Times Running Out

Hello Everyone,

Sorry I'm late! I've kept reading about comics and time (check out the bibliography page on our website for more refs). Theories about Sequential Art provide a rich source of information about techniques for representing time, motion, characters, drama and emotion. You can find some good techniques in the chapters in the reader by Scott McCloud (they are comic essays so you’ll have fun!). I’d like to hear your impressions of the chapters.

[Reading time…tick, tock…]

[After you’ve read the chapters:]
McCloud says some interesting stuff about the expression of time in a static form, do you know of any webpages that show time passing in some way? One that springs to mind for me is the animations representing a page loading. Have a look at this site by Ulysses Alvarez (keep going in until you get to the eye). Alvarez's site, MartiniH, you may recognise from the terrible remediation of it on the front cover of your reader. Let me know of any other ways that you’ve seen time be represented – in any form (can be moving images: 2D & 3D animation, whatever…). You can provide or link or describe a work or technique.

Also, there is a link to the Tarquin Engine I spoke about in class at the Interactive Entertainment Software section of our website. There is also a strip creator there. I’ve created a little 3-panel strip quickly. It is called ‘What to do at school’. Have a go (you have to register to be able to save your comic, once you’ve done that copy the URL and paste it in a comment here).