In "Setting the Record Straight", Scott McCloud cleverly defines comics through an actual comic medium. He defines comics as "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer". Taking this definition into account I started to think about how technological advances in not just our own society but other more technologically advanced societies (such as Japan) will possibly change how we perceive comics. He pointed out that photos from a photo booth can be considered comics because nowhere does the definition for comics state that the images have to be drawn. The idea of using photography for comics really stuck out in my mind as particularly interesting. The only thing close that I could find on the internet was this image, which isn't even a comic because it is only one picture and not a series of pictures in sequence, but has bubbles in it to make it seem comic-like. I find it hard to believe that nobody has toyed with this idea. It might be somewhat time consuming but nevertheless interesting.
With the recent downfall of the film industry, other medium's might soon take over in terms of popularity. It is no surprise that nowadays movies are simply re-makes and nothing to do with originality. I can't remember an actually original movie has come out. Nowadays people overuse special effects and don't pay attention to plot, and character development. A great example of this is the upcoming movie, 2012. Yet another disaster film with a lot of "new-age" special effects with John Cusack as the lead character. I personally would not pay a penny to see this but it's sad that most of America would. The "new technology" used today, in my opinion, takes away from the realism and only makes the movie less believable. It is easy to tell whether something was used with computers or not. The best special effects had little to no computer involvement whatsoever, (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.) They used actual tiny models and a blue screen and used actual pyro for fire and stunts, with actual stuntmen involved. With this disintegration, maybe people will start turning to other mediums to find a new stimulation of the mind.
New Forms of Entertainment?
Oct
5
2009
Jurassic Park
Ah about the computer graphics, another good example of that would be Jurassic Park. According to the trivia on imdb about it
, it says "The full-sized animatron of the tyrannosaurus rex weighed about 13,000 to 15,000 pounds. During the shooting of the initial T-rex attack scene that took place in a downpour and was shot on a soundstage, the latex that covered the T-rex puppet absorbed great amounts of water, making it much heavier and harder to control. Technicians worked throughout the night with blow driers trying to dry the latex out. Eventually, they suspended a platform above the T-rex, out of camera range, to keep the water off it during filming." I also vaguely remember reading something about the scene where the T-Rex's head comes smashing through the top of the car to the kids, supposedly that was an accident and those kid's screams were real.....I sure woulda been scared out of my mind too ha And it WAS real, a 13,000 pound friggin robot, not a computer generated T-Rex you can easily tell is fake.
Photo comics?
What image are you discussing? If you meant to link to or embed it, it didn't show up.
Of course, there is a whole genre of photo comics. (I used to read A Softer World a lot, but it's drifted off my daily list for one reason or another.) I even found some software for building your own photo comics.
So yeah I think these definitely count as comics. But what about that photo booth example McCloud gave? I'm not sure. I think there's another big reason why those might not be comics, and I think McCloud would agree, if you read him closely.
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