Book: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Author: Scott McCloud

Ever wanted to know what it is that makes comics so amazing? How they work? Or maybe you just want to get better att communicating ideas and stories? Not only in comics but in any medium?

Then read this book.

It’s brilliant and Scott did a great job with it. The book is a comic itself, and he uses it in a way which makes it very engaging and easy to understand.

Many of the principles he talks about can be applied in other areas as well. So it’s not just a book for people who work with comics, but for anyone doing art work.

Why did I read it?

Apart from liking comics and wanting to understand what goes on in the background, I read it because I wanted to improve how I think and work with art.

Mission accomplished?

Yes. Recommend it for anyone doing creative crafts. It really improves how you think about communicating your ideas.

Favorite parts:

The chapter about closure. How when we observe parts of something, we percieve the whole. In comics that happens between panels, we see two different pictures and automatically percieves what happened between them, and everyone percieves it differently. Using another medium, movies for example, closure happens when you shift the camera away from the subjects/scene and let’s the viewer get closure through the sounds or shadows.

Really interesting book.