The Arrival

After reading the book The Arrival I was totally awed. This is a book that you would have to own because you could read it over and over or just stare at it for hours. The Illustrations in this book are absolutely beautiful, he is so delicate with his line work the images are just very captivating. It is amazing how Shaun Tan created this world and language and all the little details he put into the characters and architecture really make it feel real. One of my favorite pages in the book was the one of all the clouds, not only were they drawn beautifully but I thought it was a neat and creative way to show time. You could really tell that he had been on the ship for days because of all the changes in the clouds. As far as the layout of the book it was nice how he had large images every once in a while, with there being so many images it kind of let you see what the more important parts were and all the others filled in the details. I did like the fact that all the frames were square because it really unified everything but after reading the book Understanding comics I thought he could have utilized the shape of the panel a little more.

The book tells a wonderful story of an immigrant who leaves home to find a better place for his family, he finds a job, meets friends, listens to their stories, and finally brings his family back for a new life in this surreal world. I would say even without the text this book is pretty easy to understand for the most part. I feel that the book would not be the same if it had text, when reading this book you really get the since of who he is and what he's feeling. Because you are just looking at the pictures you are placed in this foreign world with him. This really works because Shaun Tan isn't pinning the story to a specific language, anyone can read this book and that's just one of the other things that makes it unique.

I am so glad that I got to enjoy this book. I would suggest this to anyone and I know that they could find beauty in it in one way or another.

Understanding Comics

While reading Scott McClouds Understanding comics I learned a lot more about comics than I expected. Just in the first chapter he gave a very detailed descriptions of what comics are and the history of art and comics, he made it clear and easy to understand with lots of good visual examples. One of the ideas that really stood out to me in this book was how time is portrayed through still images. I liked how he explained how to make single silent panels seem longer by lengthening the shape of the panel. I also thought it was interesting how you can show motion through a single still scene by braking the background image into different panels and having the character move through it. I realized that I prefer time and motion viewed through the breakup of panels by spacing, separation and size rather than subjective motion by streaking. Now that I understand this aspect, as an illustrator I feel that I am more sensitive to time depicted in images and I plan on incorporating these techniques into my own work.