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Filip Stojanovski
Contemporary Storytelling: Comics and Animation
Comics: Bits of History
Usage of visual representations, or images, to convey
information dates from prehistory. The cave paintings of Lascaux (above) might
have carried a similar kind of message to the frescos of the Sistine
Chapel (bellow). They were a means to reach great numbers of people with
particular information, often formed into a story. The significance of
the visual element was not lost with the advent of literacy. This is
because the letters of the alphabet are also images, visual symbols
representing concepts, and literacy, propelled by the print, only
contributed to the importance of using the visual sense.
During the Middle Ages, the unwritten rule of
separating pictures from words when creating mainstream art--that had
been enforced since the Renaissance--was nonexistent. Medieval frescos
often have written names of characters and descriptions of the events on
the same painting plane. Drawings and ornaments, often related to the
action, illuminated the text of medieval manuscripts. Although
narratives made out of sequences of adjacent images appear in ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia, this time period is abundant with works of art
that can be considered comics in the modern sense. And they did not
appear just in Medieval Europe, but also in China, Japan and
pre-Columbian Mexico (McCloud, 1993, pp.10-16).
One example of such artwork is the Tapestry of Bayeux.
The tapestry is embroidery that tells the story of how Duke William of
Normandy became the conqueror and king of England in 1066. The artwork
itself is a strip of linen, 230 ft by 20 in (70 m by 51 cm), that is
currently exposed in the Bayeux Museum, in France (Encyclopedia.com,
Bayeux Tapestry, 1999). It is a famous historical source on the events
and the costumes of the time. Attributed to William's wife, Queen
Matilda, it was probably stitched by female workers of the court. The
textual content is in Latin, the language of writing in that part of
Europe at the time.
The tapestry has quite a clear propagandistic
function: justifying the Norman Conquest of England. Its story reveals
that Harold, the king of England at the time of conquest, was sort of an
imposter and an ungrateful fellow, who deserved to be killed in battle by the noble Normans. William, whom the late king
Edward named the hair to the English throne before Harold, could not
accept the insult to his honor when Edward changed his mind on his
deathbed. Thus, William gathered great knights dressed in chain mall
armors, built great ships, and won the day at Hastings, killing Edward
and seizing power. So ends
the story of the tapestry of Bayeux
(Peregrinator, 1999). In the aftermath, William met little significant
resistance by the Saxon populace because he organized an array of
castles full of soldiers aligned to him as vassals. England was never
the same, being greatly influenced by the French culture and language
brought by the Normans.
Contents
| Foreword |
Glossary |
Works Cited
Comics: Bits of History |
Modern Age |
Great Adventurers |
Vocabulary
| Grammar: Closure
Animation: Origins |
An Early Animator |
Classical Animation |
Making an Animation
| Epilogue
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