The Surprise and Wonder of Early Animation, Richard Brody, 2019 - The New Yorker, Link

• Something I have always found fascinating about early films, including animated ones, are the title cards and how sometimes the creators of the films will talk directly to the audience to let them know what is going on (example from the article is “How Animated Cartoons Are Made,” from 1919, directed by Wallace Carlson). Of course this is a documentary work, and in documentaries the host often talks directly to the audience in one form or another. I’m personally very interested in creating work that brings the viewer in and asks them to be an active participant in the work, and even with a passive medium such as film, I feel like it is nice to have moments to directly communicate with the audience (and sometimes even give them a peak behind the curtain)!

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud , 1994 - ISBN: 006097625X, Library, Chapters 1-3

• So after reading the first reading, I was pleasantly surprised to see this comic exploring what exactly a comic is (getting meta trying to come up with a particular description) featured a main character talking directly to me. I always find it more compelling and easier to hold my interest when I’m being engaged directly. Perhaps this is why some of my favorite books are written in the second person (On a Winters Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino, certain chapters of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and others).
• What stuck out to me most while reading this comic was the logic behind how the images we look at are not the objects themselves, but reproductions of the image (the section surrounding Magritte’s The Treachery of Images), and then how the author goes on to show how the photorealistic image simplifies into the cartoon and our human brains can still read it as the same thing.
• My favorite pages are the ones that play with how literal we have to be when coming up with definitions