Week 5 Exercise

Sosuke Aizen's splash portrait (from the manga Bleach by Tite Kubo).

At first glance, Aizen appears to be a rather nondescript character. While in the realm of manga, glasses are frequently shown as being "cool" or "trendy", his thick-rimmed glasses are an almost universal symbol of a soft-spoken intellectual; weak in both mind and body. His expression, too, is bland, though friendly. However, this portrait (published in the volume where he is established as the story's true antagonist), suggests that this impression is false.

Of note is the extreme contrast, which throws the blandness of his expression into an eerie light. His eyes lack color or reflection, giving him a very piercing gaze. Note, too, that his eyes aren't "smiling" - there's something sardonic, almost ironic in his demeanor. The seemingly kindly nerd is actually evil and dangerous, and has since discarded his mask. Finally, his name (written behind him in traditional brush strokes) is drawn very aggressively, even savagely; it's a very violent signature.

On "splash" (eyecatch) pages, it's not unusual in manga for the manga-ka (writer/artist) to do a picture of a character who figures heavily into the plot or story arc. Generally speaking, said portraits are of the character behaving in a characteristic manner - a shy character might take a more submissive, defensive pose, for instance. Aizen dominates his page, gazing down at the audience, serene and pitiless.

Week 3 Exercise

Image scanned from Shonen Jump Magazine issue Volume 6, Issue 4 p.374. Shonen Jump is owned exclusively by Viz Media.

Although Shonen Jump’s color scheme is varied, it still manages to use the Color Feature Channel, highlighting the various sections with “bursts” of contrasting hues. The intensity of the blue, green and purple highlights further draw the eye to what they frame, keeping a balance to be pleasing to the eye. Red also figures into the structure, as its used both as a frame and to highlight various points of interest. The burst shapes both use the Shape Feature Channel – furthermore, the lines draw the eye to the face of the character on the left, and centralize the gaze with the one on the right. Also, although all the shapes in and of themselves are unique, there’s a kind of uniformity insofar as both the bursts and the spikes maintain a passive similarity. Size and placement likewise play their roles - although the two sections below are important, the most space, and the position at the top, is given to the new manga appearing next month.

Week 2 Exercise

(Taken from this Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki Webpage)

My intended area of study is in web design and user interface, and this image, while simple, is oriented towards top-down visual processing. Comics in and of themselves are a kind of visual storytelling that tells a story through sequential images, the "cognitive goal" being to learn what happens next. This, being the first page, shows only one image, but the text interests the reader, and hints at the plot development that the main character is a man who is transformed magically into a woman.

Once the reader is done reading the page, he or she will probably want to proceed on - the "Next" button is available for just such an Action Goal; alternatively, other buttons are available if s/he wants to go to the latest page, to the homepage, forums or other areas to learn more about the story, its creator and the surrounding community. Because these are in a common format of taskbar and, in subsequent pages, the locations of these objects never change, the reader can easily remember or verify their locations for future use.