Notes on McCloud's Understanding Comics

So I know that it wasn't a necessity to write about what we read until class time, and I'm not writing my actual post until then. But I wanted to put my notes so I would have them in class.

• Description of comics: Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence
• Comics is a medium.
• Comics are not defined to techniques, styles, mediums or ideas. 
• Comics versus films: Space vs. Time
• Humans are self centered and see themselves in everything
• We become things. (Example: If there's a car crash, instead of thinking the car hit the car, you think 'he hit me')
• Concepts happen when physical form goes away and idea comes in.
• Words are the ultimate abstractions
• Writing and drawing are completely separate forms of art
• Comics can leave you to finish the form. (For example, if you only see a head, you assume the rest of the body is there)
• The breaks from panel to panel are two separate ideas that the eye transforms into a single idea
• There are six connections that can use as little or as much of the eye and brain's closure

1. Panel - Panel (Uses little closure)
2. Action - Action (Again, little closure)
3. Subject - Subject (Takes more attention)
4. Scene - Scene (Transitions)
5. Aspect - Aspect (Different aspects for elements of place, idea, mood)
6. Non-Sequitur (No relationship between panels)

• Comics are a mono-sensory medium
• Symbols are visual metaphors 
• Lines can be used to depict senses (Such as someone smelling based off some lines)
• Backgrounds can set moods
• Comics = 6 step path

1. Ideas - Content
2. Form 
3. Idiom - Styes or genres 
4. Structure - Piecing it all together
5. Craft 
6. Surface - Production values, finishing

• People rarely focus on ideas or form
• Core question about art - Why am I doing this?
• Color depends on the purpose or moods you're setting
• Isolation - No one can know what it's like to be you
• No one will ever read a comic like you do
• They'll never have the same experience
• To understand comics you must clear your mind of preconceived notions and start from scratch
• Pay more attention to the ideas and form than anything else
• Comics contain the viewer involvement and identification while having the realism to capture the visible world

Aaaand those are my main notes from reading Understanding Comics.