Images + Text

McCloud's Understanding Comics has been my favorite reading by far. I strongly believe in mixing text with visuals always. Every time I do a PE I try to accompany it with some sort of visual.  I have a firm belief that illustrations enhance understanding, this article confirmed it for me. Also, I may be wrong, but I found that all this talking about representation and icons/symbols reminded me of agent/cy. Every time I get on the topic of representation I can’t help but ask “what came first the chicken or the egg”… is it us that gives the meaning or does the subject matter represent something innately and we bring out understanding to form deeper meaning? I don’t really understand what McCloud meant by his definition of non-pictorials, I felt it was on the same page as all his other definitions.  McCloud’s others definitions (icon, symbolism…) were in sync with everything we have learned in class. Overall it was an interesting reading and gave me lots of concrete definitions that have solidified my understanding of what we have discussed in class.