Opening 3 Reflections

How Art Made the World – Once Upon a Time

I think it is interesting how the first story was originally words and was changed into pictures because very few could understand the writing of that age. It is interesting to think of pictures as a universal language.  It is a language of the masses, not simply the elite or well educated.

I see Ashurbanipal’s story as one that was largely propaganda to make him look like and elite ruler. Something that I believe backs this assumption up is the fact that there was no emotion connected to the brutality. As the film discusses, there is no reason to care and therefore it isn’t easily relatable to. It simply serves more as a history lesson depicting how great the king was rather than something those viewing the reliefs could really relate to and engage in.

It is interesting how clear depictions of emotions and the uniqueness of each character’s emotions can make a piece more believable and engaging.  Trajan’s story is very similar to Ashurbanipal’s in that it tells a story of his accomplishments and paints him as the hero. The difference however comes in the characterization of the figures. Just by adding emotion to the figures, the viewers are then pulled into the story and actually care about it.

Both could be considered propaganda, but know doubt, Trajan’s is certainly more convincing.

The Visual Magic of Comics

I’ve never thought of comics in the way Scott McCloud explained them. Comics always seemed very straightforward and honestly somewhat boring to me. But taking into account what McCloud mentioned, comics really do offer a lot more visually than I originally realized, especially with new forms of technology.

I think the comparison of comics to the ancient forms of story telling that were discussed in “How Art Made the World,” was a very understandable one. Although I had never discovered the commonalities before, they are so apparent upon reflection. That being realized, comics have a powerful ability to entrance people with an assortment of senses outside of sight.

To go further than traditional comics, the newer forms of comics have been made into television shows and I think this can be directly compared to the aboriginal’s form of storytelling. Although the shows more greatly represent film, I wonder if there are any that are simply pictures like traditional comics, but have sound and music and dialogue to go with them, very much like the still images of the aboriginals that, when combined with sound, became a vivid flowing story.

The Man Behind the ‘Incredibles’

I think it is interesting how the creators of ‘The Indredibles’ started with a voice for the costume designer character and had the artists draw the character based off that voice. I think it shows an interesting correlation between sound and image. Going back to the ancient visual stories, they didn’t have sound with them, the exception being the aboriginal’s, so I wonder if they had a certain dialogue streaming through their imagination while they were drawing, painting or sculpting their characters.

I would argue that in Ashurbanipal’s story they didn’t, as most of the characters were very similar to each other and had very little emotion. With Trajan’s story however, I imagine the artist acting as each character when he was creating them and really delving inside the properties and emotions of each of these characters. Without sound or dialogue however, I think the height of which these characters are developed really falls off during the transfer from creator to viewer and loses the impact it was meant to have.