Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott Mccloud Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
Book Review: Great book for establishing your comics
Summary: 5 Stars
Scott Mccloud's Making Comics resembles a constitution for those want to establish their comics either as a hobby or as a carrier. It goes through so many details regarding creating your panels, establishing scenes, storytelling, characters designs and feelings, drawing styles, and the list goes on. Simply, the book gives you a guideline for establishing a living world in papers. What makes "Making Comics" unique is that it can teach you how to be a comic artist even if you're not good enough in drawing. The book illustrates the fundamentals of drawings comics and let you be creative for starting your own comic book. All in all, I really enjoyed reading this book, and it will help me a lot for my comics' drawings.Book Review: Disagree with review below--this is a remarkable book!
Summary: 5 Stars
The previous reviewer accuses Scott McCloud of lacking the authority to write a guide to making comics. But McCloud's book is based on clear demonstration, not on authority.
McCloud does a remarkable job of showing--not just telling--the reader about how details of characters' expressions and body language reflect their mental states, how different "camera angles" and types of panels control the flow of the narrative, how the way an environment is presented affects our relationship to it, and more.
Reading the book, I encountered insight after insight about things that I had noticed intuitively about comics but never really been conscious of.
Book Review: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND..!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Scott McCloud has become the Prometheus of the Comic Book idiom dispelling the knowledge of the gods to us mere/ mortals...!!
This book WILL become the Guidebook, Map and Talisman to the ART of Graphic Narrative.
All the chapters in the book lend merit to ANY artist wishing to explore content as well as form:
The 5 Choices is well thought out and begins to give you the WHY as well as the HOW in graphic narrative. Many books show you HOW to draw comics; this book gives you the keys to [ahem..] MAKING COMICS!!!
The following chapters: Stories for Humans and Power of Words are exceptional explorations and discourses into the mechanics of REAL story telling. The section in "Stories for Humans" with the SIX basic facial expressions and the various "recipes" [83] of expressive combinations is WORTH looking into. I was looking at SPANISH tele-novellas [soap operas] and comparing expressions w/ Scott's formulas...IT WORKS!!! I wish Scott focused equally on bodily expressions.
In "Power of Words" you see correlations between the 7 types of word/picture combinations and the 5 choices.
The "World Building" section is equally rich and compels one to create worlds/ environments of substance with which one's characters can traverse.
The "Understanding Manga" is an refreshing excursion into a sub-set of comics much imitated but not much understood.
The chapter on "Tools & Technique" is worth the price. And, the examples at the end of chapters 1-3 are worth LOOKING INTO, APPLYING and DOING THE WORK!! I have seen a MARKED improvement in my comics as a result of using these excerises.
As an art educator, college instructor I have ALREADY incorporated the excerises within my current curriculum.
This book is worth using as a reference time and time again.
Book Review: The book Scott McCloud was born to write (5 stars)
Summary: 5 Stars
Scott McCloud became the premier comics theorist with his first book, Understanding Comics. His second book, Reinventing Comics, was much more controversial and not nearly as well received as his first. Finally, 13 years after his first magnificent insight into the comics world, Scott McCloud publishes Making Comics, a book he was destined to make since 1993. All of the theories in Making Comics are not only sound but brilliant and insightful, covering a vast range of topics from body language and facial expressions to the tools of the trade to the ever expanding genres and ways to publish comics. McCloud thoroughly dissects and examines every issue comics creators come across during the creative process and presents it in a way that's easy to comprehend and mindblowing at the same time. Along with presenting these findings, he tacks on notes to the end of each chapter with exercises that are easy to do and perfect for getting the creative juices flowing for aspiring comics creators. Not only is Making Comics an effective textbook for learners but, as a structured book, it's an intriguing narrative as well with McCloud bending, breaking, and exemplifying every rule he discusses. Through his narrative and visual style, Making Comics becomes an adventure with a character that can literally do anything. All through the book Scott displays a drive to create the ultimate comic book story he knows he's capable of making but all indications show that with Making Comics, he's already made it. Book Review: McCloud Narrows His Audience
Summary: 4 Stars
Scott McCloud is known best for his masterpiece, Understanding Comics. Whereas Understanding Comics clarified and simplified the principles of comics in a universally appealing way, Making Comics succeeds at removing the screws and getting into the cogs and gears that keep juxtapozed-pictorial-and-other-images-in-deliberate-sequence ticking.
That understood, this isn't really a book for someone that isn't interested in making comics, because most of the information within isn't easily applied to other disciplines, media, or general understanding of our own cognitive processes--at least not in the ways it so successfully did in Understanding Comics. That being said, the book also doesn't seem to offer a lot of useful information for the thoughtful veteran of comics creation, either. It's a bit like he's describing the subconscious actions that go with driving a car, but those won't necessarily make you a better driver.
Making Comics is definitely worth a gander, though--it's important to realize that even an average performance by Scott McCloud is quite well-done.