Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Literal or Graphic




























I thought it might be interesting to compare these two pages which both have that giant hand smacking the side of a building. The top one is from Doom Patrol #14 page 18, and the other is from Big in Japan #2 page 8. One of them is a scan and the other is a photograph, so there are differences in the look of them just from that, but there are other differences as well that are easy to see when you see them both together.

The Doom Patrol page is dense with detail: rubble, folds, lines of skin and cloth, as well as lines on buildings. There is very little white space on this page.
The Big in Japan page is much cleaner. In the lower left panel, for example, where in a photograph we would see the landscape and architecture behind the lunging monster, Seth has drawn it in a graphic style, so the monster is floating out in nothingness, all the better to see how he is the center of attention.
The actual hand smacking the wall is surprisingly similar in the two pages.
I don't want to imply that the later style is better, or that Seth graduated from literal to graphic style. He used the graphic style for this comic book. I think he decided that it would suit the purpose and intent of this story better than a literal style would do. He could make use of both.

2 comments:

Kim said...

hi Vicki
Seth's amazing work is now listed in the Top Artists Directory....section D-L
you will find a selection of codes for badges there too :)
enjoy your weekend :)
regards Kim

Vicki said...

Thank you Kim. That's a nice link to have. I found the Top Artists Directory from James Gurney's blog, because it is also listed there. That's good company.