This week we have been learning about the technical side of comic strips and how they are crafted to fully compliment the storyline. 

 Write-up Scott McCloud text (transition types):
 Moment to moment - small lapses in time 
Pebble island - a good moment to moment comic 
Action to action - different action/ same scene - needs closure 
Daddy’s girl - good action to action comic 
Lighter than my shadow - Katie green 
The table cloth - Marion fayolle 
Subject to subject - within the same scenes, but move to different subject - needs more reader involvement 
Paper girls - Bryan Vaughn and cliff Chiang - good subject to subject comic 
Scene to scene - geographic location - significant movement of time and or space - deductive reasoning needed 
Aspect to aspect - scene setting motif 
Non sequitur- no logical relationship between panels
Casestudy: research a comic artist of your choice & analyse a page of their work:
This is a strip from the comic Hilda (also known as Hildafolk) which is an award-winning British children's graphic novel series written and illustrated by Luke Pearson. I have attempted to decode this section of the comic correctly although I think there is always room for a difference of opinion. However, I think it has been very helpful to learn the importance of the technical side of comic strips and how frames can carry a story. 

French Magazine Panzani Ad. (1960s)

Dior perfume Ad. (2019) 

Conduct a semiotic analysis of a magazine of my choice. 

In this weeks lecture we have been learning about the relationship between words and images and the different ways they can be used together. Understanding  anchorage, which comes in multiple forms, explains the ways in which words and images can compliment each other.

This quote is from a book I was reading, it’s a none fiction book that wasn’t about semiotics but I really feel that it conveyed the importance of understanding the different contributions of words and images in a semiotic sense,  “What is the difference, after all, between printed words or the grey tones of a photograph. Both are simply marks on paper, both record and report. But while words engage the intellect, photographs use another language; they have a more visceral appeal, that punch in the gut.” - Alchemy and Rose 

This weeks blog task was to recreate the painting Treachery of Images by Magritte and give a brief analysis of the piece. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" French for "This is not a pipe and the simple meaning is that the painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe. This work is a result of Margritte's fascination with the combination of words and images working together to create a surrieal piece of art. 

Some notes that I wrote down during the lecture to get to grips with the idea of semiotics. In which I have learnt that semiotics is defined as the study of signs & sign systems within society. Anything that is capable of conveying meaning is a sign (eg words, images, clothes, gestures and 
symbols)

If, like me, you sometimes struggle to get grips with a new idea simply from reading then this is a very simplified video, which explains semiotics in a friendly way. 

This text I have annotated is an extract from Jonathan Bignall’s “Media Semiotics”. It mainly discusses the work of Ferdinand de Sassure, who studied language as signs and Charles Pierce, who also studied semiotics looking at signs as imagery.
Semiotics Terminology 
 -langue: whole language system
- sign: single word
- parole: partial example of speech or writing
-syntagm: a complete, ordered sequence of signs. eg: a sentence [My-dog-smells-terrible.]
-paradigm: point of substitution in a sentence (or group of signs) which allows for an exchange > of a similar sign, metaphorical sign or abstract sign, without changing the overall structure.
my-dog-{smells/pongs/hums/corrodes etc}

This annotated text is from Roland Barthes, “The world of wrestling from mythologies”. It discusses the use of semiotics within the world of wrestling and how using excessive gestures conveys to the audience the sign of violence, but without actually conflicting any real damage to the participants. The signs are exaggerated, repeated and constantly reinforced which makes them easily understood  by the audience and is in fact exactly what they want. They want to see justice carried out as they so rarely see it in their daily lives. 
Sign = signifier (gesture) + signified (concept)

During the lecture we watched this video of two wrestlers in the 1980s, fulfilling their roles as the Good vs Evil characters expected in all wrestling matches. Big Daddy being the hero of the match and the ‘good guy’ perfectly carrying out his role and executing justice by knocking Giant Haystacks out of the ring, who happened to fall onto a perfectly positioned table softened by flowers. It was a ‘spectacle of excessive gestures’ depicting an ‘image of passion, but not passion itself’ conveyed how signs are used within the world of wrestling from exaggerated movements, to the body language of the wrestlers and the body image of the wrestlers themselves. We were given some questions to answer while watching this video which you can read in my notes at the top.