When talking about the
creative team that designed the comic book, one has in mind the writer and the
artist. In Randy Duncan`s and Mathiew J. Smith`s book, The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture, they use the term “source“
for designing the creator.
The source is the comic book creator or creators. The order in which the creative components are presented is deliberate, beginning with those creative roles that are most related with invention (idea, purpose, story). (8)
The writer creates the
comic book by producing the full script, often in a panel-by-panel,
page-by-page form to guide the artist, often detailing dialogue, actions,
thoughts, motives, expressions, similar to a screenplay. The writer can work alone, or in collaboration
with other writers, in order to produce the script for the comic books.
Most often the idea of a comic book begins with the writer, a wordsmith who outlines the plot, describes scenes and actions and provides dialogue for characters and narrators.(8)
The artist is the one whose
main role is to create the artwork. The
term “artist“ is often interchangeable with “penciler“. That is because the
initial work is done in pencil, in order to correct the possible mistakes.
Some writer and penciller (a penciller is the artist who does the pencil drawings of the images in a comic book) teams collaborate very closely on the creation of stories. However it is generally the writer who creates the story whether in the form of a one-paragraph synopsis or detailed panel-by-panel descriptions. (8)
The other members of the
creative team are the inker, the colorist, the letterer and the editor.
The inker supplements and enhances the pencil artwork in order to define the artwork for
the colorist and for the printing process. Even if it may not seem so, his job is
really important when it comes to creating emotional impact and then selling the
product. As the same Randy Duncan and Mathiew J. Smith argue in The Power of Comics:
Even when the penciller provides very tight, detailed drawings, the inker still makes an important contribution to the style of the message, which can influence the readers affective (emotive) and cognitive (thinking) reactions to the art style (8)
Nowadays, computer art programs have replaced
the role of the inker by digitally darkening the artwork. The role of the
colorist is to add color to the artwork, either by hand or on computer. In the
past, the colorist used to work directly on the original artwork, but nowadays
due to computer technology, the coloring is done digitally. The colorist is the
one who makes the final decision regarding the palette of colors for the comic
book. The colorist has also responsible for emotionally involving the readers, because by using certain colors, the characters' actions may
seem more dramatic or funny.
With modern color processes that allow for more subtle and sophisticated use of colors, the colorist also contributes to the message. Receivers can have affective reactions to color: reds and oranges can agitate, blues and greens can calm and so forth. Colors have also cognitive assosiations (purple for royalty) that can be exploited to create meaning. (8)
The letterer is the individual
who places word balloons and captions on the finished artwork and fills them
with words based on the script. Typically
this is the last stage in a comic book's production, although the letterer may
liaise with the artist initially to make sure there will be space to fit the
speech bubbles into the artwork.
The editor is the one who is responsible for the
correction of mistakes, or for the story glitches that may appear in the
comic book, or for the mismanagement of the creative team.
An editor coordinates the publication of a comic book, including hiring the creative talent and supervising the various stages of production.(8)
In this industry, the writer
and the artist are considered the two main producers of the comic books.
Sometimes the artist is also called
“cartoonist‘‘. This is because sometimes the vision of the whole story, in the
artistic sense, is entirely his.
Panels are individual images
containing a segment of action,
often surrounded by a border.
Prime moments in a narrative are broken down into panels via a process called
encapsulation. In their
book, The Power of Comics, Randy
Duncan and Mathiew Smith define encapsulation as “the selection of key moments of action such as layout or
composition“ (5).
The reader puts the pieces together
by using background knowledge and an understanding of panel relations to
combine panels mentally into events, in a process called "closure". The contents of a panel
may by asynchronous, with events depicted in the same image not necessarily
occurring at the same time.
Text is frequently
incorporated into comics via speech balloons, captions, and sound effects.
Speech balloons indicate dialogue with tails pointing at their respective
speakers. Bubbles which
represent an internal dialogue are referred to as "thought balloons".
The shape of the balloon indicate the type of dialogue contained. Thought balloons are more cloud-like and
connected to the owner by a series of small bubbles. Speech bubbles used to
represent screaming or anger tend to be spiky, and square boxes have been used
to represent dialogue spoken by robots or computers. Whispers are usually
represented by balloons made up of broken lines.
Comic book captions are used
as a narrative device in order to convey
information impossible to rephrase by art or speech. Captions can replace
thought bubbles . As Berry and Allyson Lyga state in their book Graphic Novels in Your Media Center
Boxes on a comic book page that contains text... While sometimes used to convey dialogue, they are more often used to impart a character's thoughts or as a narrative device (161)
Sound effects and environmental sounds are
presented without balloons, in bold. Percussive sounds usually have exclamation
points. Usually, they are drawn to emphasize their nature such as, for example,
the sound effect from a fast race car.
Some effects often used in
comics are the ones listed below:
•
BAM! (pistol shot)
•
SPANG! (bullet hitting metal)
•
SPLAT! (bullet hitting masonry or concrete)
•
WANG! KAWUNNGG! (bullet hit with ricochet)
•
POW! (fist hitting chin)
•
SOK! (fist hitting chin)
•
CRAK! (nightstick hitting skull)
•
CRACK! (wrench hitting skull)
•
CREAK! (squeaky door opening)
•
EEEEEEEEEE! (scream)
•
CRASH! (furnishings being destroyed in a fight)
WRITTEN BY RUXANDRA MANEA
EDITED BY ANTONIA GIRMACEA AND EDUARD GHITA
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