye to one another and even the space in between the panels can imply the passage of time or unseen and unheard actions.

A contemporary cartoonist who recognizes this fact in spades is Ivan Brunetti. Brunetti’s comics, whether long form or single panel, always carry with it a hefty knowledge of graphic design and visual literacy. This example of a page from one of his large print single issues is a great example of Brunetti’s skill in graphic design.

Here we have a single page depicting a stand alone story. Immediately we are drawn in by the wholeness of the page in that it is a single image of a house broken up into individual panels. Even the form and placement of the house, the weather, the time of day and its physical orientation are preserved within this single image.

Deeper still the panels themselves are separate yet at certain points conjoin to create a whole image. However, even in these instances the passage of time still exists. By using two or more panels to convey a single image, we create the illusion of time passing within our heads and allow ourselves to take in a more fluid “movie-like” image. In a lot of ways this technique is directly related to persistence of vision and other visual phenomena, in that it fools its viewers into seeing movement and progression where there really is not.

The pacing of each of the panels is made so that the mundane activities he is going through are taken in evenly and as rigidly as possible. It is here that the cartoonist controls the viewer’s eye and guides them into reading the work that they’ve created in their intended way.