In this article, I want to re-introduce some often lost aspects of comic strips based on my own personal study of one of my most influential cartoonist heroes, Walt Kelly. These are strictly my own artistic opinions.
Click on the comic to see a larger version.
If you ask most fans of Pogo, Walt Kelly’s famous comic strip, they will probably tell you about his great political and social satire, his amazingly detailed backgrounds, his great characters or his superb visuals. But in this article I want to point out his layout and mastery of visual story telling. In the strip example above, Kelly is using a four panel format. Notice that the panels are not the same size. This is not arbitrary or accidental. Panel sizing is an important tool for the sequential story teller. The relative order and size of the panels is to a sequential comic what pacing and timing are to an animated cartoon sequence. In this first example, Kelly starts with two even sized panels to give the story a balanced beginning. Then he inserts an accent in the form of a compressed panel. Wider panels slow the reader down, narrower panels speed them up or sharpen their focus. The last panel is wider and acts as a resting point to allow the gag and or the message of the strip, in Kelly’s case, to settle in.
Click on the strip above to see a larger version.
In this next example above, we get a different example of Kelly layout skills. Walt Kelly was a master of generating tremendous visual energy in a tiny strip. The first panel is stretched out and designed to create a sense of visual anticipation. It’s an antic for the pending action. Then all hell breaks loose as he fires two compressed panels at us back to back. Then another stretched out panel to settle us down as the action tails off in the distance. Great graphics amazing visualization and most importantly enhanced story telling through his layouts.
Click on the strip above to see a larger version.
Finally, in this last example above, we once more get to see the master story teller at his best. Panel size and arrangement is used to focus the reader and move them visually to the climax. It’s a comic strip and a story board at its best. The strip cartoonist has the opportunity to be a story teller, a cinematographer and a humorist all rolled into one.
As you can see from these examples, before the big squeeze in the newspapers, the comic strip was very different than today’s print examples. That is sad in many respects, but the joy and beauty of comics delivered over the Internet is that all those constraining policies that have driven newspaper comic strips to be shadows of there former selves no longer apply. The restrictions and constraints are totally controlled by the web cartoonist. These are very exciting and liberating times if you want to be a future Walt Kelly of the web.
Interesting analysis Jerry. As a story board artist I usually ask myself when laying out a scene what does the audience need to see, when’s the best time to reveal it and how can I make it clear and still try to make it dynamic. And by dynamic I mean communicate the message with the most power. I imagine I try to use those rules of thumb in my comic strip as well but strips have constraints. You must edit and pace the dialog (not easy) along with the drawing in the panel and vice versa. One effects the other as they exist in conjunction with each other unless you have a sequential strip made up of images alone. Sometimes that affects whether or not your panel is, as you put it, normal, compressed or stretched.
What I found also intrigiung in your article was you mentioning the fact that the web can open up possibilities for comic strips to go. Schulz, redefined the comic strip when he put WW1 goggles on Snoopy and turned the doghouse into a Sopwith Camel not to mention kids with adult like anxieties. Kelly showed us his command of the english language and an animators talent. In Mad magazine Don Martin took sound effects to an absurd height.
All effected content and served it well.
Maybe someone will come along and create a new language in this medium that will not only explore but reveal the comedic truth’s in the content but also in the form. Maybe it’s interactive or 3-D or partially animated (Like Larry Levine is doing). Or maybe someone’s doing it already, I don’t know, but it be interesting to see something that helps keep the craft of cartooning flourishing.
Well, there’s my daily dose of BS.
Best Regards,
Bill