McCloud, S. (1994) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

 As I am newly delving into creating comics, I wanted to understand them more from a theoretical (or perhaps a philosophical perspective) in order to improve my work.

During my illustration development, I have talked about "reducing" the information on the page, and I wondered what kind of impact that would have on the reader. In one section of the book, McCloud discusses the impact of ow a character looks. He posits that if a character has a more realistic depiction, then they can actually be less relatable for the reader. He goes on to suggest that the simplicity of some "cartoony" styles actually offer more room for the reader to create their own interpretations and find them more relatable. I find this a really interesting point, as my perspective was that the more details I included, the more the audience would be able to delve into the images and find details that they could relate to. However, I do understand why this might actually have the opposite affect. I was initially planning on drawing my characters semi realistic (as that feels quite natural to me), but reading McCloud's perspective has encouraged me to be more experimental. I think there's some great opportunity to play with how I draw expressions and the amount of detail I put into the characters depending on the scene. 

McCloud also discusses how we can approach time/space within comics by using the layout of the page. As a reader of comics, I did somewhat have an understanding of this already. However I think when it comes to translating my manuscript into illustrations, I'll have to pay extra attention to the pacing. I could make use of a full page or even a double page spread to really give a scene impact or observe a much needed pause. I spent some time in the last modules looking at how Manga uses panels in a variety of ways to either show rapid pacing or "romanticise" a scene - perhaps I can take some inspiration from these types of layouts where appropriate?

So far this book has done a really good job of explaining to me how our brains process comics and the kind of things I need to consider when developing my work. I know that some areas of my manuscript aren't particularly strong (dialogue!!), as I am less practiced at that. So perhaps drawing out the panels will help me to refine that part.