Who Understands Comics?

Who Understands Comics? PDF

Author: Neil Cohn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 135015606X

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Drawings and sequential images are so pervasive in contemporary society that we may take their understanding for granted. But how transparent are they really, and how universally are they understood? Combining recent advances from linguistics, cognitive science, and clinical psychology, this book argues that visual narratives involve greater complexity and require a lot more decoding than widely thought. Although increasingly used beyond the sphere of entertainment as materials in humanitarian, educational, and experimental contexts, Neil Cohn demonstrates that their universal comprehension cannot be assumed. Instead, understanding a visual language requires a fluency that is contingent on exposure and practice with a graphic system. Bringing together a rich but scattered literature on how people comprehend, and learn to comprehend, a sequence of images, this book coalesces research from a diverse range of fields into a broader interdisciplinary view of visual narrative to ask: Who Understands Comics?

Who Understands Comics?

Who Understands Comics? PDF

Author: Neil Cohn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1350156051

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**Nominated for the 2021 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work** Drawings and sequential images are so pervasive in contemporary society that we may take their understanding for granted. But how transparent are they really, and how universally are they understood? Combining recent advances from linguistics, cognitive science, and clinical psychology, this book argues that visual narratives involve greater complexity and require a lot more decoding than widely thought. Although increasingly used beyond the sphere of entertainment as materials in humanitarian, educational, and experimental contexts, Neil Cohn demonstrates that their universal comprehension cannot be assumed. Instead, understanding a visual language requires a fluency that is contingent on exposure and practice with a graphic system. Bringing together a rich but scattered literature on how people comprehend, and learn to comprehend, a sequence of images, this book coalesces research from a diverse range of fields into a broader interdisciplinary view of visual narrative to ask: Who Understands Comics?

The Visual Language of Comics

The Visual Language of Comics PDF

Author: Neil Cohn

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1441174516

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Drawings and sequential images are an integral part of human expression dating back at least as far as cave paintings, and in contemporary society appear most prominently in comics. Despite this fundamental part of human identity, little work has explored the comprehension and cognitive underpinnings of visual narratives-until now. This work presents a provocative theory: that drawings and sequential images are structured the same as language. Building on contemporary theories from linguistics and cognitive psychology, it argues that comics are written in a visual language of sequential images that combines with text. Like spoken and signed languages, visual narratives use a lexicon of systematic patterns stored in memory, strategies for combining these patterns into meaningful units, and a hierarchic grammar governing the combination of sequential images into coherent expressions. Filled with examples and illustrations, this book details each of these levels of structure, explains how cross-cultural differences arise in diverse visual languages of the world, and describes what the newest neuroscience research reveals about the brain's comprehension of visual narratives. From this emerges the foundation for a new line of research within the linguistic and cognitive sciences, raising intriguing questions about the connections between language and the diversity of humans' expressive behaviours in the mind and brain.

Understanding Comics

Understanding Comics PDF

Author: Scott McCloud

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1994-04-27

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 006097625X

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Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, this innovative comic book provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning.

The Sculptor

The Sculptor PDF

Author: Scott McCloud

Publisher: First Second

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1466887281

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David Smith is giving his life for his art—literally. Thanks to a deal with Death, the young sculptor gets his childhood wish: to sculpt anything he can imagine with his bare hands. But now that he only has 200 days to live, deciding what to create is harder than he thought, and discovering the love of his life at the 11th hour isn't making it any easier! This is a story of desire taken to the edge of reason and beyond; of the frantic, clumsy dance steps of young love; and a gorgeous, street-level portrait of the world's greatest city. It's about the small, warm, human moments of everyday life...and the great surging forces that lie just under the surface. Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work; now he vaults into great fiction with a breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable new work.

The Visual Narrative Reader

The Visual Narrative Reader PDF

Author: Neil Cohn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-01-28

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1472577914

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Sequential images are as natural at conveying narratives as verbal language, and have appeared throughout human history, from cave paintings and tapestries right through to modern comics. Contemporary research on this visual language of sequential images has been scattered across several fields: linguistics, psychology, anthropology, art education, comics studies, and others. Only recently has this disparate research begun to be incorporated into a coherent understanding. In The Visual Narrative Reader, Neil Cohn collects chapters that cross these disciplinary divides from many of the foremost international researchers who explore fundamental questions about visual narratives. How does the style of images impact their understanding? How are metaphors and complex meanings conveyed by images? How is meaning understood across sequential images? How do children produce and comprehend sequential images? Are visual narratives beneficial for education and literacy? Do visual narrative systems differ across cultures and historical time periods? This book provides a foundation of research for readers to engage in these fundamental questions and explore the most vital thinking about visual narrative. It collects important papers and introduces review chapters summarizing the literature on specific approaches to understanding visual narratives. The result is a comprehensive “reader” that can be used as a coursebook, a researcher resource and a broad overview of fascinating topics suitable for anyone interested in the growing field of the visual language of comics and visual narratives.

Making Comics

Making Comics PDF

Author: Scott McCloud

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Published: 2006-09-05

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780060780944

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Presents instructions for aspiring cartoonists on the art form's key techniques, sharing concise and accessible guidelines on such principles as capturing the human condition through words and images in a minimalist style.

When We Cease to Understand the World

When We Cease to Understand the World PDF

Author: Benjamin Labatut

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1681375664

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One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2021 Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics PDF

Author: Paul Gravett

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2008-08-12

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13:

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Mammoth Books: From history to manga, true crime to sci-fi, these anthologies feature top-name contributors and award-winning editors.

I'm Grumpy (My First Comics)

I'm Grumpy (My First Comics) PDF

Author: Jennifer L. Holm

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Published: 2016-01-26

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13: 0553533452

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From the bestselling creators of Babymouse and Squish and the author of The Fourteenth Goldfish comes a new comic board-book series about feelings! Eisner Award winners Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm use panel frames, speech balloons, and thought bubbles to teach children how to read a story. In I’m Grumpy, a grumpy cloud upsets his friend Sunny and must make amends. A sweet, funny, and simple introduction to the impact that emotions can have on those around you.