Chapter 2 in “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud Essay

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The second chapter of Scott McCloud’s book “Understanding Comics” is devoted to the vocabulary of comics and all that the reader perceives when looking at the inscriptions in illustrated publications and what he concludes. The author gives some examples of pictures and introduces the term “icon,” which helps him to denote any illustrations of places, objects, or ideas. He also pays attention to the concepts of abstraction and realism, due to which a reader can perceive various graphic images in comics differently and draw conclusions based on what they see.

McCloud suggests the idea of simplifying drawings when a human brain equally recognizes more complicated and simpler pictures (cartoons). These cartooning are viewed as a form of amplification, which is achieved through maximum simplification. The idea of self-centeredness, when any person can see a human face in the objects that surround him or her, is rather interesting. The author also introduces the concept of a mask, where he talks about the fact that any person’s face is nothing more than a mask that obeys the commands of the brain and that is perceived by other people differently than by its owner.

McCloud claims that all human feelings are subordinated to the world around, and when it comes to images, realism serves as a way to portray the outer world and a cartoon – the internal one. In the author’s opinion, comic book artists use a concentration technique when a drawing method of realism is used to transfer details, and, to emphasize the general plan, inanimate objects are depicted as simply as possible. This chapter mentions the Japanese masking effect, which for a long time remained a favorite feature of the comics of this country. The article ends with a picture plane that shows the relationship between the person’s perception of reality and the language by which he or she expresses this or that idea or image.

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IvyPanda. "Chapter 2 in “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud." January 28, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/chapter-2-in-understanding-comics-by-scott-mccloud/.

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