Baetons (2001) describes Graphiation as 'the narrative and graphic enunciation of the comics' and the Graphiateaur as 'the agent responsible for it'. I understand this to mean that Graphiation is the style in which an image is drawn which creates a certain tone or setting for the story. The tone and sentiment of the author can be detected by the way in which lines, contours and colours are used in the comics images and this is then underlined by the accompanying utterance.
Monstration is described as 'events are performed by the characters themselves in a situation in which the story seems to narrate itself, without any narrators intervention'. In this instance the process is like a silent movie in which all information is gained by seeing the character in action.
Khardoc explains how narration can detract from the Graphiation in a comic and how for this reason as well as others he believes the Asterix series does better than Herge's Tintin. He explains that in the Tintin series speech balloons were used as well as narrative commentary at the bottom of each panel in order to further explain the story. However this proved confusing to the reader as the focus was then split between the image and the narration . In the Asterix series the use of speech balloons helped to create an idea that the utterances were coming directly from the character which helped to sync the the image to what the character was saying.
The Asterix series also uses various strategies to create 'sound' in order to promote the humour of the cartoon. Herge does not use many 'sound' techniques in the Tintin series, however Khardoc does allow that this could be due to the more intricate nature of the comic.
Hi Rizwana:
ReplyDeleteClear exploration of "Graphiation" (and therefore "Graphiataeur") here. The "narrative and graphic enunciation of the comics" clearly communicates meaning in its style etc. (outside of words themselves of course). It aims for a certain reader response. Do you think the narrative commentary along the bottom (or whereever) of comic panels is distracting or detracts at all from the 'storytelling'? We can't look at everything at once anyway - we view the image and then still have to read all the text - even speech bubbles. Could the textual nature of a narrative rely solely on speeh bubbles and still be effective?
Good work here Rizwana
Hi Esther
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comments. I do think that a narrative running along the bottom of a comic strip does detract from the story telling as it is difficult as a reader to think where to start when reading (or looking at) the comic. When reading Herge's 'Blue Lotus' I found it was easy to look at the text as part of the graphic and take in more effectively exactly what was happening with the character. I think the reason comics are so successful is because text is minimal and the graphiateur lets us decide what to make of the image. This being the case I don't think that a narrative relying solely on speech bubbles would be effective. In my opinion without the sequence of visual images the story would lack cohesion.
Makes sense to me !
ReplyDeleteEsther :)