✍️AIP 96 When A Video Game Designer Tells You Their Favorite Book Is On Understanding Comics…

A few weeks ago, I had a podcast with video game designer Jesse Schell. When I asked him for one of the books which has influenced him most, he answered  Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud.

I was confused. Why would a video game designer mention a book on understanding comics as one of their favorites? It’s like a painter saying they liked heavy metal. 

Comics are for children. They couldn’t possibly have profound things to say about our world, could they? I didn’t grow up reading a lot of comics. I had heard about series like Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Full Meta Alchemist. But I had never seemed to take the time to sit down and read any. Jesse Schell’s recommendation, however, intrigued me enough to read the book for myself.

My mind was blown.

Not only was McLoud’s book a profound analysis of what makes comics work, but it was a incredible analysis of art in general. Through understanding the medium of comics, we can make better art in any medium. Reading this book has given me insights into how to make my YouTube videos better, my writing more engaging, and more. It because clear to me the reason Jesse Schell liked the book so much is because it gave insight into how to make better video games.

You’re probably curious now: how do comics work?

And what can they tell us about other art mediums?

How Do Comics Work?

To answer this question, we first need to define what comics even are.

My first guess was they were pictures in sequence. But there’s a problem: so are movies.

The author goes onto define Comics are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence.

This isn’t the type of thing that comes up in conversation, but hey that’s what makes intellectualizing fun!

This definition differentiates comics from photographs as they include more than one thing in sequence. And it differentiates them from film because they play with space whereas films stay the same size as the screen they are projected upon and move forward in time linearly.

Time does for movies what space does for comics.

This doesn’t mean time doesn’t exist for comics. Time is created in comics through sound, space, and motion.

Words and sound effects introduce time to comics by representing that which can only exist in time, sound.

Motion creates time because by it’s nature it requires time to happen.

I’ll let McLoud explain shape and time:

There’s one more thing that can create a sense of time: closure. But as this is the most fundamental thing about what makes comics work, I’ll leave that to its own section later on.

Let’s get onto the vocabulary of comics.

Similar to how literature is made up of the vocabulary of words, comics have their own vocabulary: icons.

A icon is any thing used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. These include firstly, pictorial icons which can differ in meaning depending on their look, and secondly, non-pictorial icons which represent the same thing even if they are slightly different looking like peace signs, numbers, and words.

The way an icon looks can differ significantly from each other. In the book, McCloud creates a triangle to represent the differing looks icons can have from focusing on meaning, to realism, to abstraction (he calls it picture plane but I find abstraction a better term).

Focusing purely on meaning leads to words, purely on resemblance leads to picture looking comics, and purely on abstraction leads to surrealist craziness. But usually comic artists don’t fall to the extreme of any one sign. Rather, they take a range somewhere across the triangle.

This doesn’t just apply to comics but to all art mediums. In the realm of cinematography, some videographers verge on the hyperrealistic like in most documentaries. However, other styles take on a more abstract expressionist feel like in series such as Baby Reindeer when color correction is super wacky after the main character takes drugs. The style you use depends on the experience you want to give your audience.

One of the most interesting ways this triangle can be influenced in the realm of comics is with the infamous cartoon. In short, cartoons are simplified drawings. Think Mickie Mouse, Donald Duck, stick figures. It’s easy to put down cartoons as children drivel. But that would be a mistake.

It’s not just a drawing style, it’s a way of seeing.

By de-emphasizing the role of sensations and realistic appearance of the physical world, cartoons put themselves more in the realm of concepts.

By simplifying something, you can put more emphasis on the underlying form, the idea. Simplification also opens you more to imagination. A cartoon face could be anybody, a realistic one can’t.

Some cartoon artists like really play with this by using a technique by putting a cartoonish character on a realistic background.

Other mediums can take insight from cartoons. Literature for example, is the ultimate abstract medium as everything must be imagined—the vocabulary is entirely made up of words. Films tend to be less cartoonish because of the nature of the medium. But in any medium, through simplification, you can put more focus the concepts then the surface of the art.

The last essential part of comics vocabulary is the language of lines. Comics operate purely on the visual world. Therefore they must make us feel things purely through visuals. The fact that visuals can cause emotions inside of us is essential to what makes comics work.

The way visuals make us feel depends entirely on the context, but there are some consistencies. Jagged, rough lines can lead to emotions of anger, uncertainty, anxiety, and more. Rounder, softer lines can create feelings of calmness, safety, and tranquility. In addition, because some comics use color, they have the entire world of [[Color theory|color theory]] to work with when it comes to instilling emotion.

Other mediums can take insight in the fact that surface visuals can change our internal experience. In writing for example, the font you use can have a huge effect on the feeling you instill. Writing can become musical if you mix short, medium, and long sentences together. See.

Colors have a huge effect on the audiences experience too.

Generally, lighter, higher saturation colors make for a more playful, fun-loving look. Like Super Mario Bros.

Darker colors make for a darker, more serious scene like Hollow Knight.

So far, we have described the vocabulary of comics, but what about grammar?

If visual iconography is the vocabulary of comics, closure is its grammar.

Closure is the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole. We do this all the time in real life.

In comics this happens when we make meaning between gaps in panels. In those gaps there is a space, and in that space, infinite possibility. What happened in the following two panels?

You likely say you just witnessed a murder. But did you really? No one said that person was murdered. You made meaning out of the gap between the panels by inferring the scream was the scream of that man being murdered.

But it doesn’t have to be. That second panel could just have easily been half way across the planet and from a different person. That’s right, you murdered someone.

All right, it’s not that drastic. The possible “valid” meanings you could have gotten from that gap were pretty small because of how clearly the comic artist tried to make them relate. Comics are a dance between the comic artist and the reader in making meaning out of the gaps.

Comic artists can lead you toward a certain meaning through their choice of what to include in each panel and how to construct them. But ultimately, like in any medium of art there meaning is made through the relationship between the artists creation, and the audience members perception.

There are six different ways panels can relate to the panel before them:

1. Moment to moment: from one moment to another
2. Action to action: from one action to another
3. Subject to subject: from one subject to another
4. Scene to scene: from one scene to another
5. Aspect to aspect: a differing perspective on the same environment and same moment
6. Non sequitur: not related in any obvious way to the previous panel

The degree of how much each of these is used in relation to each other in a comic can vastly change the perception of the comic. It differs not only from comic to comic, artist to artist, but also culture to culture. And it all comes through the power of closure.

Closure is perhaps the most insightful aspect of comics that applies to other art mediums. The reality is every art medium comes from the relationship between the artist and the audience. Meaning is not objective or subjective, it’s created from the combination of the two: transjective.

As an artist, you need to be hyperaware of the audience you are trying to create for as this will drastically alter the way your art will be interpreted. You must be careful about how much information you give your audience, and in context of the other information around it. If you give too much, you will ruin your audiences ability to imagine, to come to insights themselves. But if you risk leaving them confused and bored.

None of the things we have discussed should take center stage.

It’s the combination of comics vocabulary, grammar, the balancing of words and pictures that make for the greatest experience. It’s not about having great colors. Or only great wordplay. It’s about the dancing of all of the things together.

Reading this book has not only altered my perception of comics but all art mediums. I now understand why Jesse Schell, a video game designer, found it so interesting. And I hope you do too.

P.S. I’m graduating this spring 2025 from Cornell with a degree in Human Development and am beginning the exciting job search. If you are or know someone who might be interested in hiring someone with an extensive background in content creation, course creation, public speaking, teaching, writing, and research, please reach out to aidan@aidanhelfant.com. My resume is linked here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/1a53rTrDBJLC0yQCAeNLNY2QMW-9CMamp/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword

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